I find I apply these settings on every picture I take except portraits. By entering these values each time I worked on a picture that it was slowing down my work flow. Creating a preset can really remove the mundane tasks and let you work on the artistic stuff.
Luckily Lightroom allows you to make presets. In Lightroom 3 Making a preset is very easy. When creating a preset it’s a good idea to make sure you haven’t applied ANY changes to the picture. I would recommend resetting the picture just to make sure that everything is back to the default settings. The reset button is on the bottom right of the main Lightroom screen when you are in edit mode. The reason you want to reset everything is that all the settings you’ve changed will be saved and applied to the preset.
Now change the settings you would like to have part of the presets. I will be increasing the Clarity and sharpening as per the screenshots above. Once you are happy with the settings you have made click the “+” button on the presets bar.
I would recommend that you click the “Check None” button and ONLY select the items that you have made changes to.
Since I only made changes to Clarity, sharpening, and Noise reduction I will check them off. Hit the “Create” button.
Now you should be able to apply these items with one click on the “JHH – Default Sharpening” preset.
If you are like me and want to be really lazy you can make Lightroom apply this preset during import so you don’t even have to click the “preset” name.
To learn how to do this check out my post “How to automatically apply a preset to a lightroom import”.
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