I spent possibly over 1 year to finally have an ounce of contentment with my image colors. If you dig back on this blog you will probably see a drastic difference of how the photos looked a year ago. I went through the HDR hole, the over-exposed high key style with blown out highlights, strobist, etc. I do cringe when I see those, believe me. Not that there isn’t any charm in those styles. There are people who master those very well. I just didn’t work for me.
But that’s a good thing. It means that my eyes are getting more refined to the style and color set I actually like. I do not claim that I found a character that defines my personal style (that’s a long way to go), but at least I am comfortable with a color set that will give a consistent look to my make my portfolio. This is a continuous process and a year from now I would have a different look from what I have now (although I don’t believe I’ll veer to much from it).
With that in mind, here is a FREE set of Lightroom presets (version 3 and later) I developed that are being applied to all of my photo processing recently. I wanted to preserve the original lighter skin tones, by adding a warm and creamy hue in the highlights (thus the Milkshake title), while having a high contrast with moderate shadows, so I can have my subject pop out.
Play with the Exposure to bring the image to the desired point, with the Blacks slider to add punch, and use the Recovery to tame the highlights from being blown out.
Works best on RAW images. Go easy on the colors 😉
Please leave a comment with a link to the image(s) on which you used these presets. As always, I am curious to discover the creative way others can use these Lightroom presets.
Wow, I really like the preset you’ve created! I’ll give them a try and let you know if I use them on some pictures! Thank you 🙂
Serena! Thanks for the comment! Yes, please let me know how they turn out! Thanks!