Video: Upgrading Lightroom 3 Presets to Lightroom 4

I’ve heard a lot of talk about what happens to presets that were created in Lightroom 3 (or LR2) and now used in Lightroom 4. I know a lot of people have presets that they absolutely loved in Lightroom 3 and they simply don’t seem to look the same in Lightroom 4. That’s because of the differences in sliders in the Basic panel. Sliders that were in Lightroom 3 simply don’t exist in Lightroom 4. So Lightroom does it’s best to “guess” what the should look like but you’ll see it’s not always right on the money. So today’s video goes over a few options you have if you had a preset in Lightroom 3 that you want to use in Lightroom 4. As always, leave your thoughts below. I’d be interested to hear if you’re having any “they don’t look the same” issues with your older presets and if you find yourself converting them over to Lightroom 4, or just tweaking the preset each time you apply it. Thanks!

Presets – Spring Color, Flare & Haze

This week, Laura (from Pretty Presets) was kind enough to donate some more free presets for me to give away. The images below show the before/after samples of the 2 presets included in the download below (from the Spring Color, Flare & Haze Collection). If you like ‘em, she’s got plenty more available over at at Lightroompresets.com so make sure you stop by and pay her a visit.

The Spring Color, Flare & Haze Collection was designed to add a sun-kissed touch to your natural light images. They’ll work best on your RAW images and were designed for both Lightroom 3 and 4, as you’ll see in the download below.
(Special thanks to Spanki Mills and Jen Carver for the beautiful examples provided)

You can find out more about the presets and the entire collection over at her website (www.lightroompresets.com) or facebook page (www.facebook.com/PrettyPresets)

$#x2022; Here’s the link to download the presets for Lightroom 4.
$#x2022; Here’s the link to download the presets for Lightroom 3.
$#x2022; Here’s a video that’ll help you install and organize your presets.
$#x2022; Here’s a couple before/after examples (click to see larger).

Lightroom 4 Presets: Summer Haze

It’s May 1st and summer is rapidly approaching (we’ve already got summer-like weather in Florida so we’re close enough in my book). I was looking through some of my old Lightroom 3 presets and deciding which ones to update to Lightroom 4, and the Summer Haze preset seemed like a good choice. Overall, I was trying to get across that summery, warm, hazy feeling and this is what came out of it. The preset adjusts the white balance, Vibrance, Saturation, negative Clarity (for some softness) and Split Toning sliders. I even tossed in a bit of a Tone Curve adjustment on it in the Shadows since the other settings seemed to muddy the photo up a bit, and I thought it needed some more blacks to bring back the contrast. It works great on outdoor photos and even makes a pretty nifty wedding effect. Hope you and enjoy!

The Presets:

• Click here to download the presets.
• Here’s a video that’ll help you install and organize your presets.
• Here’s a before/after examples (click to see it larger).

Presets – Update to the Ultimate Fighter Presets from Yesterday

Hey everyone. First, if you’re reading this make sure you scroll to the next post, as I’m giving away some free tickets to my upcoming Lightroom seminars. Next, I just realized that there’s two problems here on the site. 1) I named the “Ultimate Fighter” style presets from yesterday with a pipe character in them (“Ultimate Fighter | Strong” for example) and it seems to be giving Windows users some trouble. 2) I realized that nearly all (like 95%) of your comments are getting caught in my spam filter, so I’m not even seeing the comments when there’s a problem. So, below is a new link to some renamed presets that should work just fine. Sorry for the problems and I’ll make sure I change the names in any new presets I put up here. Thanks!

• Click Here to Download the Presets

Free Lightroom 4 Presets – The Ultimate Fighter

I’ve been busy going through my old Lightroom 3 presets and updating them for Lightroom 4. I figured I’d start with the most popular ones and the Ultimate Fighter look was one of them. There’s 3 versions and while they seem to work best on dark dramatic photos, they work on brighter photos as well. It’s just got to be a photo that you want to add a dramatic gritty effect to (probably not a good family portrait effect). It also works great on other types of photos too, so give it a try on anything and see what you come up with. As always, your comments are welcome. Download ‘em and let me know what you think.

