Should I use presets and other additional tools?

[Hrenoled]

I recently found a set of good presets and tools that will greatly automate the process, I'll throw it here a little later. Is it worth using them or is it best to learn everything yourself? (I'm a complete beginner).

 

[MattKing]

Welcome to Photrio.
I'd be cautious about using digital presets. To me, they make most sense if you have a particular need to automate a process when that process is needed for a large number of images. A volume based wedding photographer who wants to adhere to a particular style would be well served by using presets.
A lot of us here either come from a film background, or still use film mostly. Over time, many of us have developed a methodical approach that aids us in dealing with particular types of photographs. Some of those methodical approaches might very well be appropriate to automate, but the step by step development of those approaches adds a lot of value to our skills as photographers.
If you like to play with different looks, its fine to try the presets. Just be prepared to do the hard work of reverse engineering them if you find the need to thoroughly understand how they accomplish what they do.

 

[Luckless]

It is very much worth learning and understanding presets and automation in your photo editing software. There is after all little sense in manually recreating the same adjustments and corrections over and over again when you can let the computer apply them for your.

The important thing to learn is what the tools are doing, and why they produce the outcomes they do, such that you are able to modify the adjustments being made to suit your personal needs and any required changes dictated by the image at hand. While presets will often work just fine as is for a wide range of images you will still run into instances where they simply fall short or overshoot some adjustment, or an image may just not really fit with a usual trend and fall flat. If you don't understand what the tools are doing, then you can't understand how to begin fixing them with a handy 'auto button' fails to work. [Or worse, you won't recognize how hopelessly lost a given image is, and fall into a fiddling trap of trying to recover a junk image that is better off abandoned... That leads to wasting your time and growing frustrated with your work when you could have gone out finding a better image or moved on to something more worth the time and effort.]

Of course the real control and magic of presets comes from building out your own - Figure out what you need for your camera, scenes, and styles, and use the presets to get your images to 95% where you probably want them before settling down for final adjustments.

 

[Hrenoled]

Welcome to Photrio.
I'd be cautious about using digital presets. To me, they make most sense if you have a particular need to automate a process when that process is needed for a large number of images. A volume based wedding photographer who wants to adhere to a particular style would be well served by using presets.
A lot of us here either come from a film background, or still use film mostly. Over time, many of us have developed a methodical approach that aids us in dealing with particular types of photographs. Some of those methodical approaches might very well be appropriate to automate, but the step by step development of those approaches adds a lot of value to our skills as photographers.
If you like to play with different looks, its fine to try the presets. Just be prepared to do the hard work of reverse engineering them if you find the need to thoroughly understand how they accomplish what they do.

Those. for each specific case, it may be necessary to re-model the presets to adhere to the style?

 

[Hrenoled]

It is very much worth learning and understanding presets and automation in your photo editing software. There is after all little sense in manually recreating the same adjustments and corrections over and over again when you can let the computer apply them for your.

The important thing to learn is what the tools are doing, and why they produce the outcomes they do, such that you are able to modify the adjustments being made to suit your personal needs and any required changes dictated by the image at hand. While presets will often work just fine as is for a wide range of images you will still run into instances where they simply fall short or overshoot some adjustment, or an image may just not really fit with a usual trend and fall flat. If you don't understand what the tools are doing, then you can't understand how to begin fixing them with a handy 'auto button' fails to work. [Or worse, you won't recognize how hopelessly lost a given image is, and fall into a fiddling trap of trying to recover a junk image that is better off abandoned... That leads to wasting your time and growing frustrated with your work when you could have gone out finding a better image or moved on to something more worth the time and effort.]

Of course the real control and magic of presets comes from building out your own - Figure out what you need for your camera, scenes, and styles, and use the presets to get your images to 95% where you probably want them before settling down for final adjustments.

I think that real professionals do not use presets, but for beginners it is useful, but I'm afraid to make a mistake, I want to be as professional as possible.

 

[Kino]

I think that real professionals do not use presets, but for beginners it is useful, but I'm afraid to make a mistake, I want to be as professional as possible.

Just don't become too dependent upon the presets or your work will have a predictable, uniform look.

It's like leaving your camera on automatic and never exploring the possibilities...

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Professionals? My daughter used to take pictures professionally. She didn’t used any, just adjusted as she want.
But each case might be different.

