Hi fellows, I got to test the Through The Woods Lightroom presets and brushes for landscape photography from Sleeklens. Nowadays almost every photo published by professionals are post-processed and edited with the computer, like I stated in one of my earlier blog tests about taking portrait photos. One of the most common tools for post-processing, in addition to Photoshop, is Lightroom. Presets from Sleeklens aim to help with the editing process. I browsed my old photos and applied the presets and brushes into some of my landscape photos to see if the presets would help with my edits. Read on to find out my comments.
Through the Woods package contains a bunch of presets that can be used for quick automated adjustments with a few clicks. Brushes contain settings that can be applied locally by using Lightroom brush functionality. Below you can find example of some of the adjustments that can be done to the photos extremely quickly with tools like this. This clearly points out just how easy it is to manipulate the look and feel of photos. All the photos in this blog text are edited with Lightroom by using only the Sleeklens presets and brushes (except the unedited photo below).
Tallin Old Town on a gray winter day – unedited photo.
Tallin Old Town photo after 2 minute quick edit.
How about the Through the Woods presets then? Do they help with the editing work? If you are a seasoned Lightroom user and have already skills to adjust the image to correspond your vision with Lightroom adjustment sliders, the presets do not bring anything new that you couldn’t do by yourself. Presets do not contain any secret functionality, but simply pre-made adjustment presets. They cannot do anything that couldn’t be done manually via Lightroom sliders. However, they provide a wide variety of pre-made adjustment options. Thus, with them it is easy and really quick to test how different type of edits would affect the photo.
For less experienced Lightroom users the presets certainly bring an easy way to find out more editing options and ideas. When checking what kind of adjustments each preset actually does, it may provide also a way to learn more about Lightroom adjustment sliders.
Nallikari beach, Oulu, Finland.
An interesting test was to take an original version of a photo that I had fully edited already earlier and to see if I could make a better edit with Through the Wood package. This image is the one from Sweden in the beginning of this text. I ended up with almost similar edit – neither better nor worse. I may have been biased to make a similar edit, because the vision was already so clear in my head. However, I made the edit much faster with the presets.
Sunset at Nallikari beach, Oulu, Finland.
Conclusion
For beginners Through The Woods presets definitely give a fast way to learn how the landscape images can be edited and a good set of tools for doing the edits.
For seasoned Lightroom experts the presets do not bring any silver bullet for improved photographs. However, they may give a faster way to do testing between different editing approaches and are well structured toolkit, which will ease the workflow in case you haven’t already made a wide variety of presets for your own use.
If presets are not enough, Sleeklens is nowadays offering also professional photo editing service for retouching the images on your behalf.
Even with the presets it is clear that the essential skill is to take the right kind of photo with the camera in the first place and then have an ability to understand what kind of post-processing brings the most out of that picture.