When it comes to learning from presets, I find that Lightroom 4.3 for Mac/Windows (often referred to as “Lightroom Desktop” which I think is dumb as a differentiator to Lightroom Classic, but I digress) provides the best experience. Obviously, there is no one preset that works equally well with all photos, but they can provide an insight into a new direction or new starting point for an edit that you may have not considered. One of the aspects of presets, whether free or ones you purchase, is that they offer an opportunity to look over the shoulder of another photographer while they are editing. 3 update installed for whichever LrC/Lr/ACR app you are using, and make sure you haven’t hidden them using the Manage Presets function in each application. If you don’t see the new presets, make sure you’ve got the. The article about the new presets provides a bit of background on each group, but if you are not especially savvy about the differences in skin tones (like me), I found a number of good resources from the world of skin care that provide a good foundation for learning more. There are also additional free portrait presets under the Portraits group. Very cool! Finding the PresetsĪssuming you installed the June 2021 update, the new Premium Presets all appear right at the top of the Preset panel (Lightroom Classic 10.3 shown below, but these are accessible in ACR 13.3 and Lr 4.3 too), and are grouped into the following sets: I even learned from that article that they also included some portrait presets for people using the freemium version of Lightroom that were created by my friend Aundre Larrow. Now I can see why these presets are a step above the rest.

I came across a recent blog post from Ben Warde on the Lightroom team that provided some background on the various preset packs and the photographers who created them.

To be honest, I’ve never put the pre-installed presets that came with any version of Lightroom to much use, but I find these new sets to be pretty cool, interesting, and thoughtfully crafted. The name simply means that these presets are only available to people with a paid Creative Cloud subscription, as opposed to the freemium option for Lightroom on mobile. The latest update to Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Adobe Camera Raw contained several groups of what are being called Premium Presets.

Lightroom portrait presets