Monday Presets – 5 Across Print Preset

This week, I’ve got some really sweet print preset. First, I was looking at a frame that a friend of mine (RC) picked up for me at IKEA. It was one of those 5-across layouts. I thought “Hey, I can do that in Lightroom”. Then it actually got even cooler after I started thinking about the other week’s video on stacking panos in Lightroom. I was getting the presets ready for this week and accidentally clicked on several of the photos in my panorama stack. I looked at it and thought “Hey, now that’s pretty cool!”. It’s kind of like a fake pano spread across the layout. Now I know the photos aren’t actually stitched together but I still think it looks pretty darn cool. That said, it wasn’t created for that purpose so you can just use it for any photos. But the pano does look pretty sweet too. Enjoy.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Pano Print Preset
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Monday Presets – Holiday Slideshows

In the spirit of the holidays I’m switching gears this week to a holiday preset for the Slideshow module. I’m sure plenty of you will be taking photos during the holidays. Naturally, your family expects to see these photos right away. OK, they want them in 5 minutes right? Well, once you’ve imported the photo, jump over to the Slideshow module and show ‘em off in style. Step 1) Download these two backgrounds and place them on your desktop. Step 2) Position your Lightroom window in a way so you can see both Lightroom and the desktop. Step 3) Turn on the Background Image option in the Slideshow module. Then drag the background over the little thumbnail area on that panel. It’ll pop up as a background image for your slideshow. Try resizing your actual photo as well so you can see more of the background if you want. It’ll add that extra bit of holiday spirit as your family, friends, or clients look at the photos. Enjoy!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download the holiday backgrounds

Tuesday's Monday Presets

I know, the presets usually come on Monday but I wanted to change it up this week. Actually, yesterday just got away from me. Anyway, this week I’ve got some presets for you that are specifically geared for sunsets with lots of sky. As I was looking through my photos I realized there were basically two types of sunsets – cool or warm. The cooler ones typically had lots of blues and some reds in them. The warmer ones had more of a yellowish color to them. So I made a few tweaks in White Balance as well as HSL and saved them a while back. Now whenever I have a sunset photo I usually give these a try first and I get great results most of the time. If anything, it’s a great starting point and you can always go tweak the Temperature and Tint settings under White Balance for more or less of the effect. Have at ‘em!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Cool/Warm Sunset Presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Presets – Contrast Boost

Here’s another set of presets right from my personal workflow. They’re all contrast-boosting presets (there are 5 of them). I use the Tone Curve to add contrast to my photos. I used to just click on the Point Curve options at the bottom of the Tone Curve panel (Linear, Medium Contrast, Strong Contrast) to see which one I liked the best. Finally I just created some presets for them, as well as a couple other settings, because I found the difference between the 3 was a bit too broad. So now they’re yours for the taking. The “0″ preset is a flat Tone Curve while the “4″ one is fairly steep and the largest contrast boost out of all of them. What’s nice about these is that once they are installed you can just hover over them in the Develop module and see the preview in the Navigator panel so you don’t even need to click on them to apply. Have fun with ‘em!

Click here to download Matt’s Contrast Boost presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets

Monday Presets – Dark Web Presets

For those of you who followed Friday’s post, I’m happy to report that the Christmas Tree (yes, I said “Christmas”) tree is up. Casualties: 4 glass ornaments, 1 argument between my wife and I on tree placement, 2 large scratches on my arm from placing the tree (my wife won), and 1 tormented black cat (I think my kids kept trying to poke him with the ornament hooks).
Now… let’s get to the Monday preset. This week I’m making two of my custom web gallery templates available. I like black. I think it’s sleek and elegant. Lightroom comes with a couple of black “midnight” web gallery presets but they have one problem (OK, a few). The light color areas in them are too bright. Mainly, I can’t stand the cell rollovers on the Lightroom “Midnight” template. Nothing screams loud and obtrusive like they do. Also, it totally turns off the grid. I’m just not crazy about seeing the photos floating on the page like that. I like grid – I’ve embraced the grid – I’ve become one with the grid. Actually, I just think it brings order to the page. Next, the Midnight preset also turns off the Cell Numbers setting so you don’t see any numbers on the cells. I’m all for that except when it comes to client proofing. It makes it harder for some one to tell you which photo they like best. So my version has the numbers the same color as the cells except when you rollover. They become visible (albeit barely) so a client can easily tell you which ones they want. I’ve also included a darker flash template then the one that comes with Lightroom. Again, the default preset was a good start but other areas were just too bright.

