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Sep 29, 2021

[Photography] Best Lightroom Portrait Presets in 2021 (6 Gorgeous Picks)

The post Best Lightroom Portrait Presets in 2021 (6 Gorgeous Picks) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Matt Murray.

Finding the best Lightroom portrait presets can be a challenge for many photographers. With so many preset packs available in the marketplace, how do you find the right ones to suit your style?

In this article, I recommend some of my favorite Lightroom presets for portraits in 2021.

A quick note: When testing different preset packs, I loaded each option into Adobe Lightroom Classic. Then, to demonstrate each preset, I used the same RAW image taken on my Fujifilm X-T4 with the XF 56mm f/1.2 lens. I created multiple virtual copies in Lightroom, then had fun playing around with all of the presets and settings!

1. Brixton Film presets

First up for the portrait photographer is the Brixton Film preset bundle. These presets are brought to you by The Luxe Lens, a website that sells dozens of presets, Photoshop actions, LUTs, overlays, and much more. The names of each collection in the Brixton Film bundle evoke the type of mood they portray: Bold & Vibrant, Yesteryears, Earthy Moods, Film Essentials, and Love Story, to name just a few.

In particular, the Brixton Film Cinematic collection caught my eye, and I was instantly impressed when I applied the black and white Light and Lifted preset for a classic monochrome look:

Brixton Film presets — Brixton Film collection: *Light and Lifted*

There were a number of interesting color choices in this collection, but my next choice was the Teal and Berry preset, thanks to its eye-popping hues. It gave the portrait a completely unique look:

Another gorgeous collection from the Britxon Film stable is Oak & Ivy. This collection contains 25 film presets, 8 layer presets, and 62 tools presets, designed to bring out the organic colors of nature in your images. My favorite from this collection is Muted Forest, which did a great job of mixing earthy colors with clean skintones (see the image below). All of the Brixton Film presets were fun to use, instantly transforming my RAW file into a beautiful final product.

2. Mastin Labs

Mastin Labs are the market leaders for portrait and wedding photography presets, and it’s easy to see why.

These presets were first created over a decade ago by photographer and color scientist Kirk Mastin. After painstakingly scanning many different types of film, Mastin Labs developed a series of presets to give the classic look of your favorite film emulsions to digital images.

Mastin Labs claims to have the most authentic film emulation presets on the market, and many of their preset bundles reference names of classic film stocks, such as Portra Original, Fuji Original, and Fuji Everyday.

Full disclaimer: I’m a huge Mastin Labs fan. I’ve bought all three of the classic film packs I just mentioned, but while writing this article, I decided to use two new preset packs for the first time: Ilford and Portra Pushed.

Installation is a breeze; just download the presets, quit Lightroom, run the installer, and get ready to roll. Using the presets is simple with Mastin’s easy, three-step workflow: apply the preset, adjust the exposure, then adjust the white balance and tint.

Mastin Labs portrait presets — Mastin Labs Ilford: *Pan F* *with green filter*

Mastin Labs: Ilford Original pack

The Ilford Original pack contains three highly customizable presets that mimic classic British black and white film emulsions: Pan F, HP5, and Delta 3200.

Pan F gives you a high contrast look with low grain, the ever-popular HP5 delivers medium contrast and grain, and Delta 3200 gives your images glowing highlights and the chunkiest grain in the pack. Each emulsion gives you two further choices – 35mm or 120, with the latter giving you more subtle and smoother grain.

As with all Mastin presets, the Tone Profile section provides various combinations for making the highlights and shadows hard or soft in your image. It’s often hard to know which one you’d prefer without a bit of testing.

What I love most about the Ilford presets is the next two sections: B&W Filter and Paper. For decades, photographers have been using colored filters to control contrast and mood in their black and white photos. The clever people at Mastin Labs allow you to consider these creative effects by three different filter options: red, green, and yellow.

Next up are three paper types that mimic the effect of the image printed in the darkroom on warm-tone, cool-tone, or neutral paper. I really love these choices; I have a lot of fun playing around with them!

Mastin Labs: Portra Pushed pack

I’m a big fan of the Mastin Labs Portra Original pack, which is ideal for giving clean, warm tones and glowing skin to portraits. With this in mind, I was more than a little intrigued by the Portra Pushed pack. I’d heard it gave a wonderfully dark and moody look to images, but would it meet my expectations?

Note: You may be wondering why this pack is called Portra “Pushed;” pushed is a borrowed term from film development. A roll of film generally has a recommended ISO (e.g., 400), and you typically match it with the ISO dial on your camera.

