Lightroom Presets

Lightroom Presets – Focal Point for Portraits and Landscapes

February 7, 2011
23

Hey there! I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who came out to my Austin “Photoshop for Photographers” seminar on Friday. The city pretty much shut down because of dangerously icy roads but we still had a great group that braved it anyway and it turned out to be an awesome day. Thanks for coming by. Stop by KelbyTrainingLive.com to see where I’ll be next (Houston on March 9th for Lightroom 3 I believe).

Anyway, today I’ve got a follow up to some presets I released a while ago. Here’s the back story so you know where they’re coming from. See, I had an idea a while back about using the adjustment brush to create a focal point in certain parts of the photo (by darkening the rest of the photo). The vignetting controls are great for doing this but if your subject isn’t in the middle of the photo then it doesn’t work as well. So I figured I could use the adjustment brush to darken parts of the photo and save it as a preset. Nope! I quickly found out you couldn’t save adjustment brush controls as a preset so I went back to the drawing board and came up with this idea instead. I’ve created 8 different presets that each use the Graduated Filter to do something similar. 4 of them are for Portraits (or portrait oriented images) and 4 of them are for landscape oriented photos (top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right). Enjoy ’em and let me know what you think!

Portrait (Top Left)

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Portrait (Top Right)

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Landscape (Bottom Right)

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Click here to download Matt’s Focal Point Presets
Click here for a video on how to install presets

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23 comments

  3. Daniel Quirós 31 May, 2012 at 20:53 Reply

    Hi Matt! I just want to let you know those presets are really cool and useful. I just had a problem. When I updated my lightroom 3 to version 4 all your focal point presets stoped working and I couldnt update them. Could you help me to solution this issue?

    Greetings,

    Daniel

  7. Jodi Kent 4 March, 2011 at 16:37 Reply

    I have a preset challenge for you. I love the new Juicy Couture ad campaign photos. They are gorgeous desaturated images. Check them out at http://www.juicycouture.com. I don’t know who the photographer is but I love the look. Can you develop a similar looking preset? Thanks for all the hard work and great presets.

  9. Jeff Z 9 February, 2011 at 14:32 Reply

    Thanks Matt – Great shot from Steptoe Butte – looks quite familiar … http://t.co/xrrOltF

    Guess I’ve got a similar photo to try out this preset. Enjoy seeing your presets and how you’ve applied them – well, along with all the other Lightroom info!!

    Jeff

    • RON 8 February, 2011 at 13:52 Reply

      Hi Sara,

      I would keep them, Matt has a heads up and always gives an updated preset a different name by adding a 2 to it.

      you may want to go to your presets folder where they reside and make folders for certain groups of presets to better organize your presets so you don’t ind yourself scrolling through a long list just to find the preset your looking for. I personally have a folder for each group of Matts presets. example ; MATTS LR 1, MATTS LR 2, MATTS LR 3. And then i have BW, EXPOSURE, NOISE, SHARPEN ECT..

      ANOTHER THING, I would burn a copy of all your presets to a disc and/or make a back up copy to another drive. Just in case you ever need to re install your OS and format your drive, or replace a failed drive. Or if you ever accidentally change/over write a preset. Makes it easy to put things back to normal.

      Also makes it easy to share with your friends . 🙂

  19. Keith Mitchell 7 February, 2011 at 07:51 Reply

    Matt your Austin session was entertaining, informative, and inspirational. I passed 4 cars in the ditch, 1 accident, and barely missed rear ending a car that was sliding sideways in front of me on the interstate exit ramp a block from the convention center! But it was worth the risk. FYI, the iPad panorama app I showed you is PangeaVR developed in Austin.
    Keith

  20. Dennis Ebben 7 February, 2011 at 05:52 Reply

    Thanx Matt! I’m going to play with this preset tonight.

    I really appreciate your effort. I’ve used a lot of your presets as inspiration for my own presets. Very helpfull!

    Keep up the good work! *thumbs up*

    Dennis

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