Day 316/365: Lightroom Presets

I am still not feeling very inspired with my photography and only managed to take some pretty dreadful photos tonight. I edited them to the best of my ability and planned to add them onto a post tomorrow. But then I stumbled across some free downloadable presets for Lightroom and I thought that I might give them a try. 

I have been meaning to purchase some via Clickin Moms but I thought that the free ones might give me some idea how they work. Basically you just download them and import them into Lightroom. They are essentially like filters in Instagram but at least I see what settings they have used. I can't quite convince myself that it is not cheating... but at least I am learning something from the experience. 

There were about 12 presets to choose from. Some of them are pretty crazy and throwaway. I like the black and white ones best I think. It's Monday night, so I don't have much time to examine what the preset has done here. One thing that I notice is that the clarity is set way higher than I would normally set it. It's interesting. 

These photos were poor material to start with as they have such a high ISO and the shutter speed is a bit low to capture the moving ball. I am also very unhappy with my chipped paintwork...

I fancied more of a play around and so I used some of the  a photos of Bear that I took yesterday. 

I really love what it has done with some of these photos. These are ones that I hadn't even bothered to edit yesterday and with only one click I have ended up with some really sweet images. As much as this feels like cheating to me, I know that lots of professional photographers use presets. I am starting to see how such beautiful images are made. I feel like I have come another small step forward.