Editing Tips:

– Each preset will look differently based on the colors, light and white balance of each photo. First thing I like to do when applying a preset is to adjust Exposure slider to get a proper exposure of the photo (most of your histogram should fall somewhere in the middle or to the right).

– Next step I like to do is to adjust White Balance of the photo. “As Shot” or “Auto” usually accomplish what I need to do in Lightroom but sometimes I go for “Cloudy”, “Daylight” or “Shade” presets. When all else fails, adjust the slider manually to get the look that you desire.

– Basic editing should come next – adjust your “Highlights”, “Shadows”, “Whites” and “Blacks” before doing anything else. I typically like to open up my shadows to get the most details in the darkest part of the photo and tone down highlights to recover the details from overblown skies. But don’t be afraid to experiment here.

– “HSL” and “Split Toning” are powerful tools to get the colors that you want in your photos. Play around with increasing saturation and luminance on colors that you want to “pop” in your photos and decreasing them for colors that you want to mute. Split Toning can add an easy filter to all of the “highlights” and “shadows” in your photo. Some of the most popular color combinations include “blue/orange”, “blue/green”, and “green/red” but experiment with adding colors that are most prominent in your photo as well like yellows and purples.

– “Snow Day“, “Smooth + Shadowy” and “Rose Gold City” presets include radial filters that will be automatically applied when selected. “Snow Day” and “Smooth + Shadowy” add an extra pop of light to the middle of your photos, while “Rose Gold City” adds saturation to compensate for the lack of yellows in a photos. Feel free to resize, move, adjust or delete these filters from your photo as necessary.