What Is Lightroom?
Presets are a fantastic way to further improve Lightroom, which is one of the best photo editing programs. By installing Lightroom's app from the app store, you can use it on your smartphone for nothing. You can buy a Lightroom Desktop subscription if you want to edit your professional photos.
Portrait Lightroom Presets: What Are They?
Presets for Lightroom are expertly crafted filters that allow you to edit your images with just one click. They are a time-saving option that guarantees reliable, polished outcomes. Presets allow you to edit your images with just one click, or you can use them as a foundation for additional editing and personalization of your portraits.
Photographers frequently ask us which Lightroom Presets are best for editing portrait photos. For that reason, we compiled this list. Skin tone, contrasting colors, general lighting, and editing technique are all important factors to consider when editing portraits.
1. Presets for Natural Light in Lightroom
For editing portrait photos, the Natural Light Lightroom Preset Collection is the greatest option. Its delicate, mildly warm tones give off a dreamy vibe. In close-up photos, this collection will highlight the incredible color in your subjects' eyes. You can improve your portraits using natural light without sacrificing the quality, clarity, or integrity of the skin tones.
Edit Style: Natural, Light, Mild Warm Tones
Ideal Conditions: Indoor, Outdoor, All Year Round
2. Portra by Kodak
In 2024, a clean film edit will be essential. For their portraiture, many renowned portrait photographers use the Kodak Portra Film edit. This preset smoothes and improves skin tones. Hence, this is among the greatest Preset Collections to incorporate into your editing process. With so many strength variations, this preset can be subtly used for both close-up and wider-angle shots that want to capture the whole scene.
Editing Style: Gentle Film Tone, Smooth Skin
Ideal Conditions: Natural Light, Indoor/Outdoor, All Year Round
3. Colorful Clean Lightroom Presets
Who doesn't adore a picture that's colorful, airy, and bright? When it comes to enhancing gorgeous, natural tones and adding brightness to photos, the Colorful Clean Preset Collection excels. In addition, this collection guarantees clear photos and natural skin tones—everything you could want in a preset for a portrait.
Editing Style: Clear, Organic, Vibrant Tone
Ideal Conditions: Indoor, Outdoor, All Year Round
4. Presets for Lightroom's Golden Hour
There are strong hints of golden hour in this collection. With a touch of contrast, the Golden Hour Preset Collection produces stunning warm tones, silky skin, and airy, dreamy photos. You can edit your portraits in a warm, natural tone with the aid of this collection. Ideal for adding flair to golden hour photos or capturing the golden hour effect in your own portraits.
Editing Style: Warm, natural, and gentle tones
Ideal Conditions: Indoors, outdoors, late summer, and early fall
5. Lightroom Presets in True Color
The True Color Preset Collection is the one you should use if you enjoy simple, vibrant edits and want to maintain colors as close to tone as possible. The greatest way to enhance photos without sacrificing their natural beauty is with this collection. If any of your clients have colored hair, red hair, or are wearing a brightly colored outfit, you should bring out those colors rather than mask them. Natural tones will be enhanced by True Color, which will also maintain your portraits' clarity.
Editing Style: True Color Tone, Natural, Clean
Ideal Conditions: Indoor, Outdoor, All Year Round
6. Traditional Lightroom Presets in Black and White
Everyone shooting in black and white needs to have a go-to preset. Including a few black and white options in the image delivery to your clients will give the impression that there are more options in the gallery. Additionally, you can use black and white presets to soften dominant color tones, draw the viewer's attention to your subject, and help evoke mood in your portraits. The greatest black and white preset for portraiture is the Classic Black & White Preset Collection. Skin is smoothed without sacrificing image quality with this collection.
Editing Style: Classic Black & White, Natural, Clean
7. Presets for Golden Boho Lightroom
There's never a bad time to use that warm, creamy, golden edit for your portraits. This collection will highlight all those stunning warm tones whether you are shooting in late summer or fall environments. In addition to helping to balance out skin tones and warm up images taken in any situation, the Golden Boho Preset Collection also produces a visually appealing photo edit.
Dreamy, with warm, golden tones and melancholic undertones
Ideal Conditions: Summer-Winter, Indoor, Outdoor
8. Deep and Subdued Lightroom Presets
A rich, moody photo edit will help bring attention to your subjects in your portraits and enhance the colors of your background if you shoot in darker or more forested settings. With its various mood strengths, the Rich & Moody Preset Collection is an incredibly adaptable and moody preset that works well for any type of portraiture.
Editing Style: Deep, Rich Colors with Moody Tone
The ideal settings are darker, indoors, and outdoors all year long.