The Presets:
• Click here to download the presets.
• Here’s a video that’ll help you install and organize your presets.
• Here’s a couple of examples (click to see it larger).

Lightroom 4 Presets – HDR Effect Part 2

A couple of months ago I released some HDR presets for Lightroom 4 Beta. With some changes in the beta, as well as some changes in the way I’ve been processing photos, I came up with a few updates to them so I figured I’d post ‘em here. There’s 3 different versions of it (Light, Medium, and Strong) and each has a few of the new sliders incorporated into it as well as some other settings. You can replace the old ones if you’ve already downloaded these as they’re not meant to sit along side of them. As always, let everyone know what you think. However, I caution you now… if you’re one of those that don’t like HDR photos then you may want to consider staying away from these presets I’m just sayin’.

Here’s a quick Before/After (click for larger image):

• Download the presets here.
• Here’s a link to a video that shows you how to install the presets

My Most-Used Nik Color Efex Pro 4 Recipe

A couple weeks ago I did a Lightroom/Photoshop before and after video where I used Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4. One of the things I like most about CEP4 is that you can add multiple filters and save them as a recipe. That way, you don’t have to manually go through and apply the same settings each time you use it. Another thing I like about CEP4 is that you can save those recipes and share them with other people. So here’s the recipe that I used in that video. It’s basically got the Detail Extractor filter and the Vignette filter applied to it with my favorite settings. To use the recipe, just download the zip file below and unzip to your desktop. Open Nik CEP4 and look at the bottom left side of the window. You’ll see an import button (see image below). Just click it and point to the file you just unzipped. That’s it! Oh, and you NEED to have Nik Color Efex Pro 4 for this to work. It won’t work with version 3. Have a great weekend!

• Download the preset here

New Lightroom 4 Presets – The HDR “Look”

I’ve mentioned before that coming up with new preset ideas has been pretty difficult these days. I feel like I’ve run through just about every preset combination possible in Lightroom. I mean, there’s only so many ways you can move a few sliders right It doesn’t take long before they all start looking the same (maybe with just a different name).

That’s why I was really psyched when I saw the Lightroom 4 changed some of the Develop module settings. Mainly because the changes are fantastic and help me edit my photos better. But, if I’m really being honest here, the changes open up more possibilities for new presets as well as a chance to go back and tweak some older presets too.

I knew right from the start that I was going to create a preset that simulated an HDR “look”, so here’s my first one. There’s 3 different versions of it (Light, Medium, and Strong) and each has a few of the new sliders incorporated into it as well as some other settings. As always, let everyone know what you think. However, I caution you now… if you’re one of those that don’t like HDR photos then you may want to consider staying away from these presets I’m just sayin’.

Here’s a quick Before/After (click for larger image):

• Download the presets here.
• Here’s a link to a video that shows you how to install the presets

Lightroom Presets – Red River Greeting Cards

Hey everyone. I’ve found some Lightroom templates from Red River that I thought I’d share. I don’t think they’re new but, well, they’re kinda new to me because I just found them. I’ve always been a big fan of Red River paper and I noticed that they have some greeting cards and templates for Lightroom 3 on their site. They even have a video on how to use the templates if you’re new to it. Here’s the link to download the templates. Enjoy!

More Lightroom Calendar Presets

Hey everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed the free Lightroom Calendar templates from yesterday (thanks again to Ed Weaver for creating and sharing them). Just like last year, blog reader (Thomas Ljungberg) was kind enough to create some more calendar print templates for those of you outside the US. You can download the templates for free. He also has the full PSD files available for –10 in case you’re interested. If you download them, by all means please let us know what you think. Thanks!