p.2 #1 · Excellent collections of Lightroom Classic presets?
krug wrote:
Sorry to be argumentative but why on earth would any artist (as any serious photographer is/or should be) want someone else's decisions to shape - or even to start - his/her work decisions ??
I love pre-sets for the reasons many of us do... excellent starting point. with the ability to tweak from there.
p.2 #2 · Excellent collections of Lightroom Classic presets?
Probably - though I prefer the term individualist.
Don't we all hope to make an image (or three) which is well regarded - or even applauded - by our peers for being special in some way and so is lifted beyond the ordinary and might then be seen as an elite image ?
p.2 #3 · Excellent collections of Lightroom Classic presets?
krug wrote:
Probably - though I prefer the term individualist.
Don't we all hope to make an image (or three) which is well regarded - or even applauded - by our peers for being special in some way and so is lifted beyond the ordinary and might then be seen as an elite image ?
It seems to me that you might be making an arbitrary distinction about where you are drawing the line about what is artistic expression and what is a basic tool.
Every artist depends on tools which they create for themselves, tools which are created for them and tools which they modify or improvise.
Much of how light is captured and how color is rendered in photography is based on manufacturer decisions. In the case of film, the predominant influence came from the film manufacturer and the lens maker. Their choices of how the scenes light was rendered onto the film surface and how colors were interpreted were made when the tools they provided were manufactured. You were not more or less of an artist because you chose one tool or another.
Now we use digital and the choices are more complicated but similar. Lenses are the same (mostly). We have the sensor manufacturer and camera manufacturer who decide about how light which hits the sensor is recorded, what specific color the individual red, green and blue filters are, how that information is recorded and, if we let the camera interpolate (such as to create a jpeg) how that information is transformed into an image and what color palette is used. In essence, a preset (color interpretation and a curve) have been applied. This is a preset decided by the manufacturer.
Load the RAW file in Lightroom and Adobe is making a similar interpretation of your image when the RAW file is demosaiced. Use Capture One and you are putting the same decisions in the hands of Phase engineers.
When you apply a preset, you are making a decision to go with another set of interpretations of how the color is rendered.
I submit to you that where you draw the line in this chain to assert artistic integrity is arbitrary and that the same types of decisions about how the light you captured is interpreted into an image are being made.
I also suspect that you have not looked carefully at well-crafted presets and this will bias your interpretation. A poorly crafted preset looks like poor color judgement on most images. Adobe, Phase etc tend to not do this, so their influence appears seamless, just as film from Kodak or Fuji appeared seamless. But when you look under the hood, you realize that it is very much an interpretation. When you choose a well crafted preset, it also appears seamless and it is an interpretation of the same sort.
p.2 #4 · Excellent collections of Lightroom Classic presets?
krug wrote:
Probably - though I prefer the term individualist.
Don't we all hope to make an image (or three) which is well regarded - or even applauded - by our peers for being special in some way and so is lifted beyond the ordinary and might then be seen as an elite image ?
I have many images that are well regarded by my peers where the starting point of of my post processing was a pre-set.
p.2 #5 · Excellent collections of Lightroom Classic presets?
Ok folks I think this bit has gone on long enough and is distracting from the question asked by the OP - I was being deliberately provocative to begin with but I sometimes feel that, even on this site which personally I rate as one of the best of its kind, people seem to be looking for crutches rather than risk experimenting for themselves which is, imho, the best way to learn.
I accept almost entirely what 'Story in Pictures" says above.
And not wishing to start another hare running by again being provocative I never quite understand the implied rebuke that I "sound a bit elitist". I rather approve of elites in almost all fields - I enjoy elite athletes in whatever sport I am watching, elite artists in whatever field be it paint, sculpture or photography, elite actors on stage or film, etc..
I definitely but sadly do not believe that I am in any such category myself but I certainly would like to be and try - and fail regularly - to attain that in my work. Without that aim I would hardly make the effort I do nor bother to show the results in the hope of learning from the comments and critiques of others. If what was intended was that I sounded "arrogant" then that is another matter which I would regret, I certainly did not intend, and if I did I apologize unreservedly.
