Going Retro

One of the fun things about Lightroom is playing around with presets. Presets are basically saved settings that manipulate the look of your photo. You can create your own (if there are specific settings that you regularly use to clean up your photos) or you can find tons online…both free and that you can buy. They can save you tons of time by automating edits, but they also let you experiment easily with different looks for your photos.

I am finding that using presets is helping me learn more about how the different settings in Lightroom work. The more I see how other photographers play around with their images, the more confidence I am getting to try different things. I am also starting to get a better feel for what works with different types of images. Not to mention it is just plain fun to see what you can do.

One of the presets that I downloaded from Preset Heaven is called Retro. It gives photos that old “post-cardy” look from years ago. It allows me to take a photo like this:

And change it to:

Which I just think looks pretty neat. Here is a another one:

I like what it does to the look of the water.

So far I have gotten most of my presets from Preset Heaven and Killer Lightroom Tips. But there are tons out there.

Enjoy!