Use profiles as a starting point or as a finishing touch

Begin your Lightroom image editing with a profile, or use a profile to add a creative look at the end of the process.

Published January 26, 2026

00:01

Introduction

Have you ever possessed an image that you didn't know where to begin, or felt that, at the end, there was a little more that could be achieved?

A look into profiles, might be the missing piece of the puzzle you're looking for.

I'm ZEISS Ambassador Kenneth Hines Jr., and today we'll be looking into utilizing profiles in Lightroom to give your images a creative look as a starting or finishing point.

So, what are profiles?

00:25

Understanding what profiles are and how they work

Profiles function a bit like filters on top of the edits you've applied to your images in Lightroom, and they can add a creative look to them.

With some profiles, you're also able to control the Amount with the slider to adjust the strength of the profile on your image.

There are also Camera Matching profiles, which are color profiles that are specific to a particular camera manufacturer and come included with your camera.

The camera matching profiles will only appear in Lightroom if you're working with the Raw file from that camera manufacturer.

For instance, these profiles are for files from my Sony camera.

Let's look at this image of New York City that hasn't been edited.

01:12

Choosing profiles to start an edit

To obtain an idea of where to begin with color adjustments, I tend to look to see what dominates my image.

The obvious is the yellow of the taxicab.

We also have yellow and orange in the facade of the background buildings.

Now with that, I'll look for warmer tones to complement the yellow and orange.

To begin, we must access profiles via the Edit panel.

Locate Profile at the top, and then select the Window icon to browse all profiles.

Now let's look at a few selections to see how they work for our image.

And keeping in mind that warm tone, let's look at this one of Modern 03.

Now as you can see, it really changed the dynamics of our photo, leaning into that warmer color tone.

Let's maybe look at Modern 07.

Now, this one isn't as aggressive as Modern 03 to where we still have a little bit more of the other colors that are in this photo, but it's still also a nice warm tone and gives us a nice starting point.

Now let's look at something that's a little bit different, to where, with Vintage 07, it has a more faded look.

It kind of emphasizes a little bit more of the taxicab itself, while kind of muting the other colors around it, but it really gives you a different look to our image compared to the other selections.

02:34

Applying profiles at the end of an edit

Now, these were various examples to demonstrate using profiles to start an edit.

But now let's look at selecting these at the end of images, we've already applied our other adjustments to, and see what those do for our overall ending result.

Now, applying profiles at the end of edits is more of my personal preference as well.

Now, as mentioned, this is an image that I've already completed my other adjustments on.

It's a very beautiful looking portrait, as is, but let's give this image an additional creative look.

And I'm going to select Artistic 08.

Now this gives this rich sort of purple bronze look which is quite different from our previous warm golden look.

Now let's say that we want to fine-tune the look of this profile.

We can adjust the Amount slider

03:21

Fine-tuning profiles with the amount slider

to diminish the effect or make it stronger, depending on the effect we want for our particular image.

In this case, I want to lessen the effect a bit, and let's go to about 60.

And that looks pretty good.

Hopefully these examples have given you some ideas on how to commence and complete edits on your images by utilizing profiles.

Try them on your own images and feel free to share them with us in community by selecting the Share icon here and clicking on Share to Community.

We'd love to see your results!

I'm ZEISS Ambassador Kenneth Hines Jr., and until next time.

What you'll learn

Using profiles in your editing workflow

Profiles in Lightroom control how colors and tonality are rendered in your photos. Applying a profile creates an initial interpretation for the look of an image and can be a useful first step at the beginning of your editing workflow. Profiles can also be used as a finishing touch to apply a specific creative look after all the image processing is finished.

Instruction and photography by: Kenneth Hines Jr.

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