How To Create An HDR Preset In Lightroom

How To Create An HDR Preset In Lightroom
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
This is Before the Preset.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
This is After the Preset. Single click, No Halos! Pretty Awesome, I’d Say.

Today I am going to show a simple technique to create a HDR preset in Lightroom. Many of you may know that I am a huge Lightroom fan. The reason is, it’s a huge time saver. I like to do as much as I can when I am working inside Lightroom, the reason is, speed. When you export an image from Lightroom to Photoshop, you just know you are going to be doing some really in-depth adjustments. Those adjustments take lots of time. With that said, one of the biggest time savers in Lightroom is the ability to create presets and apply them to any image. You can create presets for almost all of the controls inside the Lightroom interface, however this does exclude the adjustment brush for certain techniques like stacking adjustments.

So, I want to show you a trick I learned from Lightroom master Matt Kloskowski. It involves the use of the graduated filter. One of the cool things about the graduated filter is you can stack adjustments with it, and then save them as a preset. In previous tutorials, I have shown how to stack the effect of the adjustment brush to create really interesting images. Now you can do the same exact thing with the graduated filter but save them as a preset. I cant believe I didn’t think of this myself. It just goes to show we all have stuff to learn, even if you think you have fully mastered a program.

Check out the video below where I show you how to make the HDR preset in just a few clicks of a mouse.

  1. I am more interested in what I don’t know than what I do know.

    That said, I want to tether, seeing the images in black and white. Just changing the camera setting to monochrome doesn’t do it. It comes in color. None of the presets which come with LR have a simple b & W preset. Could you do a piece on how to make a preset to use on import when tethering.

  2. “I am more interested in what I don’t know than what I do know” Does this statement infer that today’s post is somthing that you already knew. If so that is great, because it was all new to me.

    I will try to do a video that applies a preset during import. For me a B&W viewing filter is a much better option. I use the Kodak Wratten #90 filter to survey a scene before I shoot in B&W.

  3. No. It means I love learning all the things I don’t know. You have this same joy of learning and you know a lot. Me. I got a lot to learn. I was just supporting you.

    Filters. Gels. I know little.

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