Matt's Monday Presets on Tueday

Matt Kloskowski has posted more presets this week, rather cool (or warm) sunset presets, albeit a day late.
I know, the presets usually come on Monday but I wanted to change it up this week. Actually, yesterday just got away from me. Anyway, this week I’ve got some presets for you that are specifically geared for sunsets with lots of sky. As I was looking through my photos I realized there were basically two types of sunsets - cool or warm. The cooler ones typically had lots of blues and some reds in them. The warmer ones had more of a yellowish color to them. So I made a few tweaks in White Balance as well as HSL and saved them a while back. Now whenever I have a sunset photo I usually give these a try first and I get great results most of the time. If anything, it’s a great starting point and you can always go tweak the Temperature and Tint settings under White Balance for more or less of the effect. Have at ‘em!

I've used similar presets for ages, but it's great the way he has them done as 2 levels of cool or warm.
Here's an image from yesterday that I've applied the Cool II to. (Good timing Matt!)

Muted colours and other trendy looks.

For those abounding on Flickr and other similar sites, here's a few looks that are currently popular and easy to create with Lightroom:
Let's start with our base photo:



To get a muted look, start by adding Vibrance and removing Saturation. As Vibrance only saturates colours that are not already saturated (it also protects skin tones from becoming too saturated), we can effectively remove saturation in a controlled way by applying Vibrance and removing Saturation. I use +50 Vibrance and -50 Saturation as a starting point. Change it to taste from there.



Next up we'll add some creative Vignette. Now Vignetting with Lightroom is generally only a corrective tool, but with uncropped images, it works fine for creative control. Here I've applied -100 Vignette and moved the midpoint to taste (11 in this case).



Because I've done such an extreme vignette, the skin has darkened too much. I want to retain the effect of the Vignette, so I use the Lights and Highlights in the Tone curve to taste for the image. Here I've used +28 Highlights and +49 Lights.



The image is finished for my taste, but if you like you could add a Cross Processed finish. This is done quickly and easily using the Split Tone Pane. The fastest way to use this is to by holding down the Option key (Alt on PC) and moving the Shadow and Highlight Hue Sliders to select the shadow and highlight tone colours. This set the Saturation level to 100 when you move the Shadow/Highlight Hue sliders, allowing a quick preview of the effect. With Cross Processing, the Shadows tend to be in the Blue-Green range, while the Highlights tend to be in the Yellow-Orange range. Once you've selected the colours, increase the Saturation sliders to taste. I find that lower values work better than higher values. For this deliberately green/yellow look, I've used Highlight Hue 65, Saturation 37, Shadow Hue 153, Saturation 30. You can also use the Balance slider to favour Shadows or Highlights.

Lightroom and Nikon Modes

There's an article on Nikon Mode Presets over at Nikonians.

In it Rick from Colorado states:
"Try these camera calibration settings in Lightroom. They're not an exact match for Mode III, but they'll get you in the ballpark.
Red Hue: -25
Red Saturation: +35

Green Hue: 0
Green Satuation: +10

Blue Hue: +10
Blue Saturation: -25

Depending on which contrast setting you prefer in Capture or in-camera, you may need to adjust some of the other parameters as well. A "normal contrast" setting in NX is similar to a "strong" contrast curve and a contrast setting of around 30-35 in Lightroom. These settings work fine in ACR as well.

In practice, I have presets in Lightroom and ACR called Mode III Color, Mode II Color and Mode III Default. The first and second simply change the values on the camera calibration tab, with the Mode III one using the values I just mentioned, and the Mode II reflecting zeroed settings. Those enable me to quickly change between two different color palettes. The Mode III Default setting incorporates color mode, tone curve and contrast values and gives me the equivalent of Mode III and a normal contrast curve. It replicates a combination I use frequently with Capture.

Rick, Nikonian in Colorado"

Develop Presets

The keeper of the flame since I kicked off a Develop Presets Sharing post many moons ago, has been Richard Earney of Method Photo. He's recently updated the Lightroom Presets page to reflect the new V1.0 preset changes. Added to the light are a few new ones by Martin Evening.
http://www.method-photo.co.uk/lightroom/