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.
Hi Scott,
Yes, I use presets that I make myself and I fine tune them for the specific image.
Cheers 🙂
Yes I use (my one) presets for the “basement” of post production, for more contrast, less saturation sharpening, and to enlighten shadows and get a higher contrast especially in the middle tones.
I am yet to understand the whole concept clearly.
adjust the first photo in a set which has the same lighting then use the lift and stamp tool for photos with the same lighting, then i make minor adjustments after that. i do not use presets at all
Scott… I “Auto Tune” or as I like to call it “T-Pain” everything… I mean it worked for him in the music industry, perhaps it could catch on with photos?
All joking aside, It really depends on the situations I’m in. For the PJ stuff that I shoot, especially stuff on deadline I can’t ethically do much to it other than adjust color/white balance, shadow/highlight correction, and perhaps a little burn/dodge. I do this all individually on every image because if I’m ever asked by an editor about manipulation I want to be able to explain exactly everything that was done. I also prefer to let the editor who is working off of a color corrected monitor calibrated for that publications presses make the bulk of the adjustments. Also as I mentioned before, if its on deadline time is important, so I really can’t do much to the images and get them out efficiently.
That being said for covering sports especially indoor or at night I have pre-sets created for each venue. I’ve gone in and done lots of exposure testing, white balance testing with grey targets, etc… when I ingest, the preset for each venue gets applied to every those images, meaning I don’t typically have to touch anything other than a quick crop, and writing a caption which speeds up the process even more.
On the commercial/advertising side of things its just as varied. If the shoot calls for a specific look/feel I may spend some time creating a preset to get me in the ballpark of the overall look the client is going for. I will typically create a set of versions with this preset applied for proofing purposes, but will then go back and work the un-touched files individually for those going to publication, which typically goes pretty fast since I know the recipe for the preset.
For personal stuff I have created some presets that will re-create the same look and feel of some of my favorite film stocks, again these go on versions, and sometimes I may go from the preset, or just start from scratch. I think this goes back to my early professional days working for a daily newspaper where the image techs would go in and setup presents in the software on the Kodak RFS 3570 scanners for each type of film stock we used (Mostly Fuji Press 100,400,800 and 800 pushed to 1600).
I think sometimes that the presets can hinder a vision of what an image can be, but I also think that from time to time it might take you in a direction you never thought of by playing around with them and trying new things. That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever sent an image out to a client without doing a little tweaking to each individual frame.
There’s a lot of good conversation going on in here. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.