In the latest version of Lightroom, Adobe has implemented a new profile browser inside the Develop module. The team over at DVLOP has already put this feature to work with some awesome new ways to edit your images.
Adding overlays and lens flares to images is nothing new in the world of photography. But with DVLOP’s new Leaks and Tweaks, we now have a completely new way of adding these effects to our images. The Leaks portion of this pack is applied to your image using a modified radial filter. These are added using the more traditional preset panel. Here, you can adjust the color, opacity, and position like you would any other preset.
The Tweaks portion of the pack is where things get really cool. These are applied through the new profile browser that was just added to Lightroom in the most recent update. The cool part about these is that you get a grid layout of all the Tweaks. This gives you an instant overall view of your options. Once applied, you can then change the opacity to fit your taste and style preferences. In the past, this type of feature was reserved for third-party plugins that required you to create new copies of your images. These plugins used up a good chunk of time loading, saving, and jumping from one piece of software to the next. So, the ability to perform these edits nondestructively through Lightroom while getting the grid overview of possible edits is a welcome addition.
If this is your first time hearing about DVLOP, definitely check them out. I wrote a full review of their preset packs.
Can't read right now, still renaming all of my presets to fix the out of order mess the developers left me with. After that I will spend forever trying to get rid of all the new presets I don't want. They should release another version that has none of it and is just fast. But bloatware gives them an excuse to keep hiking that price.
I really don't get how presets like these even sell. It's good for the developers of course, but I don't understand why would someone buy them. I find it much more efficient to just do what you want instead of browsing an endless list of presets to MAYBE find the one you want. I don't get it. Would be glad if someone can enlighten me about this.
I think people are just looking for something to set them apart from the crowd in terms of creativity. Other filters, presets, etc are all the same kinda beast. If you don't have the wherewithal to either create them manually, or the inspiration to figure something original out then you can grab these preset packs to at least give you a head start. I would be in the crowd of people that would maybe use these presets if they weren't so expensive. For the amount of times I actually need to use a light leak or something in my work, I will just bring the shot into photoshop and do it there instead. Still doesn't hurt to be aware of the options.