Scott here. Many of you know that I’m the primary retoucher here around the Chase Jarvis studio. I was surprised to get into a fairly spirited debate the other day with some of my co-workers. The topic? Adjustment presets and plug-ins in Aperture or Lightroom or Photoshop.
I’ve got a strong opinion on this, but this experience has once again reminded me that there are a thousand ways to skin a cat and that my way is just that, my way.
Instead of letting a debate rage inside the office and then fade out, I figured, why not make it public? I want to hear from you.
Do you use presets for the post production of your images?
Do you make your own, or download them from other users online?
Do you use them for initial inspiration, or to create your final files?
What are your favorites and why?
I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Don’t be shy. For those of you who give a rip, I’ll follow up this post with my personal take and we’ll all be a little more informed.
I use a mixture of Aperture’s presets, that I’ve adjusted and made my own, and some that I’ve downloaded off the net.
Also if I’m working on something in either Aperture or Photoshop, and I think it looks good, I’ll start making presets and actions so I can easily pull that back again. Especially if the photo is part of a series where they all have to look consistent.
I think consistency is key here. Why start from scratch every single time you edit a photo? If you have a certain style or look you want to go for, and you’ve done that before, why not use the preset you made last time?
Of course, too much of anything is bad. But I tend to start with a preset, and move on from there.
I do have presets that i’ve downloaded and ones that i’ve made but generally i’ll do a rough tweak to the first file in a series, apply that to the others and tweak the ones that need tweaking from there onwards.
Far from the most efficient way of working i don’t doubt, but i’m not a pro and it works for me. If i mange to get to a semi-pro or pro level then i’ll obviously tweak my workflow accordingly but what i do works fine for me and my photos at the minute 🙂
I can understand the artistic concerns surrounding the use of presets. I don’t do any batch processing, but I think scrolling through my presets in Aperture is helpful in quickly guaging what styles might work on a particular picture. My primary program for photo editing is Aperture 3. I HATE Adobe products and rely on the Nik Software plugins to fill the gap with their U Point technology. I currently use Color Effex 3 from Nik and you can’t really do presets, but they just released version 4 and that will let you build and share “recipies” which I expect will save me tons of time.
No presets for me…
Unless there’s a bunch of photos that look alike and probably will need the same work. than I’ll make an action or a preset but it doesn’t happen often.
I love that you brought this up and it’s really interesting to read everyone’s responses. I, personally, never use presets. I color correct, skin retouch, burn/dodge, drastically alter (whatever needs to be done) each individual photo. Every one of them is different and needs individual attention. If I moved to the left a foot for one photo the lighting may different, so different adjustments might need to be made. It takes a lot of time to work this way but every image gets attention and I control everything.
I am still on the fence about presets. I can see using them in certain situations but I do believe they create a repetitiveness that can be very irritating. I don’t like all of my photos to look exactly the same.