Lightroom is a post-processing and organizing photo editing software, coming from the Adobe software family. It’s been a long journey together, with many ups and downs, angry moments, and fights. But we made it through, and today I’m going to show you how to use Adobe Lightroom if you’ve never done it before!
This Adobe Lightroom guide for beginners will help you start your photo editing journey on the platform, to create stunning pictures! We’ll be going through a couple of basics about the program to ease the struggle! It’s just a brief of Lightroom and the custom presets. Let’s dive into it!
What is Adobe Lightroom?
Let’s start at the beginnings! Adobe Lightroom is a photo-editing software for post-processing, editing, and organizing your photography. It has two different platforms for PC and mobile, where you can transform your pictures in unbelievable ways. Literally, just as you want them to look. To the smallest details of the texture, colors, lights, you can adjust everything.
The only issue is, that you can’t use the same filters on the PC as on the phone. But we’ll be back to this later! Keep reading!
A great tool for photo editing.
Lightroom is made for photography. Using the tool, you can upload, edit, share, save the presets, and much more. When you download Lightroom, you’ll be getting some extra tutorials in-tool, where you can explore exactly how to use each option.
You don’t have to be a professional photographer to have stunning shots in your album, frame, or on your social media channels. And this is the best in it! You can create your own stunning pictures, with just a few clicks, and whenever you look at those shots, they will remind you of the moment, the feeling, the vibes.
This is why I personally used Lightroom for so long. The software allowed me to recreate the vibes, even on bad-quality, old pictures. And through that, I recreated the feeling and memories of that specific moment.
Me being a visual person, as you can see I love photography. And for me, that feeling is essential. To feel the vibes, the atmosphere.
That essential something that’s not always visible on an image, but you can make it visible with Lightroom.
Just look at the frescoes on the sealing of this incredibly unique chapel in Milan. The picture was taken with a Samsung S10+ mobile. But as you can see on the original shot, nothing’s too visible.
However, the edited one reminds me of that mysterious feeling that’s been surrounding me while I was in that chapel. What do you think? I’m really curious about your opinions, so go ahead and leave a comment, feedback at the bottom of the page! Also, if you like the photo filter, you can find it in my Milano Preset Collection for PC!
What are the Lightroom Presets?
The presets are the saved photo edits, you’ve made to change a picture in certain ways. The great thing in Lightroom Presets is, that when you make an edit that you really love, you can save it in a collection, and use it for later on. As I have mentioned previously, some of us do need years to somehow master the Lightroom, especially if that person is using no tutorials (yeah, that was me).
When we are editing our images, as mentioned, there are plenty of ways and options to adjust and change the pictures to achieve a unique look, a unique vibe. The tools Lightroom is giving us make it easy for each mind and vision to create what fits the most!
You can make certain colors dominate in your pictures, which is really helpful if you’re looking to design your own Instagram gallery in a more eyecatching way. Nobody likes when each picture has a completely different style in a gallery, right?
How to use Lightroom presets for photo editing?
And now we have finally approached our HOW TO guide to photo editing. Let’s see how we can edit with lightroom presets?
Lightroom presets are in the first place for those who are new at Lightroom. These already-made photo filters will help you start up with editing, and in the meantime to create and understand the process.
Here’s how to install the Lightroom presets on PC.
When you’re trying to install custom Lightroom presets, you’ll need to follow this step-by-step buide to do so. Let’s see!
- Open Lightroom
- Click on the Lightroom tab in the top left corner of the screen
- Click on Preferences
- Click on Presets
- Click on Show Lightroom presets folder…
- Open the Camera Raw folder
- Click Settings
- Drag the presets in the User Presets folder
- Restart Lightroom
If you’re really new to Lightroom, here are some basic steps:
Importing pictures: Click File on the top taskbar, and go on import photos and videos.
Developer mode: This is basically the mode where you can start editing your photos. To go to the developer mode, look on the 2nd level top bar, on the right-hand side for Developer mode, or use D button on your keyboard.
When you’re on the developer dashboard, on the left side, you’ll find your previously installed and saved presets. To creat new collections, and save new presets, simply go on the tob bar on the Develop menu, and press create new preset.
On the left side, you’ll have all the tools to edit your pictures, or if you’ve applied your presets, this is the place you can adjust it to your specific shots.
As you may know, sometimes, some presets have to be adjusted, for the lights, colors, saturation, texture to fit. You can adjust each one using this toolbar.
When you’re done editing, on the Edit topbar menu, all you’ll need to do is to press export and your new popping pictures will be saved in a specified folder for you. Video tutorial is coming soon!
Lightroom Preset Shop by ShegoWandering
My preset collections are related to a place, to a specific vibe and specific lights. Each collection has a different story, from a different destination.
ShegoWandering presets are compatible just with Lightroom on PC. Each pack has above 10 different photo filters, some have more than 30. The photo filters are mixed.
Some have been created for RAW pictures, others for JPEG. They are easy to apply to both photo formats, with some adjustments, if it’s needed. The preset collections were made using Lightroom Classic, but they were tested on other versions as well, to work fine!
ShegoWandering Lightroom Presets
Milano Collection – Desktop Lightroom Presets
Budapest Collection – Desktop Lightroom Presets
Rome Collection – Desktop Lightroom Presets
Seville Collection – Desktop Lightroom Presets
So is Lightroom a good choice for photo editing?
Yes, it definitely is! I’ve been using Lightroom for my pictures for more than 3 years so far. And I’m using it on daily bases. If not for new pictures, I’m re-editing old pictures, by creating new presets as well for old collections, to update them.
Before Lightroom, I was fine with my pictures, used some random free filter, that never actually made those pictures perfect. But at that time, I didn’t know I could actually create something different. As soon as I first heard about the software, it became one of the reasons I fall so in love with photography today!
Developing my knowledge using the platform didn’t happen overnight, but that’s what the presets are for! To help you learn and develop your own style. Or if you’re looking for just great filters, it’s all there!
It took time, a lot of experience, and some really low-quality edits, to get to the point where I feel absolutely confident to start sharing my presets. If you have a look at the above pictures, the first has been edited in 2018, the second photo editing is from 2020. Two years of actively using the software.
Check out PhotoWoah to get a pack of free lightroom presets for portraits.
