If you have spent more than five minutes surfing the web, you have probably gone down the rathole that is Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions. There has to be thousands of these things floating around the Internet. I have purchased a few cheap ones and downloaded a few freebies. I have also developed a couple that fit my style of portrait post processing.
Well, you can color me surprised as I found by accident, that one of our own Photographers Cooperative OG members , Aaron Grubb, had developed several presets and was offering them as a free download. I went to Aaron's site, downloaded them and started checking them out.
There are six presets that come with the free download. They are as follows: AMG – Dehaze +10
AMG – High Contrast B&W
AMG – Import Preset +
AMG – Import Preset 2 Less Bold
AMG – Liven up
AMG – Studio Portrait
There are also two Lightroom Brush presets included with the bundle: AMG - Skin Smooth BRUSH
AMG - Yellow Teeth BRUSH
They seemed like they might fit my portrait style. I go with a “color pop” style for my portraiture work. Although I developed a Lightroom preset a couple of years ago that gives my images a good foundation, I wanted to see what Aaron's presets would do.
The preset I like the best is the AMG – High Contrast B & W. This particular preset kind of falls into my wheelhouse when it comes to black and white portraits. The Import Preset + matches my initial Lightroom adjustments almost to a tee. My camera does have issues with skin tones, so there are some adjustments within Lightroom's HSL area that I have to make.
For the sake of this article, I applied the presets as delivered to an image and left the image as that. No adjustments outside of the presets were made. If you would like to see Aaron's video on the preset, feel free to check it out:
If you would like to download the presets, head over to https://gumroad.com/aarongrubb.
Feel free to check out more of Aaron's work on his website.
Hailing from the nether regions of the Oklahoma Panhandle, Stanley is the master of creative chaos and mayhem at Black Mesa Images - Photography by Stanley Harper. When Stanley is not kicking it with his family at home, he can be found pursuing his photographic goals. Some of those goals include seniors and weddings, thunderstorms, night skies and sports (mainly rodeo and off road racing). Some of the other corners of the web you can find Stanley's work include:
www.facebook.com/blackmesaimages
www.instagram.com/stanley_harper