Lightroom Editing

What Lightroom Presets Actually Do to Your Files (And Why Most People Use Them Wrong)
Lightroom Editing

What Lightroom Presets Actually Do to Your Files (And Why Most People Use Them Wrong)

A few years ago I released a preset pack on a Tuesday night, mostly because I’d spent the entire weekend building it and felt too stubborn to let it sit on my hard drive. I named every preset after a song, priced the pack at zero dollars, and went to bed. By Friday it had 50,000 downloads. The number wasn’t the surprising part. The surprising part was how many people emailed me to say the presets “weren’t working” because their photos looked nothing like the preview images on the download page.

What Lightroom Presets Actually Do to Your Raw Files (And Why Most People Use Them Wrong)
Lightroom Editing

What Lightroom Presets Actually Do to Your Raw Files (And Why Most People Use Them Wrong)

A few years ago I released a preset pack called Slow Burn — named after a Kacey Musgraves track, because I name all my presets after songs and I’m not sorry about it. I built the whole thing over one long weekend, uploaded it for free, and watched it pull 50,000 downloads inside of a month. The flood of follow-up emails taught me something I hadn’t expected: most of the people using those presets were frustrated.

Why Your Lightroom Presets Look Nothing Like the Preview (And How to Fix That)
Lightroom Editing

Why Your Lightroom Presets Look Nothing Like the Preview (And How to Fix That)

A few years back, I built a preset pack over one long weekend. I barely slept. I named every preset after a song — “Harvest Moon” for that warm, golden-hour film look, “Blue Ridge” for cooler tones with lifted shadows, “Neon Noir” for the high-contrast, teal-and-orange edit that was everywhere on Instagram at the time. I put the whole pack together, decided it felt wrong to charge for it, and gave it away.