Prolost Graduated Presets

User’s Guide

 
Version 3.1, for Lightroom 4 and up, and Photoshop CC. The Dehaze presets require Lightroom 6.2/2015.2 or later.
 
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This collection of over 500 presets is arranged in gradated groups. As you move your mouse up and down, you're previewing different amounts of each effect. Just click when the image feels right, and you've applied the adjustment.

In most of the groups, the presets act together as one adjustment. Some of these gradated groups, such as Contrast, adjust only one Develop control. Others, like Dynamic Range Compression, Color Temperature II (JPEG), and Blockbuster Cyan, adjust many parameters together, making complex, powerful adjustments a simple matter.

When you hover your mouse up and down over a group of these graduated presets, you get an instant, visual preview of the adjustment in the Navigator panel. When the image looks the way you like, just click, and you've made the adjustment. You can do almost all your photo editing this way, without touching a single slider. Just see and react — exactly as you do when you're shooting.

Installing the Presets

These installation instructions apply to version 3.0 and later. Earlier versions included installation instructions with the download.

Process Version

These presets use Lightroom's Process Version 2012. You should update any images using a previous Process Version (such as those imported into Lightroom 3 or earlier) to PV2012 before using these presets.

To update the Process Version of a photo in Lightroom Classic, go to the Develop module and choose Settings → Update to Current Process (2012).

Using the Presets

The best way to get familiar with the Prolost Graduated Presets is to watch the demo video:

Here's a video walkthrough of what was added in v2.1:

Changelog

Version 1.0

Version 1,0 was previewed at the Bay Area Lightroom Users Group on December 5, 2012.

Version 1.1

Added Saturation and Vibrance presets.

Version 1.5

Added the following:

  • Color Treatments (HSL) – 10 presets for reshaping the color palette of your photos
  • Prolost Technical – 2 presets for extracting accurate light values from a raw photo
  • Prolost Creative – Red Scale

Version 1.5.1

Simplified the installation instructions.

Version 2.0

The first major upgrade to the Prolost Graduated Presets, version 2.0 was first previewed at the Bay Area Lightroom Users Group on January 27, 2015. It includes many new presets and some important updates to existing sets.

  • Skin Hue (HSL) has been updated to adjust only skin colors, leaving other HSL adjustments untouched.
  • Skin Squeeze (HSL) has been updated to adjust only skin colors, leaving other HSL adjustments untouched.

The following are the new presets included in version 2.0:

  • Color Temperature II (JPEG) – 29 gradations of white balance adjustments (warm to cool) that produce more pleasing results than Lightroom's default controls on non-raw images.
  • Blockbuster Blue – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a deep blue tint.
  • Blockbuster Cyan – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a green-blue tint.
  • Blockbuster Gold – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a warm tint.
  • Blockbuster Sundrench – 15 gradations of a warm cinematic look with pale colors and low contrast.
  • Blockbuster Hues – 15 gradations of a cinematic color adjustment that allows separate control over the hue isolation used in Blockbuster Blue, Blockbuster Cyan, and Blockbuster Gold.
  • Blue Squeeze – 11 gradations of compressing only blue hues toward cyan. This provides a more granular control over the Blue to Cyan preset found under Color Treatments (HSL).
  • Candy Apple Red – 12 gradations of boosting red toward a rich, saturated shade.
  • Invisible Vignette – 15 gradations of a subtle vignette that range from unnoticeable to pronounced, but still organic.
  • In Prolost Creative, three new subtle vintage looks:
    • Aged Olive
    • Aged Teal
    • Aged Umber

Version 2.1

A minor upgrade to 2.0 that adds support for Lightroom 6.1's Dehaze control, as well as a new Exposure group and a Fade group.

  • Exposure II (JPEG) – 37 gradations of exposure adjustments (+4 stops to -2 stops) that produce more pleasing results than Lightroom's default controls on non-raw images.
  • Fade – 15 gradations of a tone curve lift that washes out blacks to gray, for a vintage look.
  • Dehaze – Gradations of the Dehaze control added in Lightroom 6.1. Easily remove haze from your photos, or even add more back in. Requires Lightroom CC or Lightroom 6.1+.

Version 2.2

  • New Gradient and Radial Dehaze groups
  • New global Dehaze group with finer increments.

Version 3.0

All presets updated to the new XMP format to work with Lightroom CC 1.3 and Lightroom Classic 7.3 (.lrtemplate versions still included for compatibility with Lightroom 6 and earlier).

All presets now work in Photoshop CC’s Camera Raw importer.

XMP presets have more cosmetic names, as their display name no longer dictates their display sort order.

Version 3.1

Updated the following presets to not clobber non-default Profiles:

  • Exposure II (JPEG)
  • Saturation
  • Vibrance