If you set the ISO on your camera to 800 despite an ISO 400 recommendation, however, you are underexposing the film by one stop, so you’d typically ask for the film to be pushed in development one stop. In other words, you’d ask the lab to develop the film for longer to make up for the underexposure. Why would you want to do this? There are a couple of different reasons, but one is that the process typically gives color film more contrast and saturation.

The Portra Pushed presets mimic this effect with intense, moodier colors and boosted saturation. The pack has a choice of three different film looks – Portra 160, Portra 400, and Portra 800 – and with each, you can apply the one-stop or two-stop push look.

This pack may not have the B&W filter and paper options of the Ilford pack, but it does include a tone profile, a toolkit with auto white balance and lens correction, and a choice of 35mm and 120 grain.

I was impressed by the clean and consistent look of the Portra Pushed presets. They gave a high-contrast, moodier look to images than the Portra presets and really brought out the earthy tones.

3. Julia & Gil

For the last seven years, Julia & Gil have been photographing people in love all over the world. Not only are they skilled photographers, but it’s clear they’ve learned a thing or two about editing photos along the way.

Julia & Gil offer three stunning sets of presets: wedding, portrait and mobile. I took the wedding and portrait presets for a spin in Lightroom and was impressed by what I saw.

The Wedding collection is designed to add soft colors and “a little magic” to wedding photos. Julia & Gil are fans of soft tones, creamy whites, beautiful skin tones, and natural colors, as you can see from the image below. The collection is perfect for all lighting situations.

Best Lightroom portrait presets Julia & Gil — Julia & Gil Wedding: *Classic*

The Portrait collection is made up of eight presets for couple and portrait shoots. They are billed as “the modern answer to creating that popular film look” and are designed to add soft colors to your photos. As you can see from the Cream preset below, this collection gives a soft, dreamy look which I really love.

Both preset packs offer a range of tools, including colors down, colors up, a range of options for grain, three different sets of tones, vignette tools, and several ways to warm up your images. In just a click or two, Julia & Gil presets give a wonderfully unique look!

4. @rwpho Portrait Lightroom presets

@rwpho Portrait Lightroom presets are brought to you by Filtergrade, an online marketplace offering a range of resources for photographers and videographers, including actions, presets, LUTs, overlays, and templates.

Created by photographer Reed Walchle, the @rwpho presets are focused on adding warm, complementary, orange and teal tones to your images while keeping natural-looking skin. The presets shift the overall palette toward complementary colors to make photos stand out, adding character and depth. They seem to work especially well on pictures where the subject is well lit compared to the background.

There’s only a handful of presets in this pack, but sometimes less is more. I really liked the tones of both the Joyce Warm and Elena Cupcakes presets. All in all, the presets were easy to apply and gave great results instantly.

5. Etchd Portrait presets

The next set of Lightroom portrait presets come from award-winning portrait, landscape, and travel photographer Matt Horspool, better known by his Instagram handle, @etchd.

Matt is incredibly well traveled, having backpacked across 48 countries on all seven continents. His images and articles have been published by National Geographic, Australian Photography Magazine, The Australian, and Olympus Passion.

Etchd Portrait Presets Volume 1 contains 15 timeless and beautifully refined presets that “soften and breathe life into your portraits.” The presets come with a detailed, 37-page, step-by-step installation and application guide. I really like the information in the second part of this guide – Matt gives you a detailed description of each preset, along with information on what to adjust in your images. For example, there are tips on suggested adjustments to the RGB tone curve, white balance, and split toning.

Many of the preset names are a nod to Matt’s travels: Roadtrip, USA, India, and the preset I used for the image below, Verona. The latter preset comes with two versions, and the one I’ve used has a built-in Radial Filter. (The guide also gives step-by-step instructions on how to apply Radial Filters to your portraits.)

6. dPS

Last but certainly not least are the comprehensive range of portrait presets by our very own Digital Photography School team. The dPS preset bundle consists of three packs, each containing 101 presets: 101 Lightroom Presets, 101 Landscape Lightroom Presets, and 101 Lightroom Portrait Presets.

dPS portrait presets — dPS Portrait Presets: *Art Series 50s*

For this article, I tried out some of the portrait presets created by Rachel Devine. These give you countless image-enhancing options, and included in the pack are the Art Series, Black and White, Film Series, Traditional Series, and a Touch-Up Kit featuring 37 brushes.

I really love the look of all the Art Series presets, but perhaps my favorite was Art Series 50s, which gave my images a classic vintage appearance. Another fantastic preset is Found, which has a beautiful, warm effect reminiscent of film stocks such as Kodak Gold.

