When shooting weddings or other events where you are taking hundreds or thousands of images per shoot getting a streamlined post production process is key. Having a background in Fine Art I always want each image to have a very specific look and feel to it but at the same time can’t spend 5 minutes on each image. Using presets in Lightroom is key to getting an image 90% where I want it and then we do a little fine tuning. Being able to apply a preset to a group of images really saves time when doing our post production. When editing a shoot we first group together the images by how we want them to look (high contrast black and white, normal black and white, normal color, split tone, etc…). After the images are all sorted we have a preset for each type of look, we will apply the preset to the group and then go over each image one by one to do some fine tuning.

Here are some great, free lightroom presets we have found:

Albumen (1860’s Civil War era) Preset

Albumen, a process used to create photos of this era seem to have very sharp clear centers, good dynamic range blurry/distorted edges often with vignetting. In looking at the old images from the American Civil War era it was learned that the surviving photos vary in coloration from yellow to gray, brown to almost purple in hue. Yellow seems to be most common so there is some freedom in crafting the coloration. Download here.

Muted Tone Sub-Pop Preset

“Bleach bypass…is an optical effect which entails either the partial or complete skipping of the bleaching function during the processing of a film. By doing this, the silver is retained in the image along with the color dyes…The images usually would have reduced saturation and latitude, along with increased contrast and graininess.” Download here.

New York State of Mind Presets by Chad

Chad says, “I developed these around the time I visited New York City for the first time, and for me, they work out amazing for street shots and candid people photos” Included in this set are three (3) presets. Download here.

Jack Davis Presets

It’s a large preset collection that is organized in a tidy list. You can drag you mouse over the list and see the variation as they subtly change (low contrast to high contrast for example. Very well put together with lots of effects. Download here

TLC B&W Split Toning Collection

There are 30 presets in the collection including solid colors, multi-tones, and classic chemical darkroom tones like platinum, palladium, selenium, etc. These well-designed presets will co-exist nicely with other presets, affecting only the split toning panel. Shown here are the Cooler Gray, Cyanotype and Silver Gelatin presets. Download here.

Also ifyou are looking for some great , free photoshop actions check out this list: Free Photoshop actions