August LR preset: Urban Greys

End of month! That means, time for a new LR preset :D

August has been busy for me but actually not with photography, more with life stuff and setting up the new apartment and all the things that come with moving to a new city, so I actually haven't shot much this month and have been editing my backlog of Japan videos and photos.

For this month I decided to make a preset that's a look that a bit of a while ago I was actually quite into, but not so much anymore, however it's still a cool look and I think you might be able to make good use of it. I called it Urban Greys (I know, kinda generic, but it fits too well haha) because it's the type of preset that would work really well in urban situations. Basically what it does is keep the skin tones and desaturate everything else, which results in a neutral muted look with a touch of elegance, depending on your subject matter. I see this working really well with minimalistic urban photography.

In the preview I've applied it to some of my photos where it fits and you can see it basically tidies the colours and simplifies the palette to create a neutral, not too colourful look.

One thing you really need to be careful with when using this preset is the White Balance, specifically the temperature. When set too low this can result in grey and super weird looking skin tones, in which case you just need to warm up the shot until the skin tones look normal. You can see the three settings I changed after applying the preset in the preview.

As always I want to add the disclaimer, that these presets are not one-click solutions for the editing process... but almost. In the previews I've always written the three settings that I tweaked after applying the preset - those are White Balance, Tint and Exposure. Apply the preset and adjust those three settings and you should be good. :)

Hope you enjoy it :)

Teo