Calvin’s Hub

Most of the time, serious photographers aren’t happy with shots straight out of the camera that they do some sort of post-processing one way or another. For amateurs, it’s nothing to be ashamed of to tweak the colors, contrast, brightness, etc. of photos to correct the shot.

The problem with amateurs like me encounter is that we don’t know squat about the intricacies of post-processing. Fortunately, there’s Adobe Lightroom and its one-click presets to apply artistic effects to a boring photo. Not many people use Lightroom because they think they’re only for pros but anybody can easily use it to apply and experiment with different effects to their photos.

Check out what I accomplished with my old, dull photos using Adobe Lightroom’s presets. Photos on the left is always the original shot and you can click them for a closer look.

This is a shot of the beach in Sentosa. The original looks dull and gray so I applied an HDR enhancement to bring out some colors.

This photo is taken somewhere in the New Summer Palace in China. Applying a Velvia treatment made the colors more vibrant.

I also used the Velvia preset on this shot of Mayon Volcano from the jeepney terminal but this time I added some vignette to make it look like lomo shots.

This shot of the monument to Gen. MacArthur turned out to be like an old photograph after I used the Antique-Light plus the Cross Process preset. Yep, you can combine multiple presets to a single photo to achieve different results.

Boracay looks cold and dreary when its cloudy so I applied a Cross Process preset to make it look sunnier. It doesn’t look natural but it it turned out looking better.

Another old-photograph effect on the old Sinking Bell Tower in Laoag City but this time using Split Tone – Yellow & Blue preset.

Lastly, here’s a shot I took of Club Noah in Palawan. I applied a Direct Positive preset to bring out more color off the reflection in the water. Added a vignette effect as well.

So if you don’t want to be messing around trying to find the correct contrast or saturation or whatever setting to make your photos look less boring, try Adobe Lightroom. Here’s a link to a portable version so you don’t have to install it to your system. You can even run it from a USB stick.

I know Adobe Lightroom can do more stuff than just tweak colors but presets are enough for amateurs wanting more from their photos. Oh I added more presets which I got from this site by the way.

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Filed under: Tips n' Trix