You shoot primarily digital now and you have tried to create presets that emulate the look of that classic emulsion. Say you are a photographer who is in love with the look offered by a certain favorite film stock from back in the day.

In fact, it is likely that many photographers will see a benefit in using both simultaneously. While they appear to achieve the same effects, the way in which they do so is so different that one is not a replacement for the other. I am not suggesting that you ditch presets in favor of profiles. The real benefit of camera raw profiles lies in the added control they offer.

The fact that the sliders haven't moved is not the main benefit however. Anytime a given profile is applied within Lr or ACR, one will notice that the sliders remain in their default locations. When applied on import, they can serve as a starting place or can be applied after adjustments are made to further the processing workflow. They work at deeper level within the program and act as a key to tell the program how to interpret the RAW file. Furthermore, if a preset is applied after adjustments are made, it will generally overwrite any previous changes (with limited exceptions). Of course, one can go in and make adjustments to any given slider after the preset is applied to fine tune the look. They are applied without any discrimination. Presets work by telling Lightroom or ACR exactly where to place every slider for an image. Still others use them as a “starting place” to give their initial edit of a photo some direction. Others use them to automate identical adjustments that are made to a large batch of images in order to streamline the process.

Some are adverse because they feel as though they're giving up control. Different photographers have different takes on presets. If not, you really should give them a chance. Camera RAW Profiles PresetsĬhances are, you have probably had some experience with presets in your photographic workflow. I'll address the second statement in the first full section. Trust me on this.) If you've never created a preset, no worries still. (Pro Tip: as you're going through your normal workflows, try holding that key down for each task you complete. The process is about the same as for creating a preset but with the help of that all magical “Alt/Option” key, which is useful for so many things in Lightroom, ACR and Photoshop. I understand these thoughts but let me address them one at a time. Now, you're probably already thinking “That sounds hard” or “I just use presets”. If you avoid Lr like the plague and you prefer to stick with Adobe Camera RAW (ACR), good news: this applies to you as well and the process for creating them isn't really any different. Now here's the cool part…You can create your own camera RAW profiles! And this doesn't just apply to Lightroom. Recent updates to Adobe Lightroom came with at least one major benefit…additional camera RAW profiles.

Adobe camera raw 12.4