Free Lightroom Preset – Cat McPherson

Here’s a preset with a silly name, but they say you remember silly things more than normal. I do anyway…

I use tweaks of this preset ALL THE TIME!. It’s gold, gold, gold for bands in particular, as demonstrated nicely here by Poetikool Justice. You will more than likely have to tweak the black clipping to suit your own image, depending on how much detail there is/isn’t in your shadows.

NB: Don’t go nuts on the “Fill Light” slider, you’ll start to add some funky undesirable halo effects to hard edges like hair/arms etc.

* Download Cat McPherson here.

Once installed, you should tweak the preset to suit your own image.

1. Download the zip file above, it should unzip to your desktop.
2. Unzip the preset zip file.
3. While in the Develop module in Lightroom, go to the Presets panel (far left). Control click anywhere in it and choose the “Import” option at the bottom of the pop-up menu.
4. Select the .lrtemplate file you downloaded and click “Import”.
5. NB: Don’t import the zipped file, it won’t work – you must import the unzipped file into Lightroom.
6. Tweak and enjoy!

After:

Before: