There are two processing techniques here. The first is an HDR treatment, using 3 shots at 2 stops apart. I liked the result, but I then started playing with my Lightroom Presets and I really liked the result on this.

As stated in a previous post,, California will be closing Mono Lake State Park next year due to budget cuts. This is what prompted us to go see this lake again.

Hope you like the B&W

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The strong colors and tonal range of an HDR image seem to be a perfect base for B/W conversions. As I have several B/W Lightroom presets on my site for free downloads, it is worthwhile having a play with several of them.

The results you see here stem from the Red Filter Preset. The HDR was processed in my normal fashion, in this case using Photomatix, then blended in Photoshop with the original to tone down noise and get a more realistic look. The coulds in the sky get accentuated in this process which is one of the effects of HDR I really like.

After trying several of my B/W presets, I decided I liked this one best. It presents good blacks and contrast and the sky looks awesome (IMHO).

About this picture

You are looking down onto the Sydney Aquarium, that building in the center with the curved roof (the sign that says “aquarium” sort of gives it away too). It is located on the edge of Sydney’s famous Darling Harbour, a fantastic, cosmopolitan part of the city. Great restaurants, cafes, a park and the location of many activities during the year.

The aquarium too is awesome and is one of the best in the world. They have two underwater walkways through enormous tanks. One is full of giant rays and grey nurse sharks. The other is where you can see seals. They also have a Great Barrier Reef display complete with coral and beautifully colored fish. If you are every in Sydney, make sure you visit this fantastic aquarium.

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The shot itself was taken in Gouda during a photowalk with Martin, my brother in law.

The city dates back to around 1000 when people first started to harvest peat from the area. Today, Gouda is a lovely picturesque city famous for its cheese and a cookie called the Stroopwafel.

While the city lies inland, it is well connected to the vast Dutch network of waterways and it is no wonder that a harbor was created here as early as the 13th century. That church you see is the Gouwekerk which is relatively new. It adds a nice touch to the scene though.

About the preset. It is the Aged Photo Preset from my free collection. It creates a old feel by desaturating the colors and providing a sepia-like tone. Hope you like it.

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The package is put together with flexibility in mind, allowing many presets to be combined, resulting in an almost endless line of possibilities. The presets provide not only toning effects, but also address skin qualities, lighting, softness and contrast. Also, a series of adjustment brush presets are included in the package rounding off the capabilities with tools for fine-tuning.

Some of the preset effects are soft and subtle, others are more colorful and dramatic. The possibilities are only limited by your creativity and experimentation.

There are 54 Develop Presets and 12 Adjustment Brush Presets in total. The Develop Presets come grouped into 5 groups:

• Portrait FX (11)
• Toning FX (18)
• Soft FX (6)
• Skin FX (8)
• Lighting FX (11)

The Adjustment Brush Presets include brushes for eye enhancements, touching up make-up, softening skin, whitening teeth and eyes, even a black eyeliner.

Some examples of the Develop Presets

And here are some of the other toning presets.

Then combine these toning presets with the presets from other groups to get any number of effects. You can soften the skin, lighten the skin and play with lighting angles with presets from the Lighting FX group.

Some examples of the Lighting FX presets mimic lighting sources located left/right, top and bottom of the main subject. Great to brighten up parts of the portrait or accentuate (or tone down) exiting lighting effects.

Other presets include contrast boosts, skin softening and skin lightening. A complete list is as follows:

Package Details

The entire package has been reduced to $14.95 and is available as a download. Checkout is via Paypal and is not only safe and secure, you do not need to have a Paypal account and can pay with any major credit card.

Order now Portrait FX for only $14.95 

Please note that as this is a software download, all sales are final. No refunds.

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The most popular preset is the “Warming Vignette” which earlier today stood at 13048 downloads. The next most popular one is the Steel preset with 7437.

What is perhaps even more impressive, at least to me it is, is the fact these presets were downloaded by people all over the world. In fact, 129 different countries to be more precise. Countries like US, France, Australia and the UK are perhaps no surprise, but that people from Angola, Nepal, Madagascar, Macau, French Polynesia and the Maldives found their way to my website, simply amazes me. Just goes to show how small the world has become and how easy it is to navigate the world from behind the computer screen.

Here is a map of all the places people visited from. Every red dot represents a location, the larger the dot, the more people from that location.

Thank you, thank you to all who downloaded these presets. I hope they provided you with a lot of fun and helped you process your images a little bit quicker.

As a result of this amazing results, I will be posting a package of Portrait presets. Doing the finishing touches right now and they should be up by mid-July.

Albert

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The effect can be pretty cool and was particularly popular in the seventies posters. The baby boomers among us will recall posters that used this effect. Remember the posters of Che Guevara and Jim Morrison of the Doors? However, today, this treatment can still be very effective.

