Enhance photos with presets in Lightroom on the web
Take advantage of presets to jumpstart your image editing or explore new creative styles.
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When we're editing our images in Lightroom, we have access to Presets, and these are a great way to not just make adjustments to a photo quickly with just a simple click, but they're also a great source of inspiration.
Hi, I'm Glyn Dewis, and in this video, I'm going to show you how to use Presets in Lightroom on the web to quickly make changes to a picture, and also how we can use them to try out different looks.
I'll also explain to you what a Preset is, and show you how to make your own adjustments to a Preset to give a picture your own unique look.
I'm going to use a Preset on this image, so I'll start by clicking on the Preset section.
What is a Preset?
Well, a Preset is basically a saved set of adjustments that you could apply with one click.
And they adjust things like brightness, color, contrast, and more depending on the Preset.
You can see here that we have three different categories.
We have Recommended, Premium and Yours.
The Recommended section includes Presets that Lightroom recommends based on the content of your image.
The Premium Presets are professionally designed editing styles that apply a carefully tuned set of adjustments to your image.
And finally, we have the Yours section, and this is where you'll find Presets that you have created or installed.
Let's now take a look at applying a Preset to this image.
I'll dive into the Recommended section, and here there really are some great-looking Presets, but I must admit - I'm very drawn to this top one.
To apply it, I just click on it and straightaway we see the results on our image.
Underneath we have this Amount slider where we can click and drag to the right to increase the overall effect of the Preset or we can click and drag to the left to reduce it.
One thing I really love about the Recommended Presets is that, like all Presets, they are a great starting point, but also when you hover the cursor over a Recommended Preset, you get this that says More like this.
So now, if I click on that, Lightroom will give me even more Presets.
And these ones are variations based on the look of the original one.
I especially like this one, so I'll click on that to apply it.
Again, here we see the Amount slider, so I can adjust that left or right to suit my taste, but I think I'll settle with it there.
But now look, this is the really cool thing about Presets.
If I go to the Edit section here we can see all of the adjustments that have gone into creating this look.
And if I want to, I can now make adjustments to these settings to fine-tune the result to exactly how I want it to be.
You can see as I look through every part of the Edit section what adjustments have been made.
And another great thing about this is that Presets can be a fantastic way to learn how to edit your images, by looking at how the adjustments affect certain parts of it.
Let's just make a few minor alterations to the settings to get the image exactly how I want it.
I think I'll add a little bit more of a Vignette to darken around the outside of the image.
It looks a little bit too contrasty too, so I'll reduce the Contrast a touch, but also darken the shadows a little by dragging the Shadows slider over to the left.
I'll also maybe make it a little bit a touch warmer using the Temperature slider.
Yes, I'm liking that so far.
One thing to remember here is that with one exception, when we apply a Preset, we can only apply one because if we apply a second Preset, those settings will replace the originals.
However, there are what is called Adaptive Presets, and these use Adobe's AI technology to target specific areas only of an image.
For example, here we have Adaptive Presets for the sky, and if I click to open that, you can see there are a few to choose from.
If I applied one of these Adaptive Presets, say Golden Hour by clicking on it, look how only the sky is affected and everywhere else remains the same.
I can also use this Amount slider to control how much or how little of the Adaptive Sky Preset I want to use.
Let's now just click on the Eye icon in the upper right of the screen to see before - and after.
So, hopefully there you can see that Presets are incredibly powerful, but also very easy to use.
They can save you a lot of time and can be a great source of inspiration.
Have fun using them.
Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.
What you'll learn
Explore new creative looks with a single click
A preset is simply a saved set of image adjustments that you can quickly apply to your photos. Presets can be used for simple improvements, or dramatic transformations that take your image in a new creative direction. You can fine-tune any of the adjustments in a preset with the sliders in the Edit panel.
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