Introduction
Welcome back! In our last lesson, you did the essential strategic work of defining a target aesthetic for your first preset collection. By creating a mood board and analyzing its visual characteristics, you've developed a "recipe" for your unique style.
Today, we transition from strategy to execution. The goal for this lesson is to create a primary 'hero' preset and develop 3-5 supporting variations for different lighting conditions. We will take the aesthetic "recipe" you designed and bring it to life inside Adobe Lightroom.
This process is fundamental to creating a valuable digital product. A single preset rarely works perfectly on every photo, so building a small, cohesive collection of variations makes your product far more practical and professional.
1. Building Your "Hero" Preset
The "hero" preset is the foundation of your collection. It's the primary expression of the aesthetic you defined. Building it is an iterative process of adjusting, testing, and refining.
The Systematic Workflow
Given your preference for structured methods, we'll follow a clear, step-by-step process. This approach minimizes guesswork and focuses on repeatable results. A great article, "6 Steps to Making Amazing Lightroom Presets," outlines this workflow.
6 Steps to Making Amazing Lightroom Presets
This article from gunairy.com provides an excellent framework for creating robust presets. We'll use its initial steps as our guide for the 'hero' preset.
First, read the section 'Mistakes to avoid'. Pay close attention to the advice against heavy-handed edits and accidentally adjusting lens correction settings. This will help you create a more versatile preset. Next, read the sections 'Step 1: Start with a RAW image that is well-exposed,' 'Step 2: Make ‘universal adjustments,’' and 'Step 3: Create a ‘look.’' This three-part process will be our core workflow.
To summarize the workflow for your hero preset:
- Start with a strong foundation: Choose a well-exposed RAW photo that already aligns with your target aesthetic. Your iPhone 12 shoots in ProRAW, which is perfect for this.
- Make universal adjustments: Apply basic edits you would make to most images (e.g., minor exposure tweaks, setting black/white points).
- Craft the "look": Use the more stylistic tools—Tone Curve, HSL/Color Mixer, and Color Grading—to implement the specific color, contrast, and tonal recipe you developed in the last lesson.
The Technical Foundation
As you begin editing, there's one critical rule for creating presets that you plan to distribute. Let's watch a short clip that explains it.
How to Make a Lightroom PRESET PACK and SELL it online!
In this video, 'How to Make a Lightroom PRESET PACK,' Mark McGee explains a crucial technical point about white balance when creating presets for others.
Watch from 01:52 to 02:26. The key takeaway here is to avoid adjusting the global White Balance sliders (Temperature and Tint) in the Basic panel. Because every photo is shot with a different white balance, a preset with a hard-coded white balance will behave unpredictably. Instead, you can and should use other tools like the Tone Curve or Color Grading panels to influence color temperature.
From Theory to Practice: Creating and Saving
Now let's see this process in action. The following videos demonstrate how to apply edits and then save them as a preset.
How to Create Presets in Lightroom - Day 12
This PHLEARN video provides a very clear and concise demonstration of making adjustments and saving a preset.
Watch from 01:37 to 05:07. Notice how the presenter makes adjustments in the Basic panel, adds a mask, and uses Color Grading. He then goes to the Presets panel, clicks the '+' icon, and selects 'Create Preset,' giving it a name and choosing which settings to include.
Once you have a first draft of your preset, the most important step is to test and refine it.
How to Make a Lightroom PRESET PACK and SELL it online!
Let's return to the Mark McGee video, which has an excellent segment on the iterative process of testing and updating your preset.
Watch from 04:54 to 06:18. The workflow is: Apply your new preset to a different test image. Observe what looks wrong (e.g., skin tones are oversaturated). Make adjustments to fix it. Right-click the preset and choose 'Update with Current Settings' to save your refinements.
Your Turn: Create Your "Hero" Preset
It's time to open Lightroom.
- Select 3-5 well-exposed RAW photos from your phone that fit the general theme you're targeting.
- Choose one photo as your primary editing image.
- Following the workflow, apply your universal edits and then craft the stylistic "look" based on your aesthetic recipe. Remember to use the Tone Curve, HSL, and Color Grading panels, and avoid the main White Balance sliders.
- Save your result as a new preset. Give it a clear name, like "[My Brand] - [Aesthetic Name] BASE".
- Apply this new preset to your other test photos. Refine your settings and update the preset until it produces a reasonably consistent result across your test images.
2. Developing Supporting Variations
You now have a "hero" preset, but as you've likely seen, it won't work perfectly everywhere. The next step is to create variations designed for common lighting conditions. This is what turns a single preset into a versatile, professional-grade preset pack.
These images show how commercial preset packs are structured with a base style and several variations.
A Guide to Adapting for Lighting
So, how do you make these adjustments systematically? We'll use an article that provides specific guidance for adapting presets to different lighting scenarios.
Mastering Lightroom Mobile Presets: Adapting to Any Lighting
This article, 'Mastering Lightroom Mobile Presets: Adapting to Any Lighting,' gives a fantastic breakdown of which sliders to use for common lighting challenges. The principles are identical for Lightroom Classic.
This is your main guide for creating variations. First, quickly review the section 'Essential Tools: The Key Adjustment Sliders' to refresh your memory on what Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, etc., control. Next, carefully read the section 'Adapting Presets for Common Lighting Scenarios.' This is the core of the task. It gives you a recipe for adjusting your preset for: Bright, Direct Sunlight (Hint: Lower Highlights) Overcast or Diffused Light (Hint: Increase Contrast) Low Light and Indoor (Hint: Increase Exposure and Shadows) Finally, read 'Saving Your Tweaked Presets for Future Use.' This explains how to save each of your new variations as separate presets with descriptive names.
Your Turn: Create 3-5 Variations
Now, apply this knowledge to your hero preset.
- Find photos (yours or from a free stock site like Unsplash) that represent at least three different lighting conditions:
- A photo in bright, direct sun.
- A photo on an overcast day.
- A photo taken indoors or in low light.
- For each photo:
- Apply your "hero" preset.
- Follow the guidance from the LINK article to adjust the sliders until the photo looks good.
- Save this new version as a new preset. Use a clear naming convention, for example:
[My Brand] - [Aesthetic] - Bright Sun[My Brand] - [Aesthetic] - Overcast[My Brand] - [Aesthetic] - Indoor
- As an optional extra variation, you could also create a "subtle" or "light" version by applying your hero preset and simply lowering the Amount slider (found at the top of the preset panel) to 50%, then saving that as a new preset.
By the end of this exercise, you will have a base preset and several named variations, forming your first complete preset collection.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You've successfully translated your creative vision into a tangible and functional digital product. You now have a core preset that defines your style and a set of variations that make it powerful and adaptable.
Key Takeaways:
- A "hero" preset is the foundation of a collection, built by making universal adjustments and then crafting a stylistic look with tools like Tone Curve, HSL, and Color Grading.
- The most robust presets are created through an iterative process of testing on multiple images and refining the settings.
- For distributable presets, avoid changing the global white balance, as this creates unpredictable results on other people's photos.
- Supporting variations adapt the hero preset for common lighting scenarios (e.g., bright sun, overcast, low light), making the collection far more valuable.
- Clear and consistent naming (
Style - Condition) is crucial for keeping your preset collection organized and user-friendly.
Preview of the Next Lesson
You've created the product. Now, how do you prepare it for sale? In our next and final lesson of this module, we will focus on packaging and delivery. You will learn how to export your presets as .XMP files, write simple installation instructions, and package everything for your future customers.