Everyone’s talking about presets and you know you need them, but you’re not quite sure what they are and why you should even bother.
Let me show you!
This is a shot I took of one of my framed Covered Bridge photos. Although the image is well exposed with nice detail in the highlights and shadows, it’s falling flat.
The lack of depth in this picture makes it feel like … a picture.
I want my collector to feel like she’s standing right in front of this vignette, reaching feverishly to grab the piece before anyone else does, because she can’t resist the burning desire to have this beautiful print hanging on her own wall.
Tell me, how do you feel when you’re shopping online and looking at a website with meh pictures vs shopping on a website with pictures that make your insides ache with desire to have that thing you’re looking at?
You feel like you need it so bad, that you might just die if you can’t buy it right now.
You didn’t even know you needed it before you looked at that website.
You might not have even known that it existed before you found that website.
But now, you have to have it.
What if I told you that all you need is a preset to make your customers swoon over your products?
And you can do it all in the ‘Edit’ panel in Adobe Lightroom.
You can see what a difference just playing around with the ‘Light’ settings made – the contrast and depth of this edited version leads my eye straight to the photo of the Covered Bridge. Whereas, I wasn’t sure what to look at in the original image.
The next step is to go through the rest of the settings below the ‘Light’ panel and add a few more tweaks to make the image feel as realistic as possible.
That’s all well and good for one picture, but I have 18 images in my collection to edit before I put them out in the world.
So now, my options are to either write the settings down and manually apply them to each image or I can create a preset and apply the settings to all of the pictures with just a few clicks.
I’ll take the second option, please!
I’ll go through each of the images to make some very minor adjustments to the settings, but my one preset has just:
- Saved valuable time
- Made the product stand out
- Created a consistent look and feel across the entire collection
To sum it all up, a preset is the arrangement of settings applied to a photograph that help the image better tell its story. Think of image settings as brush strokes on a painting – choreographing the playful dance between light, color, and form.
Simply put, presets are lifeboats for your business (and your sanity) and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them.
Plus *ahem* great photos add the extra added benefit of increasing conversions in your shop by up to 23%!
Comments +