I’ve always planned on giving photography tips on this blog so as I start, I thought of sharing my simple workflow to come up with nice looking landscape photos. I used to do all my post processing work in Adobe Photoshop but now, I almost entirely use Adobe Lightroom for most of my post processing needs. I only use Photoshop for selected photos because it takes so much time tinkering with its interface. I’ve been there and I understand how daunting Photoshop could be for beginners. At the other end of the spectrum, I just love how easy, fast, and fun it is to edit batches upon batches of photos in Lightroom. It only takes a few clicks to turn my photos into the works that you’ve seen in my blog. If you’ve been curious to know my photography workflow, here’s how I usually do my post processing.

“Before and after” photos of the scenic Capones Island, Zambales using my customized develop preset for Adobe Lightroom

My Lightroom Develop Preset for Landscape Photography

This is basically the one click quick-fix version of my workflow (I’ll discuss more detailed tips in later posts). After importing my photos in lightroom, I just apply my custom made “develop preset” for landscape photos. As you can see in the “before and after” shot above, there’s already a noticeable difference in the photo. The “after” shot pops up more now. It has better contrast, sharper details, and more vibrancy (deeper blues and more saturated warm colors in particular). I also enhanced the shadows to give a more balanced tone and applied a small amount of vignetting. I know vignetting is frowned upon (generally) in professional photography. There’s even the automated lens correction for vignetting in lightroom 3 but for my amateur photos, I kind of like the effect of vignetting since it draws attention to the center of the frame.

Sometimes the preset doesn’t get the exposure right, which is easy to fix with the exposure slider. Then, it’s time to correct the composition of the image. I’m fine with the crop but the horizon needs to be straightened (using the rotate tool). When I’m satisfied with the result, I just export the photo and upload it online.

More samples:

Download Instructions

It’s currently in its beta version right now. I’ve released a “one click fits all” preset. If it catches on, then I’ll come up with more specialized presets for different situations. You can download the Ambot-ah Landscapes Develop Preset here. After downloading and extracting the .zip file, you’ll now have the “.lrtemplate” lightroom preset file. To install the preset in lightroom just watch this instructional video.

Hope you’ve found my develop preset useful :)