If you’re like me, you keep shooting more photos, which, of course, means more images to edit and process. You want to make your images look as good as they can possibly be, though, so it’s worth taking the time to process each shot in order to get it right.
However, time is not an endless commodity. Whether you’re a full time pro, an enthusiast with a day job, or someone in between, chances are you probably struggle with your time management just like I do. After all, there are only so many hours in the day, so anything that can help you save time with your photography is worth looking into.
Craft and Vision has just released their Lightroom Develop Preset Bundle. The bundle compiles the two preset packages by David duChemin and Dave Delnea to give you a total of 82 Lightroom presets for only $18. That’s like what, four and a half gallons of gas?
Why use presets? If you spend any decent amount of time in Lightroom, you’ve probably found that you often do similar corrections on many of your images. Using presets allows you to quickly apply a desired correction or enhancement to large numbers of photos in a split second, give or take, depending on how fast your computer is. The bottom line is that presets help speed up your digital darkroom workflow. They make you more efficient with your time,
The advantage of using presets by top photographers is that you don’t have to spend time tinkering around with sliders, trying to find the look you’re going for. Instead, you find the preset that matches the look and feel that you want for your own imagery, and bang- you’re done. Image looks great. Time saved. Of course, you can also use presets as a starting point to get your creativity you going in the right direction.
When I look at my own photos, I seem similarities between many types of shots, and similar adjustments that reflect common moods or themes that I like to convey in my imagery. I have the experience with Lightroom to get this done quickly, but I’ll admit, I could probably benefit from using presets as well.
Maybe I’ll release my own set of Lightroom presets, but for now, I’d recommend taking a look at the Craft and Vision Lightroom Develop Preset Bundle. I view David duChemin’s work with incredible admiration- the guy makes gorgeous images, and his landscapes and travel imagery is top notch. For as good as he is, though, you can bet that his shots don’t come out of the camera that way. He spends time working each image on the computer in order to make it look just the way he wants.
If there’s a guy whose eye and method I’d trust, it’s his. I’m not as familiar with Dave Delnea’s work as much, but from what I’ve seen, he’s got a pretty good eye as well. It’s only a few more bucks to throw his set in as well, which gives you a total of 85 presets from which to help you fine tune your own imagery.
Each set comes with a PDF guide that shows you how to install them and also illustrates just how they work and how to get the most out of them. They’re recommended for LR4 and the upcoming version of LR5, but may not work as well with LR3.
