Ever since I got Lightroom I have been playing around with the presets a lot. As well I have talked to a lot of photographers so who use presets a lot as well. One thing that we all agree on, is that when you use a preset - it almost feels like your cheating a bit. Going from a basic RAW/JPEG to a very refined look in one click. Let me explain.

Before Lightroom and Aperture there wasn’t really any programs widely available for a photographer to use to enable them to make a nice refined image in a few easy steps. Having to open up Adobe Photoshop to do the edits could sometime take 30 minutes to 1 hour. So imagine using your workflow this way, then you get Lightroom or Aperture. You spend the time working your workflow around Lightroom or Aperutre, refining, testing, refining more. Suddenly your 30 minutes per image has turned into 5-10 minutes on one image then "syncing" 15 other images to those edits you did to that one image. Your workflow has just gone from hours upon hours of work to almost under an hour.

Now there’s presets. We now refine our workflow to an even smaller amount of time. Now instead of spending 5-10 minutes on an image editing it, you just click a button apply all the adjustments you want and suddenly you have a mere perfect edited image. Possibly spending 30 seconds to tweak the black point, exposure, etc.

If you are like me, you feel a little guilty inside. It almost feels like you’re using a tool to cheat. So this is where I am at personally on this conundrum:

I believe there is a thick solid line between cheating and efficient productivity. What programs like Aperture or Lightroom allow us to do is do what photographers do, take photos. They give us the tools to spend less time infront of the screen getting lazy and more time to get out and shoot pictures. Going from a 30 minutes edit down to a 30 second edit is an amazing tool, one that will benefit any photographer.

Another point is that it’s all about simplicity. A simplistic workflow is a productive workflow, an efficient workflow and a fun workflow. Going from capture to output in a small amount of time is very rewarding and less backbreaking. Digital promised us a more simplistic approach to photography and now we’re wading neck deep in tens of thousands of images without a workflow to properly manage them. Use tools that are given to you to better simplify your life.

While I realize that this isn’t necessarily everyones opinion but I would love to open this up for a bit or a lot of discussion. This is an art form that on the technical equipment aspect is going through drastic changes
and I feel that we need to have an open discussion about it.