This preset accomplishes this look through the use of another unusual tone curve (see my Steel and Polarize presets).

As you can see, this tonecurve clips the highlights and shadows equally, allowing really only two colors. By turning the picture into a grey scale picture, those two colors become Black and White.

This effect is seen here:

By playing with the “exposure” slider, you can shift the point at which black becomes white and vise versa. See these samples where the exposure was shifted +/– 0.4  EVs

This preset is available as a free download. Have fun and leave me a comment if you like it. Even better, send me a link to samples you have used this preset on. I always love to see what other people do with my presets.

Download this preset Posterize Preset (2310)

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As the name implies, it adjusts the white balance to add a wonderful warm tone to the image. It “tightens up” the dynamic range by applying a little fill light and recovery, boosts the saturation and then “sharpens” the overall image by using a combination of Clarity (mid-tone contrast enhancement) and sharpen sliders.

There are two presets in this pack. A “regular” version and a “lite” version which just adds a little less of the warming effect.

Check it out.

Original Image with cool tones

Warm Vignette

Warm Vignette Lite

Download: Warming Vignette (53940)

♦

Recommended Reading

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However, over time, as you collect more and more presets, your preset panel can grow to unmanageable proportions. Time to get organized by creating preset folders into which you can organize your own presets or import presets downloaded from the Internet.

Develop Presets

First we need to go to the Develop Module as the Develop Presets panel only shows up on the left when that module is.

To create a folder, pull down the “Develop” menu and select “New Preset Folder

Create a new folder

Type in the name want to use in the dialog box and click “create”. This will create a new folder in the Presets Panel.

Now we are ready to manage our Presets. You can do so, simply by dragging and dropping. You’ll find that you can quickly reduce a long, unorganized list of presets, into neatly presented folders.

Importing

Importing Develop Presets is easy. Adobe has done all the work for us.

After creating a folder like we did above, simply put your cursor on the name of that folder and hit the right mouse button. A menu will pop up that includes an “Import” option.

Import Develop Preset

Simpley select the Import option and navigate to the location you downloaded the preset to (make sure you unzip the preset first!). Simple.

What are presets and where are they kept?

A Develop Preset is simply a file with instructions that tell Lightroom what to do. Everything you need is contained in such a file, they come with an extension of .lrtemplate. For example, the Solarize Preset you can download from this site is called ADB_Solarize.lrtemplate.

These files are kept in a special folder on your PC.

For Windows this is

C:Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets (and “username” is the name of the user you are logged on as).

For Vista, it is slightly different:

C:Users/username/AppData/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets

Two things to watch out for here:

1. Develop Presets are stored per User. So if you have multiple people using the same PC using different login names, they will not automatically have the same presets.
2. Often, especially in Vista, the operating system hides the AppData (or Application Data) folder from users. You simply don’t see them eventhough they are there.

If you have a lot of presets you want to import (or export), it might be easier and quicker to open this folder and copy batches of preset files like you would any other file. Take note: you cannot have nested folders. In other words, you cannot put a folder with presets inside a folder of presets. Lightroom will not recognize them.

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It creates an effect similar to leaking light into a canister of exposed film. Some areas of the exposure turn negative, some remain unaffected. However, unlike with film, this preset lets you further adjust the effect so you can get just the look you like. It opens up a new creative and fun way to process your images.

Check out this image:

Solarize Lightroom Preset

Solarize Lightroom Preset

As you can see, highly unusual.  The darker pixels will look practically normal, but the lighter portions of the image will look strange. This is due to the special tonecurve that is included in this preset, which looks like this:

Solarize Tonecurve

This preset was created by editing the tonecurve in an external application, as Lightroom does not offer the means of creating such a tonecurve. You can now also see why darker tones look pretty much “normal” as that is where the tonecurve is normal (although with high contrast). The lighter tones turn more and more hegative, the ligher they become.

Having fun with the exposure slider

Because the light and dark characteristic of the pixel affects the look so much, we can have some real fun by playing with the exposure slider. As the exposure slider lightens or darkens the pixels, you can control which portions of the overall image are affected. You can create some VERY unusual moods.

Here is an example, created by moving the exposure slider to the left, darkening more and more of the image. You’ll see that the tree and bushes are almost “normal” , but the sky is highly unusual.

Download: Solarize (6586)

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It is extremely handy when you’ve been experimenting and have adjusted a whole bunch of sliders. Rather than re-visiting each slider to set them back, you can use this preset. Note that this is not necessarily the same as using the Reset function in the Develop module, simply because the default settings of some sliders are not zero.

Download it and add to your arsenal of presets.

Download: Zero Preset (2767)

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