# Totally Rad Lightroom Presets



## Krista

Does anyone use these? www.gettotallyrad.com


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## Brad Snyder

No. I can't imagine paying for Lr Develop presets.


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## sizzlingbadger

I agree with Brad, presets should be free ! They seem great at first but you soon get bored with the over-the-top look from most of them anyway.


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## Brad Snyder

I wouldn't say I'm against free market capitalism, and people *trying* to sell presets, just that I'm not buying.

I also question the breadth of applicability of certain looks. A lot of these are tweaked to given source images, or so it seems.


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## johnbeardy

I'm not sure which is worse - selling presets, or being stupid enough to buy them. Paid-for presets are the brain-numbing junk food of the Lightroom cookery book.

John


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## Victoria Bampton

Krista, I have them, but only because someone bought them for me to use on their images - and I don't use them. Presets are a shortcut to get to a specific look, but they're only moving sliders to preset positions, so there's nothing you can't do by playing around yourself. 

I do understand, though, that some photographers want that shortcut because they don't have time to play themselves, or hunt down free presets, and so preset creators have a market. Whether you buy or play is up to you.


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## RobOK

Krista,

I would offer a different perspective. Collections of Develop Presets can be useful if you are newer to Lightroom. It can give you new ideas on how to develop pictures.

I did buy some, maybe foolishly, and learned a lot. The ones that I liked I actually opened the Preset text file into an editor and examined the settings. Many used Auto Tone, which I don't use. I think many presets that try to work for a lot of pictures use Auto Tone as a starting point.

At least the site you posted shows you what many of the presets will look like with a variety of images -- that is a nice touch.

So for me, I am glad that I bought them as a learning tool, but I am not sure I would do it again.

You could probably replicate what I did with the many free Develop presets available on the web.

Rob.


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## Brad Snyder

So, our considered opinion is Yes, No, and Maybe.  But at least we all have provided our rationale, so Krista has someplace to start in forming her own opinion.


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## Braders

I like them for giving me ideas on how i might take an otherwise mundane image, further. However, most of the time i find myself tweeking the preset again, but i appreciate the starting point they provide.

I have paid once, for a good set, but can't see myself paying again.


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## sizzlingbadger

I have nothing against presets, they are very useful to give you different ideas for your images but I'm adverse to paying for them :fi_lone_ranger:


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## ajpl

[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=9695.msg65617#msg65617 date=1272491842]
I agree with Brad, presets should be free ! [/quote]Why? Someone has spent time and effort coming up with them, others are too lazy or are too unskilled to do it themselves. So why can't they pay someone else for their effort in creating them?
That's how basic commerce works.


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## Brad Snyder

[quote author=ajpl link=topic=9695.msg65948#msg65948 date=127294462']
[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=9695.msg65617#msg65617 date=1272491842]
I agree with Brad, presets should be free ! [/quote]Why? Someone has spent time and effort coming up with them, others are too lazy or are too unskilled to do it themselves. So why can't they pay someone else for their effort in creating them?
That's how basic commerce works. 
[/quote]

Tempest in a teapot, but just to restate my original position, since I'm getting quoted a teensy bit out of context: 

"I accept and support your right and commend your ability to create and sell presets." 

But I'm not interested in buying. Principally for the reasons: I don't like the large majority of them, and I'm smart and creative enough to do them myself if I want to.


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## clee01l

[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=9695.msg65977#msg65977 date=1272989118]
[quote author=ajpl link=topic=9695.msg65948#msg65948 date=127294462']
[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=9695.msg65617#msg65617 date=1272491842]
I agree with Brad, presets should be free ! [/quote]Why? Someone has spent time and effort coming up with them, others are too lazy or are too unskilled to do it themselves. So why can't they pay someone else for their effort in creating them?
That's how basic commerce works. 
[/quote]

Tempest in a teapot, but just to restate my original position, since I'm getting quoted a teensy bit out of context: 

"I accept and support your right and commend your ability to create and sell presets." 

