Lightroom Creative Preset set - Before vs After
Take a look below to see my six creative presets: Bruges, Carnaby Street, Il Pleut, Cool Dry Sunset, Delicate B&W and Salzberg Sunset in action.
Out of all of them, I find myself using Il Pleut and Delicate B&W the most, the former in duller, moodier weather, and the latter in high contrast images with lots of negative space. Thankfully, living in Devon, there is rather a lot of overcast rainy weather, and more than enough landscapes to fulfil all of these requirements. In fact, there's a whole gallery using my Delicate B&W preset right here.
Cool Dry Sunset is best saved for, you guessed it, sunsets and low light, as well as aerial and drone footage. I find that aerial and drone footage often needs a higher contrast and bolder look to enhance what are smaller details from a distance.
Bruges and Carnaby Street are for nighttime photography fans. As a beginner I was put off nighttime work as I struggled to edit out the harsh yellowness of artificial lights without purely resorting to black and white. Black and white is great, don't get me wrong, but some images call for colour! What better way to illustrate than with a preset devoted to Carnaby Street itself - think fluorescent lights, colour, Christmas lights, fireworks and festivals. Bruges is a little more toned down and designed to enhance a cosy, mysterious, wintry and foggy vibe. I've tried it out many an urban nighttime shot and never been disappointed.
Finally, Salzberg Sunset is for those high contrast images the sun creates at either end of the day that can often look overly blue, lacking detail, or else have totally blown out highlights. I've used this on a variety of darker sunset landscape and urban images and it's quickly become my go-to!