9. Soft and Gentle Lightroom Presets
One of the greatest presets to improve portrait photography is always the creamy edit. In order to draw attention to your subjects, the creamy tones help to even out skin tones and soften background colors. The image is further enhanced by the soft, beautiful contrast created by the moody undertones. Any setting or lighting condition works well with the Creamy Moody Preset Collection. The greatest preset library for cloudy days!
Editing Style: Warm, Gentle, Creamy Tone
Ideal Conditions: All Year Round, Indoor, Outdoor, Best For Overcast
10. Daily Presets for Lightroom
One of the greatest photo editing choices for both indoor and outdoor portraits is the airy and light photo edit. The Daily Preset Collection will maintain a very natural photo edit while adding lightness, brightness, and airy color tones to your photos. Excellent for adding brightness to gloomy photos or cloudy days.
Editing Style: Dreamy, Light, and Natural Color Tone
Best Settings: Outdoor, Indoor, Year Round Best For Spring & Summer
11. Lightroom Presets for Cream Tones
Because they provide a soft, creamy tone without sacrificing the natural edit, the Cream Tones Lightroom Presets are fantastic for portraiture. This set is ideal for your portraits if you prefer creamy tones without adding any moodiness. Produce warm, creamy hues in subtle, clean tones.
Editing Style: Light, Creamy, Natural Tones
Ideal Conditions: Indoor, Outdoor, All Year Round
12. No Lightroom Presets with Filters
The No Filter Preset Collection is the final collection to make the list. The dreamiest skin is created by this collection's very subtle smoothing and film grain, which avoids giving the appearance of skin retouching. These presets also maintain the edit's natural lightness, which makes it ideal for a variety of lighting setups and prominent color tones.
Editing Style: Soft, Smooth, Natural Skin Tone
Ideal Conditions: Indoor, Outdoor, All Year Round
Utilizing Lightroom Presets
Lightroom presets are simple to use! To adjust the amount of preset applied, simply import the presets into Lightroom, apply them to your photo, and then use the preset opacity slider. You can professionally edit and transform your portraits with a few clicks.
Enhancing Your Edit
Let's talk about how to use Lightroom Presets to edit your portraits and get the best results. Presets are great because they only require one click and work well for most photos.
You can simply alter the presets to suit your particular needs if you come across difficult lighting conditions or strong, dominating colors. Applying a preset makes it simple to modify the edit to fit the primary colors and lighting of your images.
Modifying The Presets' Strength
Every one of our presets has an editable opacity slider built in for seamless customization. To make changes to your image, you can change how much of a preset is applied. To achieve softer results, we advise reducing the edit for close-up photos.
For iPhone & Android you can find the slider after you apply a Preset then click on that preset again. The slider will pop up and you can adjust the setting.
After applying a preset in Desktop Lightroom, you can locate the slider in the Presets Panel. All you have to do is slide to the desired quantity.
Finding The Perfect White Balance
White balance is essential to the way your photo edit turns out. After using a preset, you can tweak the white balance to achieve the ideal color tones. Either manually adjust to your preference or use the "Auto" white balance option, which, to be honest, works brilliantly.
To help Lightroom produce a better white balance for your picture, you may also utilize the white balance eye dropper in Lightroom Classic (LrC) to choose a neutral tone for your picture.
Achieve the Ideal Exposure
After using a preset, all you have to do is modify the exposure to change the brightness of your picture. Try "Auto" as well; it will change a few other options but can produce excellent outcomes. Manually tweaking the exposure will work excellent to really obtain that perfect lighting.
Edit Your Portraits in Bulk
Batch-editing is one of Lightroom's greatest time-saving capabilities. It sounds exactly like that, too. You may use Lightroom to simultaneously edit all of your photographs using the same preset! Eliminate the need to edit every single picture by hand.
In Lightroom Mobile, to batch edit, copy the preset first, then pick all the photographs you wish to apply the preset to. Next, select "Paste" to apply the preset to every picture you have.
Applying the preset to one of your gallery photos in Lightroom Desktop will allow you to select all the photos to which you wish to apply the preset. Then click "sync", this will apply the Preset to all the photos.
Try out a few different presets without fear and see which ones best suit your style. The best Lightroom presets for portraiture will help you improve your photography and produce beautiful shots with a unified style.
Here you can shop all of our Lightroom Presets or peruse all of these Portrait Preset Collections: Purchase Lightroom Presets
To use Portrait Presets you will need the Free Lightroom App you can download here: Download for iPhone or Download For Android
For Desktop users you can download a free trial of Desktop Lightroom here: Lightroom Desktop Free Trial
For Photoshop users you can download free trail of Adobe Photoshop CC here: Download Photoshop CC