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Midnight Web presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Monday Presets – White Balance

I’m back from a long weekend off and I feel totally revitalized. It’s amazing what a few days off will do for ya’. This weeks’ presets hit me over the weekend. I photographed a good friend of mine, Derek, and his family (see the next post for more). As I was going through the photos, I kept experimenting with the white balance presets (cloudy, daylight, etc.) and it was getting to be a pain in the neck to go back and forth. I started thinking how great it would be if when I hovered over the white balance setting I could get a quick preview of what it would look like. That’s when this hit me. I created presets for each white balance setting. Since you can hover over a preset in the Develop module and get a preview of the effects in the Navigator panel above it worked perfectly. I’ve only been using them for a couple of days but I gotta tell you I’m happy I made them. Now they’re yours too for the taking. Enjoy ‘em and make sure you scroll down for the next post for a little “behind the scenes” on my weekend shoot.

Click here to download Matt’s White Balance presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Monday Preset – My favorite Split Tone

Happy Thanksgiving week to everyone out there. It’s a short one for me so I’m pretty psyched to have some time off. Anyway, today I’m sharing my favorite Split Tone preset. It’s not really colorful like some split tone effects I’ve seen out there. It actually only adds a slight amount of red/orange to the highlights and yellow/orange to the shadows. I think it works great when you’re looking for that subtle classic effect. Also, don’t forget that split toning really works best when you already convert the photo to a black and white. So, I’ve included two presets here. The one with the (BW) at the end of it automatically converts the photo to black and white using the “General – Grayscale” preset that ships with Lightroom. Then I’ve added my split toning effects on top of it. Since Lightroom’s Grayscale preset may not work well on your particular photo, the other one just adds the split tone effect so you’ll have to convert your photo to black and white first. Enjoy ‘em!

Click here to see a sample of the preset.
Click here to download Matt’s Classic Split Tone presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Monday Presets – Sharpening

This week’s free presets deal with sharpening. Now, I know Lightroom has a couple of sharpening presets built right in (one for landscapes and one for portraits). The reason I created my own was that I felt these presets were a bit on the “not enough” side. A couple of times they worked great, but most of the time I found I was increasing the sharpening strength. So I created my own (3 for portraits and 3 for landscapes). They’re grouped into a “a little, a little more, or a lot” format. I’ll tell you right off the bat that there is absolutely no scientific reasoning behind this other then these presets look good when applied to my photos. Actually there’s a little reasoning. You’ll see with the portrait ones that the Masking setting is always cranked up, which is generally what I use when I want to preserve the skin tone. For the landscape ones I leave it at a lower setting. Anyway, enjoy them. I hope they work well for you.
Click here to download Matt’s Sharpening presets
Click here to see a video on how to install presets.

Monday Presets – Vintage New York Look

Here’s an effect that works great for portraits. It’s got that desaturated look that is often associated with the whole vintage style that’s so popular. Plus, it’s a popular effect for city (New York-ish) style photos these days. It’s primarily geared toward portraits. One thing you’ll notice if you look at the settings after you apply it, is that I bumped up the Orange and Yellows in the HSL panel to bring back some life to the skin (you gotta love Lightroom). As I mentioned earlier, this is mainly geared towards portraits but give it a try on other types of photos as I’ve gotten some really fantastic results.

Download the presets here

- See the Before/After view of the presets here
- Download the presets here.

Monday Presets – Creative Printing

A few weeks ago I posted this video on creating a custom contact sheet that actually looks more like a cool print then it does a contact sheet. If you missed the video or are just too plain lazy and never got around to creating the preset, then you’re in luck today. Even if you saw the video and created the preset, you’ll like this one because there’s an extra for you. This week I’ve created two printing presets that were born from one of the Contact Sheet presets in Lightroom’s Print module. One is a 3×3 grid and the other is a 2×2 grid. The 3×3 requires that you have 9 photos and the 2×2 needs 4 (I know, simple math but hey, it’s Monday and I didn’t want to make you think too much) . They’re an awesome way to spice up a simple print. Plus, sometimes you’ve got a bunch of photos that, by themselves, aren’t print worthy but when they’re all together easily pull of a pro-quality print. I’ve got lots more that I’ll be sharing over the coming months but here are a couple to get you going.
- Here’s a sample of what one of the presets looks like.
- Download the presets here.