Lightroom 5 Presets For Music Photographers

Adobe Lightroom 5 includes some amazing new features, all streamlined to facilitate a quicker, more effective workflow for photographers.

For the first time, I’ve packaged together 10 of my most sought after presets and they are now available to purchase right here for only 2 bucks via a quick, easy payment with Paypal.

Sure, these presets are not ONLY for music photographers, I’m positive lots of other photographers will find them handy too!

All 10 presets were created in Adobe Lightroom 5, so no process updating is necessary 🙂

The download contains the following Lightroom 5 Presets: Erpla, Happenin’ Style,
Cat McPherson, BW Weapon, Mooga, Darn It, The K-Mart Kid, Kendra’s Letter,
People Are Dying and Put Your Helmet On.

Hover your mouse over the images below to see each in action.

1. Erpla
Here’s a great preset that I come back to from time to time – it works well when there is a great deal of variety in colours throughout an image. Check how it creates a smooth, overall tonality to this example.

2. Happenin’ Style
I use this preset on flat images that lack any real contrast or pop. I love how the shadows are super punchy with this one.

3. 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! 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. Also remove the vignette if your image doesn’t require it.

4. BW Weapon
Black & White Lightroom presets: I can never have enough of them!! Each have their pros and cons: some don’t allow anywhere near enough contrast and the resulting image looks more like someone has dragged coal over paper than a work of photographic genius, others simply desaturate all colour from the image – brilliant for some instances, but not all. BW Weapon leaves enough detail in the shadows while highlighting minor contrasts such as different shades of skin, hair definition etc.

5. Mooga
Pulling detail out of heavy shadowed areas is not easy. If you simply decrease the blacks you introduce a lot of noise and lose loads of contrast. Mooga compensates for this just nicely. I use this preset with images that contain little or no detail in the shadows.

6. Darn It
A nice, dirty b/w preset that introduces just the right amount of grain to your image.

7. The K-Mart Kid
You know when the stage lighting really sucks for the first three songs, but then once you’ve put your gear away and are enjoying the show, everything steps up ten notches? The spotties come on, gelled, rotating rear facing cans and smoke machines creates a sense of depth behind the drummer and massive LED panels stretched the width of the entire stage blink to life, displaying vivid, epic images? It’s right about then that I’m thinking this preset will work well later to bring something back to these otherwise drab shooting conditions.

8. Kendra’s Letter
I really love how this preset gives pop to an otherwise flat image, bringing out waaaaay more detail, particularly in the shadows.

9. People Are Dying
Sometimes you will want to spice things up a little, create something on a totally different scope to what you may be used to – this preset gives an old time feel to the image, perfect for this performance!

10. Put Your Helmet On
Saved the best for last! As rock n’ roll photographers it’s pretty unanimous to say we HATE red lighting!! Dealing with red in post is a royal pain in the ass!! Not anymore, this totally schwenken preset pulls the reds and replaces them with more natural looking skin tones. That’s worth the 2 bucks on it’s own!

NB: Tweak those sliders to suit your own images and needs, these presets should be used as a starting point for your workflow only!

Installation instructions:
(also included as a text file in the download)

    1. Download the zip file bjwokLR5Presets.zip to your desktop, or wherever your downloads download to on your machine.
    2. Unzip the zip file by double clicking it.
    3. The folder named bjwok.com_Lightroom5Presets should now be unzipped and on your desktop (or wherever you downloaded it to!)
    4. Open Lightroom 5 and from the “Lightroom” menu (top left hand of your screen), choose Lightroom –> Preferences.
    5. Within the dialogue box that opens, choose the “Presets” tab (second from the left).
    6. Click “Show Lightroom Presets Folder…”
      IMPORTANT:
    7. From within the “Lightroom” folder that opened as a result of clicking on “Show Lightroom Presets Folder…” in step 6, navigate to the “Develop Presets” folder.
    8. Drag, paste or copy (whichever you like) the entire folder you downloaded and unzipped in Steps 1 and 2 above into the “Develop Presets” folder.
    9. Restart Lightroom 5
    10. Go to the Develop module and you will now have bjwok.com_Lightroom5Presets available in the Presets column on the left.