But I'm not interested in buying. Principally for the reasons: I don't like the large majority of them, and I'm smart and creative enough to do them myself if I want to. 
[/quote]And to reinforce Brad's comments, my experience has been that there are plentry of Free Develop presets And while agreeing in principle with RobOK who said, 





> Collections of Develop Presets can be useful if you are newer to Lightroom. It can give you new ideas on how to develop pictures


. I D/L'd these free ones to learn how to do make my own presets. 

The way commerce works is that you have to offer something of substantial value if you expect to sell your product for more than the current the market (which is free). Mictrosoft and Apple come to mind as having products which they think offer more value than LINUX. And then P.T. Barnum is frequently cited as the source of the quote: "There's a sucker born every minute." And again Microsoft and Apple spring to mind...


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## sizzlingbadger

[quote author=ajpl link=topic=9695.msg65948#msg65948 date=127294462']
[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=9695.msg65617#msg65617 date=1272491842]
I agree with Brad, presets should be free ! [/quote]Why? Someone has spent time and effort coming up with them, others are too lazy or are too unskilled to do it themselves. So why can't they pay someone else for their effort in creating them?
That's how basic commerce works. 
[/quote]

sell em if you want...... it just my opinion - you are free to ignore it


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## johnbeardy

They're like the perfume and jewellery you see guys selling from suitcases in shop doorways - cheap fakes sold with BS and bought by those with more money than sense.


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## stasber

[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=9695.msg65977#msg65977 date=1272989118]
But I'm not interested in buying. Principally for the reasons: I don't like the large majority of them, and I'm smart and creative enough to do them myself if I want to. 
[/quote]
I generally like the LR 'ethos' of offering presets for free and I too don't like the majority of them and would use them sparingly or occasionally if I fancy being a bit creative outside of my normal habits, rather than relying on them as a toolbox.

But I'm not as creative or smart as some people and don't always get the best results from LR as there's just so many sliders that could ultimately have an effect on results.

I recently paid for presets from X-Equals, whose presets I can highly recommend. Their Cold Storage series give good renditions of classic film emulsions, both colour and b&w - and in many cases this is the answer I need to crisp up & boost images just right, where otherwise I'd be messing around with tones, contrast, clarity & whatnot and never really getting the results LR is capable of. Their Creative platform is very well thought out. In my opinion, these are the rare few, and well worth it. And they don't cost the earth, either.

But for the most part, presets are someone's nice ideas and something worth sharing, or at the most, taking Tim "Mogrify" Armes' example, donationware. He works very hard on his apps and is rewarded and respected for it. I probably would have donated more than the asking price for X-Equals, in fact, to put a value on it.


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## Brad Snyder

Well said, Stas.


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## absolutealive

Some presets are free to download from people who are happy to give back to the greater community.

You are right that presets are sliders in a particular position.

What I can see is people who are happy to pay for the presets are people who don't have time or the knowledge to make them themselves, so to spend $1'' to save a couple of hours isn't that bad.

it's the old tale of having time to do it yourself. I guess most of us could change oil in the car, but choose to have a mechanic to do it.

Both sides of this coin are right.


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## Osho

Krista, I don't know if you're still following this thread but I understand why one would use presets especially in a production environment where time is short. From everyone's input above, though, you can see that it would be much better for you to sit down with Lightroom and Photoshop and build those that will serve you best on the job. 

Conventions devote a great deal of their exhibition areas to sessions about the making of "totally-rad" visual effects currently popular in the industry and which many attendees are enthusiastic about replicating. Mostly these techniques appeal to advertising, promotional and publication artists. And just in case you missed the first go around, Adobe and NAPP have several publications that detail the creation of these effects. Photographers of all types can use these resources also. This all makes paid-for presets somewhat pointless [even though I think that you're going in the right direction].  

BTW, I'm no big expert with Lightroom, but it's a great past-time as well as a powerful tool.


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## Sean McCormack

[rant]

I better be careful that I don't get trampled by all the 'High Horses' in this thread. 

Being a tightwad is probably about the worst argument I've ever heard for stuff being free. And where the hell does someone get the idea that there is a 'Free' ethos about Lightroom? 
Let's see. Lightroom is €299 or $299. How much is Nik for Lightroom? Or onOne for Lightroom? Or Imagenomic Portraiture? Yes.. Almost as much as Lightroom. Big companies charging big bucks.

So a user who spends their time refining and developing presets that save both time and effort, shouldn't be rewarded for that effort? Give me a break. I've never heard such rubbish in all my life. 

Sure presets can be hit or miss, but the cream will rise, because there is a community here that talks about stuff. Personally I've sat on a large collection of presets I've refined and used, giving out some for free; still I've not released them for sale. I've considering it though, and a mention on twitter showed that people were in fact interested. 

Obviously I also write plugins. I do think that only developers have a clue just how much effort goes into making one of them. So some of them are free, and some of them are commercial. Simple as. As well as the coding, there's also the time spent promoting, and supporting the product. It's not a case of.. "I'll make it today and then let the money flow". Hardly. I certainly won't be retiring on anything coming back from the Lightroom Community. 

So, it might be obvious that I don't do it for the money. But, at the same time, there is no way I could do it, if there wasn't *some* money coming back. I simply wouldn't have the time. Plus, I want to be taking pictures, not writing code. 

So will I put out a set of Presets for creative effect? Probably. Nicely packaged, nice looks and cheap. But not free. While it 'easier' to make a preset than write a plugin, making something that is useful is a little more than banging about a few sliders and saving the results. Ultimately I'm looking at things that save time, and therefore allow more time to make money.

And finally on the subject of free presets. I've 2 sets on the Lightroom Exchange, LRB Dragan and Smoke Presets. They have been downloaded *a lot*. I can count the thanks I've received for each set on exactly one finger. It's less for the free plugin Releases. I have had one or 2 people go back and donate, which was nice. And as a matter of history, I cut and pasted the first ever text from a preset into a forum to share with other tester way before Lightroom 1 even existed. Ask Richard Earney, that's where his site Inside-Lightroom.com originally came from. 

So if you'd never buy presets, and feel you'd never need to, bully for you. For those that do, and find it speeds their workflow, bully for you too. But judging people that do the opposite? C'mon people, that's an entirely different form of bully. 


[/rant]


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## sizzlingbadger

I shall step down from my horse....

I don't disagree with what you have said Sean. I develop software too and can appreciate the effort involved, it is way more time consuming and complex than than many people think.

However... There are many crappy presets out on the market being sold to unsuspecting users so generally my advice is not to buy them but try and find free ones instead. That doesn't preclude those that put the effort in to create good sets from selling them. If they get good feedback then I would advise anyone asking me to buy them if thy wish.


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## Choja

I don't think that paying for a preset collection that contributes to your workflow is a negative move. I have bought two sets of Gavin Seim's presets and they're an incredibly important part of my workflow now.

That said, I do have more than a few that were free and, frankly, are useless.

Interesting discussion this.

Cheers


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## clee01l

Sean, I wish that you would take a look at my earlier comments. 
Quoting perhaps the most significant part of that earlier comment:





> The way commerce works is that you have to offer something of substantial value if you expect to sell your product for more than the current the market [price] (which is free).


As a programmer in a previous life, I recognise the effort involved in creating a plugin for LR. Some day when I feel I have something to offer, I'd like to author my own plug-ins. I would hope that some would find enough value in them to pay. I run a few plugins created by others and for these I have paid. I also (after a little study) realize the simplicity in develop presets. I would be ashamed to ask mone y for any that I have created. First because I believe I would be fleecing the gullible and second because all of my presets are derviatives of the work by others or at least influenced by what others have done. 

I feel the same way about Keyword lists as I do develop presets . They should be free to anyone that can benefit from them. I say this because there is no original work in the basis for any of these. Plug-ins do contain original work and there is a reasonable expectation that the author should be compensated. But again Plugins should offer something of substantial value to justify the fee.


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## Sean McCormack

Have you actually created a proper Keyword list, with a proper hierarchy? Because it's not a trivial thing to do. I did a basic Actions one, which I did indeed give away, by choice. It certainly took quite a fair bit of my time to do, and if you think that I consider my time to be worthless, well, you'd be wrong. And the people that have worked on and refined such lists, they don't deserved to get paid? You say there is no original work in them? I'm sure Seth Resnick would absolutely disagree. His keyword list is the basis of his stock photography business, and as such is a very valuable product.

I'm not a particularly religious man, but surely 'the worker deserves his wage'? 

