Experiment with presets

Quickly adjust colour and tone with Lightroom’s easy-to-use presets

The mission

Experiment with camera-processing presets to quickly boost images

Time

5 minutes

Skill level

Beginner Intermediate Advanced

Kit needed

Lightroom 5 or later

Nikon DSLRs provide the opportunity to process a photograph immediately as they capture it, using a range of built-in Picture Control presets. These change the look of a photo’s colours and tones. For example, Landscape boosts the saturation of blues and greens, Portrait gives skin a smoother look, while Neutral avoids boosting the image’s colour and contrast altogether.

If you shoot in JPEG format, the Picture Control is ‘baked’ into the file – and the effect difficult to subsequently alter in post-processing. If you shoot Raw, however, then the Picture Control information can only be read by Nikon’s own Capture NX-D software, and Lightroom won’t automatically apply the effect to the image. But Lightroom has its own camera-processing presets, found under the Camera Calibration panel. This panel provides you with a springboard towards adjusting colour and tone. You can then fine-tune the results of a particular preset profile using the sliders in the Basic panel.