What are the best Lightroom portrait presets in 2021?

The best portrait presets for Lightroom will differ from user to user. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which look and feel suits the images you take!

I love using all of the preset packs recommended above; they’re simple and give incredible results.

So which preset is your favorite? Tells us in the comments below.

Best Lightroom portrait presets: FAQs

Should I use Lightroom presets for my portraits?

Lightroom presets are a fantastic way to get a consistent look in your portrait photo shoots.

Which Lightroom presets should I buy for portraits?

That depends on your photographic style and your budget. Take a look at the images above and visit the websites featured to find the presets best suited for your images.

Are Lightroom presets easy to use?

Most of the presets featured here are very easy to use. You can transform images in one or two clicks.

Do professional photographers use presets?

Yes, many professional portrait and wedding photographers use off-the-shelf presets.

The post Best Lightroom Portrait Presets in 2021 (6 Gorgeous Picks) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Matt Murray.

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Sep 28, 2021

[Photography] 8 Tips for Beautiful Fall Landscape Photography

The post 8 Tips for Beautiful Fall Landscape Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Dusty Doddridge.

Capturing stunning autumn landscape photos might seem difficult, but it’s actually pretty easy – once you know a few simple tricks.

As an experienced fall landscape photographer, I’ve spent plenty of time in search of those elusive fall photos. I’ve made lots of mistakes, but I’ve also had a lot of success, and in this article, I aim to show you how it’s done.

Specifically, I’m going to share eight practical tips for creating beautiful fall landscape photography. I’ll cover:

The perfect lens choice to emphasize patterns in foliage
The best fall landscape settings for gorgeous results
My favorite type of autumn landscape light
Much more!

So if you’re ready to head out into the field and start taking some jaw-dropping shots of your own, give this article a read; I guarantee it’ll be worth your while.

1. Use a lens with a long focal length

Autumn leaves, trees, and forests look so beautiful that it’s often tempting to whip out that wide-angle lens and capture the entire scene.

But while a wide-angle lens can work for fall photography, it’s often better to go in the opposite direction and shoot with a longer focal length. A 70-200mm f/4 lens is ideal, though you can also shoot with a 100-400mm lens, or even one of those monster 150-600mm options.

You see, a longer lens can really help simplify the scene and make the shot about more than just the colors. A long focal length lets you emphasize patterns in the leaves, plus it compresses the scene to create a beautiful wall of trees.

You can also use the longer focal length to highlight intimate details of a forest interior. Look for patterns, but then hunt for the part of the scene where the pattern breaks and include it in your composition. Consider including negative space to help isolate your subject.

2. Use a wide aperture to isolate the subject

Often, photographers shoot autumn landscape photography at narrow apertures, such as f/8 and beyond. And when you’re capturing images full of sweeping foregrounds and intricate patterns, a narrow aperture makes sense (for instance, the image featured in the next tip, with the river in the foreground and leaves in the background, was shot at a narrow aperture).

However, you can also create unique fall shots with a wide aperture. Set your lens to f/2.8 or f/5.6, then get in close and isolate your subject from its surroundings. You can get a shot like this:

shallow depth of field fall landscape photography

Here, the foreground tree trunk is sharp, while the background becomes a pleasing, slightly colorful blur.

Ultimately, a wide aperture creates visual contrast between the sharp subject and the soft, abstract background. This also adds tension between the real and the unreal, providing you with an image that’s more dynamic and expressive.

While you can always shoot lone trees against colorful leaves, try experimenting with different subjects and backgrounds. Get creative with your choices. Pay close attention to your subject, and make sure you have enough depth of field to keep its key features sharp; it often pays to check the LCD preview after you’ve taken a shot just to be sure.

3. Make fall color the secondary subject

Fall colors are great, so it can be tempting to make them the primary subject of your photo. In other words, you’ll probably want to make the image all about the fall colors: their beautiful hues, the texture of the leaves, the pattern of the trees.

But to make your photos more unique, look for other primary subjects, such as streams and waterfalls, that are accented by the fall colors. This will also give your fall landscape photography more depth and complexity, plus it can really draw in the viewer, as the eye sweeps from the beautiful foreground to the stunning fall backdrop:

So before you take a shot, ask yourself: What could I highlight other than the fall colors? How could I combine the fall colors with a foreground subject to get a great result?

By the way, this is one time when a wide-angle lens is the better choice in fall landscape shooting. The wider field of view lets you capture an interesting foreground and a beautiful backdrop (but make sure you’re using a narrow depth of field, otherwise you’ll lose the colorful detail in the trees!).

