Shutter Sisters

sunday school: lightroom presets for the {unapologetically} nostalgic

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She wants a puppy, just like any other happy-go-lucky six-and-a-half-year-old little girl. Alas, I am in no position to get a dog of her own, so we visit Mayu, my friend’s lovely and playful Peruvian pup. The sun peeks out, slightly warming the frigid March air, giving us hope that spring is finally remembering to return to us.

Someone once characterized my photography as being “nostalgic.” I like that description. It’s true; one of the reasons I take photos is because I am nostalgic-to-the-core, and unapologetically so. I sometimes exhibit this side of me in the way I choose to edit my photos in Adobe Lightroom, by applying “vintage-esque” effects that accentuate my emotional ties to the memory captured in the photo.

To celebrate spring finally coming back to the Windy City (fingers-crossed/knock-on-wood…), I’ve created a set of spring-and-nostalgia-inspired Lightroom Develop Presets for you to play around with. To see larger photos of these examples, you can go to this gallery of images and click on any thumbnail on that page to see a larger version.  To download a zip file of these presets, click here.  You can view instructions on installing presets here. Please note that these presets were developed for RAW (uncompressed) files, but most of them should work for JPEG files as well; you’ll just need to tweak a little more here and there. You’ll also want to change the basic exposure/brightness to your liking, as most of these presets do not affect those settings.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only nostalgic vintage-effects-loving photographer around here. Please share with us today your favorite vintage editing effects, or, if you’re a Lightroom user, try one of these presets and share the results with us!

Comments

  1. Love these presets. Only wish they'd work in Aperture! 😀 If anyone knows of good resources for Aperture users, please share!

  2. I've never edited photos in Lightroom (actually I rarely use it even though it's installed on all my computers). I'll have to give that a try.

  13. I'm very new to Lightroom and it seems like a steep learning curve to me at the moment. I'll get there eventually and it's probably not as hard as I think. Thanks for sharing these presets . . . whole new world to know that I can 'borrow' expert work and apply with a mouse click 🙂

    I used the years ago preset here:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjakobsen-martin/5593773592/