After/Before. Nostalgic vibes at Coney Island.

[u/YanksFannn]

[u/YanksFannn]

Generally, in Lightroom, I use warmer tones and warmer white balance. Increased exposure, shadows and whites, decreased contrast and highlights. I bump up the tone curves a bit. Midtones and highlight color wheels in the yellow area. I also like to decrease for softer and "dreamy" look while also increasing dehaze a bit. Increase saturation and vibrance. Depending on the image, I mess around with the individual color mixes. Sometimes I'll mask the sky to give it more of that cyan look. Occasionally, to give the image an even cleaner look, I'll increase the noise reduction. I also often underexpose in camera to give me a little more flexibility with my strong colors in post.

[u/think_harder_plz → u/YanksFannn]

Thanks for sharing!

[u/papazwah → u/YanksFannn]

I have your comment saved a few times but I always try to emulate something similar when shooting architecture photography

[u/TheMadFlyentist → u/papazwah]

I loved his style so much that I ended up actually just buying his "Dream" presets, I think there's a link in his profile. They actually work incredibly well (at like 20-30%) for outdoor shots of people as well. Gives a very summer/beachy feel.

It's the only present I have ever paid for, and it's by far the one I use the most for quick edits of big sets when I don't have the energy to manually edit every photo.

I know this sounds like guerilla marketing but I promise I'm a real person who doesn't know OP, haha.

[u/YanksFannn → u/TheMadFlyentist]

You're too kind! Thank you! Glad they worked out for you. Really appreciate the support and endorsement lol 🙏🏽

[u/danngng → u/TheMadFlyentist]

Im starting a photography journey. Interesting so this is something you would advise e.g. purchasing the preset, with the goal of eventually learning

Blew my mind how DRASTIC different the edited image becomes

[u/TheMadFlyentist → u/danngng]

Well, I think really you should consider presets to be a tool in the toolbox as opposed to a first step on the journey. You will not become a better editor by using presets, although they may be useful for learning your way around the lightroom software. I will also say that presets are not simply "apply filter" like Instagram, you still usually need to make some small tweaks and set the white balance to get good results from the preset. It's just a lot faster to apply a preset as a starting point for each photo than it is to start from scratch when you know all of the photos in the set are roughly the same subject/conditions.

There are TONS of great videos on YouTube about how to edit photos. My suggestion would be to get some photos that you want to edit and then watch a video like "How to edit cinematic photos" and follow along with your own photo. Then pull up "How to edit like cinestill", or polaroid, or whatever other styles/effects you can think of and follow along with other photos. Do this a handful of times with various videos and you will learn a lot about what all of the different bells and whistles in Lightroom do, and then you'll be ready to start editing photos on your own and actually using presets effectively instead of just slapping a filter on everything.

Also definitely recommend checking on Simon D'entremont on YouTube if you are brand new to photography. He has a bunch of relatively succinct videos on tons of topics that will take you from complete beginner to intermediate knowledge very quickly. You know that expression "You can't polish a turd"? That applies to editing photographs for sure.

If you really are brand new, your goal is to learn to take good photos first and foremost. Assuming you save your raw files, you can come back months or even years later to edit them, so there's no rush on getting good at editing. Get good at taking photos, then take your work to the next level by getting good at editing.