One of my most popular selling sets of presets are my Squeaky Clean presets for Lightroom. They are for RAW images only. Really a workflow set.
When I am proofing a session for a gallery – I find I usually like to grab this set and close my right panel, bottom and top panels and leave my left hand panel open and work in there by taking my Pen (I use a tablet) and pick an {aio} aka all-in-one. Which is basically like grabbing your foundation and putting it on getting it ready for mascara, lipstick, lip liner and eyeshadow.
It’s my base. It does not change Exposure or White Balance. The photographer is able to fix these FIRST or LATER. It’s really up to their workflow. I usually fix it later. Right or wrong by other pros- it’s how I do it usually.
Then I see if I need to add fill light, contrast, play another tone pop (tone curve) preset, adjust colors and saturation, warmth or even add a tint. I do all this in the left panel until I am ready to fine tune. I close the panel and then click open the right panel. And tweak. I usually have little to do here. Usually just adjust the darks in the tone curve or maybe the blacks and the tint (not split tone tint, but refrerring to the tint in the white balance area up at the top underneath the histogram).
Then I grab my adjustment brush and dodge/burn, eye pop, skin smooth as needed.
Another cool thing to remember. Should you decide you want to change your {aio} preset in Squeaky Clean- you can. At the top just hit RESET. It will NOT affect your Adjustment Brush edits.
Just your main slider adjustments.
Nor will it reset Exposure. It WILL reset White Balance however.
So here is a before, played out untweaked, then 2 afters – one warm and and one cool.
I selected the preset Daybreak from the Squeaky Clean set. You can see how I took one preset and make 2 different looks just by slight tweaks.
These edits literally only took me a minute or two. Imagine what you can do with another minute or two of more fine tuning.
.jpg "daybreak before")
.jpg "sq daybreak 2")
.jpg "sq clean 3")
Hope you enjoyed today’s Tweaker!
