I get asked this constantly in workshops: do you use presets, or do you edit every photo from scratch? The honest answer is both — but not in the way most people think.
What Presets Actually Are
A Lightroom preset is a saved set of develop settings. That is all. It is no different from a custom tone curve, a HSL adjustment, or a camera profile that you have saved for reuse. Calling presets “cheating” is like calling a chef’s mise en place cheating — it is preparation and efficiency, not a shortcut around skill.
Every professional photographer who shoots at high volume uses presets. The question is not whether to use them — it is whether you are using presets that are worth using.
How I Use Presets in My Professional Workflow
When I am editing a 500-image landscape shoot, I start with a preset from my Landscape and Cityscapes collection as the base. The preset handles the global tone curve, color calibration, and base saturation settings that are consistent across the shoot. Then I adjust exposure, white balance, and local adjustments per image.
This is not laziness. This is the same image starting 80% of the way there instead of 0%. The creative decisions — what to emphasize, how dark the shadows should be, how punchy the colors feel — still happen on every image. The preset just removes the repetitive foundation work.
When You Should Edit From Scratch
There are situations where I start from zero:
- Technically unique images — extreme mixed lighting, unusual color casts, HDR scenarios
- When I am developing a brand new look for a project
- Client work with very specific technical requirements
But even in those cases, I often save the result as a new preset for similar images in the same shoot.
What Makes a Preset Worth Using
The presets you use matter enormously. A preset built by someone who shoots casually looks completely different from a preset built by someone who has edited hundreds of thousands of professional images. The difference shows up in:
- How highlights roll off at the upper end of the histogram
- Whether skin tones (and other critical colors) shift when you apply it
- How it behaves across different white balance settings
- Whether it holds up at large print sizes
My presets — including the Ultimate Collection — were built on these standards because they had to be. When your images appear in National Geographic or on a 40×60 inch gallery print, there is no margin for presets that look great on a phone screen and terrible everywhere else.
The Bottom Line
Use presets. Use good ones. Learn what they are doing so you can fine-tune them. And do not let anyone tell you that using tools efficiently makes you less of a photographer — the opposite is true.