 

[Luckless]

I think that real professionals do not use presets, but for beginners it is useful, but I'm afraid to make a mistake, I want to be as professional as possible.

If that is your mindset, then "Real 'Professionals'" clearly shouldn't make use of ANY kind of automation! Print your raw file data out, and manually calculate out everything by hand! ...

But seriously, presets are a baseline to start with, not the end of a workflow. If you are applying nearly the same values consistently to a group of photos, then what would be professional about sitting there and manually doing it for each and every one? The professional thing to do would be to make effective use of the tools at hand to save you time and allow you to do more work with less effort.

If you're repeatedly doing one style of portrait where all photos have a similar set of adjustments applied, then you write up a preset that gets them into the ballpark, apply them to all photos from the batch you're working on, and manually make adjustments only to the ones that need further work. If the baseline preset is good enough then you move on.

Using presets isn't cheating or robbing your client of anything. It is saving you from repeatedly doing the same work over and over again for not additional gain in life.

 

[MattKing]

I think that the OP was enquiring about using presets created by someone else, and purchased as a package.
Creating your own presets - i.e. automating something you regularly do - is a good idea, but it is significantly different than buying something off the shelf.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I recently found a set of good presets and tools that will greatly automate the process, I'll throw it here a little later. Is it worth using them or is it best to learn everything yourself? (I'm a complete beginner).

whatever works for you;I use a few(Perfectly Clear and Nik Software)without hesitation.

 

[Ariston]

If you apply a preset and the photo is up to your standards, then why do all that manually? It is good to know what you are doing, so that if it doesn't look the way you want you can correct it. But at the professional level, TIME IS MONEY.

 

[Hrenoled]

I think that the OP was enquiring about using presets created by someone else, and purchased as a package.
Creating your own presets - i.e. automating something you regularly do - is a good idea, but it is significantly different than buying something off the shelf.

Yes, you understood correctly, I found similar sets of presets http://fixthephoto.com/free-lightroom-presets-for-portraits (I don’t know if the link can be). They are free and it’s great, but I'm not sure they should be used if I want to learn something. I am afraid to spend a lot of time choosing and it turns out that it is useless!

 

[Hrenoled]

Just don't become too dependent upon the presets or your work will have a predictable, uniform look.

It's like leaving your camera on automatic and never exploring the possibilities...

That's it, I do not want to become one of those who use the same settings. Boring and unpromising.

 

[Hrenoled]

Professionals? My daughter used to take pictures professionally. She didn’t used any, just adjusted as she want.
But each case might be different.

After all your comments, I also plan to do it myself. Thank!

 

[Hrenoled]

If that is your mindset, then "Real 'Professionals'" clearly shouldn't make use of ANY kind of automation! Print your raw file data out, and manually calculate out everything by hand! ...

But seriously, presets are a baseline to start with, not the end of a workflow. If you are applying nearly the same values consistently to a group of photos, then what would be professional about sitting there and manually doing it for each and every one? The professional thing to do would be to make effective use of the tools at hand to save you time and allow you to do more work with less effort.

If you're repeatedly doing one style of portrait where all photos have a similar set of adjustments applied, then you write up a preset that gets them into the ballpark, apply them to all photos from the batch you're working on, and manually make adjustments only to the ones that need further work. If the baseline preset is good enough then you move on.

Using presets isn't cheating or robbing your client of anything. It is saving you from repeatedly doing the same work over and over again for not additional gain in life.

Thanks, valuable advice.

 

[jim10219]

It's best to learn to do everything manually. It gives you more control. But there's nothing wrong with using presets if they get you to where you want to go, or even learning on presets to start out. I know several professionals who start off using presets, and if they can't find what they're looking for, they'll hop over to manual controls. It's more of a time saver than anything else for them. And sometimes it's just a quick way to see the same image a bunch of different ways to see if something inspires them to go a different route than what they originally planned.

I rarely use presets myself. And any presets I use, I generally made myself. And even then, they mostly only exist as starting points. But I'm a graphic designer, and I use programs like Photoshop everyday, and sometimes 12 hours a day. So for me, manually controlling everything is usually quicker and easier than messing with presets. But that's just me.

There's no glory in doing things the hard way. All that matters is the final product. So I wouldn't think of presets as "cheating". And if you're worried they're making all of your work look the same, then that would be a good time to quit using them or find some others. Don't let the tools define what you're capable of doing. They're just tools.