4. Look for patterns and textures

Fall color photos tend to start with, well, color. It’s what generally draws you to the scene in the first place, after all.

However, the best fall landscape shots merely use color as a jumping off point.

In other words, they include color, but the color doesn’t carry the image. Instead, the composition relies on color plus patterns and textures to hold the viewer’s interest.

Many fall scenes do have plenty of interesting patterns and textures to work with, so moving beyond color isn’t especially difficult. Simply find some reds, yellows, and oranges that you like – then think about other compositional elements you can incorporate into the shot.

For the photo below, I used a combination of yellow color, forest floor texture, and tree repetition to create an eye-catching result:

5. Be patient

A decent camera and a telephoto lens is great for fall photography, but patience is the best tool in your camera bag.

Specifically, the autumn landscape photographer must learn to wait for two things:

Great color
Great light

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that you stay inside until autumn colors hit their peak. You can capture beautiful shots at the beginning of the color change by focusing on lone reds among a sea of green, and you can capture dramatic shots at the end of the color change by emphasizing the moody browns and the last of the colorful leaves.

But make sure you pay careful attention to the changing leaves. Try checking a local foliage predictor. And then, when the fall color peak really comes, make sure you spend plenty of time outdoors capturing the autumn beauty.

And as for the light…

While fall colors are wonderful, they can be even more stunning when combined with the right light. For instance, a small patch of sunlight on a mountain peak, or dappled light hitting a sea of yellow trees, is often the difference between a good image and a great image. Unfortunately, the light rarely does exactly what you want, when you want, so when you find a beautiful composition, be ready to hunker down and wait for the perfect light.

Pro tip: The best light is often short lived, so think through your settings and composition in advance. When the light hit, be ready.

By the way, while beautiful sunlight plus dramatic clouds often works great for fall photos, if you’re focusing more on the colors and less on the wider landscape, I recommend heading out on gray, overcast days. The sky will act as a huge softbox, and you’ll get beautifully saturated colors (plus a wonderfully moody, gloomy feeling!).

6. Experiment with intentional camera movement

Intentional camera movement (ICM) involves deliberately moving your camera during a long exposure to create abstract effects like this:

intentional camera movement fall landscape

And thanks to the beautiful colors, fall is a great time to try it out.

First, find some nice colors and trees. If possible, ensure there’s contrast between the tree trunks and the autumn leaves (note the white trees and orange leaves in the photo above).

Then switch your camera over to Manual or Shutter Priority mode. Make sure your shutter speed is around 1/30s or longer.

Finally, focus on the leaves, then move your camera as you release the shutter!

Note that intentional camera movement is very hit and miss, so don’t be discouraged if your first shots don’t turn out as great as you hoped. Definitely experiment with moving your camera in different directions (I recommend vertical movement, but you can try horizontal or even diagonal). Also, experiment with different shutter speeds and the pace of moving your camera until you find the right amount of blur.

7. Look for elements that contrast the fall color

Fall colors are usually bright and have texture and pattern. To really take your photos to the next level, find nice colors – but be sure to contrast them with darker elements. That way, you can create dramatic tension.

Look at the image displayed below. I found some nice, bright, well-lit trees, but I shot them against a dark, shadowy rock face:

And it’s that contrast, that drama, that elevates the shot.

Of course, dark rocks aren’t the only contrasting element you can use in your photos. You can use sun/shade contrast (where your subject is lit by the sun but the background is in shade), you can contrast fall colors with dark water, or you can contrast bright fall colors with darker, browning fall colors (the opportunities are endless!).

8. Don’t forget to look up

The interior of a forest can be an amazing place to shoot the fall colors, but it’s often difficult to find a pleasing composition. Sometimes, you just can’t isolate individual elements and you can’t find interesting patterns. You might be ready to throw in the towel, but I’d recommend you try something else:

Look up and explore the canopy.

This works best on sunny days; images that contrast the fall colors with the deep blue sky can be really pleasing.

wide-angle forest shot looking up at the sky

You generally want to keep the trees sharp from foreground to background, so don’t forget to use smaller apertures like f/22. Also, a narrow aperture will create a starburst effect if you shoot through the forest toward the sun.

Fall landscape photography tips: final words

Hopefully, these tips will help you make the most of your time when photographing the amazing colors of the fall season.

In fact, if you found these autumn landscape photography tips helpful, print it out and take it with you into the field; that way, you can slow down, think through your compositions, and return home with some compelling photographs.

Now over to you:

Do you have any fall landscape photography tips to share? Which of these tips was your favorite? Share your thoughts – and photos! – in the comments below.

Landscape Photography