Black October

November 3, 2013Olivier Glod

I'll tell you straight away: my October sucked. Countless hours overtime at the office, bad weather, crappy light and now the flu. Well, dear November, here's hoping...

However, I did manage to catch about half an hour of alright shooting conditions at the lake in Echternach and still had some backlogged pictures of my first walk in the woods with the X100S, so I actually have something to share.

This leads me to the actual subject of this blogpost: Lightroom presets.

Considered by many as one-click solutions to an otherwise lengthy trial and error process (especially if you're starting out and don't know how to use curves), presets can also be a creative kick-starter. Sure, you can browse through the available ones, apply the one you like the most and leave it at that. There's nothing wrong with this, but you can also use them as great starting points and go bonkers with full customisation afterwards. Love the tones, but don't like the grain in that Ilford Delta 3200++ preset? Simply go to the Effects part and set Grain Amount to 0! Maybe it could do with a little bit more Clarity? Go ahead, what's stopping you?

There are about a bazillion different preset offerings on the Interweb, but I have to admit that I'm particularly fond of two different brands: VSCO and REBELSAUCE.

While VSCO is sort of the top dog in the whole presets game, offering four different packs, each with specific camera profiles, I will take a moment to talk a bit more about Rebelsauce and why I just love them.

Currently, if you navigate to the Rebelsauce Store, you have the choice between 4 different collections, and an "adjustments" kit.

It all started with the Italia collection.

Here's a shot edited with the Novara Dark (no fade) preset from Italia.

Shot with a Canon 5D Mark III and an EF 135 L.

I was an early adopter and got the complete Italia collection as one package, but this has now been split up into two sets:

Italia:

"A collection of hazy Lightroom film presets, inspired by the sands and seas of Italy."

Italia [Faded]:

"A faded set of the classic Italia collection, for lovers of vintage analog photography."

Next in line, there's the Francia collection.

Here's one edited with the Arzon preset.

Francia:

"A collection of subtle Lightroom presets, inspired by the simplicity of France."

And finally, the newest of the bunch is called Espanja.

This one was edited with the Chiva preset and the vignette +2 adjustment, as well as a dash of darks fix +1 adjustment :-)

Espanja:

"A mastered collection of Lightroom film presets, inspired by the spice and passion of Spain."

So far, there has also been one collection split up over two limited edition packs: Titan01 and Titan02.

I used Nyx from Titan01 on this one.

Shot with a Fuji X-E1 and a Walimex 8mm fisheye.

Another great point which sets Rebelsauce apart, is their pricing policy.

First of all: they offer trial packs. These Micropaks give you the chance to try out a few of the presets from each pack for a small price, instead of going all out.

10$ still too much for your current budget? Well, they also offer excellent FREE presets. All you have to do is:

Subscribe to their mailing list (and get one preset per month for free, included in the newsletter)
Like their Facebook page
Tweet about them

I'll now leave you with the aforementioned new shots. These were either taken with my Fuji X100S or Fuji X-E1 with the excellent 18-55mm kit zoom lens (note to all potential X-E1 or X-E2 buyers => do go ahead and treat yourself to this great piece of glass!).

All of the images were edited with Rebelsauce presets. While the currently available sets also feature B&W presets, there's a set coming up called UNDERWORLD, which will be all about monochrome goodness. These presets were used for the B&W shots below :-)

Hope you'll enjoy!