The only person that seems to think the market value is free, is you, Cletus. It's not. It's determined by the seller of the product. If the product is bad and people don't buy it, the pricing is still set in the market and will influence that of others. If the seller decides it's free, then they have still determined the market value for themselves. You wanting it all to be free wouldn't matter one bit.


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## johnbeardy

You know it's not just Cletus, Sean, and I'd certainly agree that as far as *develop presets * are concerned "I would be ashamed to ask money for any that I have created... because I believe I would be fleecing the gullible". As with smart collections, I think a donation model is more appropriate. I wouldn't though extend that argument to keyword lists where there's a decent level of research (eg species lists with Latin names) and I doubt that's what Cletus would either.

John


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## Krista

Does anyone use these? www.gettotallyrad.com


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## Sean McCormack

Hi John,
I not referring to any old slap here. I referring to a set of useful tools that took time to develop (sic). Of course there are plenty of snakeoil sales people out there, but community does reduce the risk of that happening to informed users.


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## clee01l

> Have you actually created a proper Keyword list, with a proper hierarchy? Because it's not a trivial thing to do.


It seems pretty trivial to me. I will admit that it can be time consuming I like to think mine is a contiunous work in progress. Not that I keep changing things around but that I keep adding to it. Building a hiearchial keyword list was perhaps the first thing I did when I began using LR. First before importing &gt;2'K images. In researching the process, I came across Controled Vocabulary concept and products. 
http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/
This led me to the Keyword Cataolg: 
http://keyword-catalog.com/index.html
Where I even D/L the Demo. I determined that I did not need to spend £5' or $7' For a list of words most of which I would never use. 
And Nick Potters website was useful but none of my birds are in his list and I suspect I'll never need the "Bactrian Camel" keyword.  What these websites did do is teach me how to construct a proper keyword hiearchy. Mine seems to work for me since I've not needed to do anything more than minor tweaks to the structure since I put it in place. 

It now contains over 65' Keywords plus Synonyms and I would gladly give it away to anyone that has an interest in photographing Insects, Spiders and birds (as well as some native plants).

Recently there was a thread here asking for an "Open Source" keyword list. 
http://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/index.php?topic=9926.msg6734'
 I think a collaborative effort along these lines is an excellent idea and would be happy to contribute.  There probably aren'y many people that need an 11,''' term keyword list especially if it does not contain events like "Christmas at GrandMas" , "vacation to Europe" or locations like "Backyard". But everyone could probably use a small subset of a larger list. 


> The only person that seems to think the market value is free, is you, Cletus. It's not. It's determined by the seller of the product.


 Actually You have that backwards. It is the buyer. As long as someone is 'selling' presets for free, then that is the lowest price. If you want to charge more than the lowest price (free), you have to demonstrate that you have a product that offers substantially more value than the lowest priced product of that type. That is the point that I tried to make with Apple & Microsoft versus LINUX. On Flickr, There is a Lightroom Preset Extractor group http://www.flickr.com/groups/lrpreset/ where members freely share the EXIF data of their images with a link to a web page that will extract the Preset information into a file that can be imported into LR. 

The biggerst difference between Presets, Keywords and Plugins is that the first two exist as ASCII text. This makes it difficult to even consider it Intellectual Property. Plugins OTOH do offer the author some protection in that they can be compiled lua files.


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## Victoria Bampton

[quote author=clee'1l link=topic=9695.msg67436#msg67436 date=1275586'49]
I determined that I did not need to spend £5' or $7' For a list of words most of which I would never use. 
[/quote]

You've probably hit the point there Cletus. You're not the target market. For you, spending money on that list of words would be a waste. For a stock photographer, it would be well worthwhile.


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## Sean McCormack

People aren't selling when it's for free Cletus. It's called giving it away. And there's types of free with this stuff usually: a loss leader to encourage purchase of something, a way to draw traffic or rubbish. Donationware stuff is not free, if you use it you should pay for it. 

For the record Plugins can and do exist (and run) as text files. I compile mine to protect my IP, even if I choose to give them away (not sell). And by your very definition we can freely share books, because they're only text. 

Like Victoria says, you're obviously not the target market.


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