Cinematic Lightroom presets are built adjustment sets meant to give a dramatic and filmic look to your photos, similar to classic movie scenes. Cinematic presets typically have mood changes in color grading, higher contrast, mild fades, and unique color tones to elicit emotional response and atmospheric qualities in your images.
What are Cinematic Lightroom Presets?
Cinematic Lightroom presets are pre-determined edit settings to provide your photos with a cinematic style, resulting in a film-like effect – a look that you would commonly see in movies. The main attributes of these presets are typically:
- Muted or desaturated colors
- Crushed blacks
- Greater emphasis on shadows and highlights
- Split-toning
- Film grain over-lays
- Contrast adjustments
- Cinematic color grades
How They Work:
Cinematic presets also create considerable manipulation of your photo that affects things overall, including tone curves, the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminescence) panel, camera calibration, split toning, grain effects, vignetting, and color balance altogether, which achieve a dramatic storytelling effect.
Things to use Cinematic Presets for:
- Creating a moody vibe
- Storytelling through your images
- Adding a dramatic effect
- To keep a consistent editing style throughout a photo set
- Professional photo finishing
- To create content for social media/portfolio
Benefits:
- Saves time by applying complex edits with one click.
- Promotes a professional look and feel, very cinematic and Hollywood-like.
- Creates consistency amongst many different images.
- Presets are easy to customize and make any adjustments as client or personal needs dictate.
Where to Find Cinematic Lightroom Presets
Free Options:
Several websites offer free cinematic presets for Lightroom. For example, FreePresets.com provides several differing cinematic presets for Lightroom and Lightroom Classic.
Each preset has a different option, such as “Moody Film,” “Blockbuster,” or “Cinévision.” PRESETPRO has a free “Cinematic Film” preset you can download for free. When applied, it brings a moody, dramatic feeling to your images.
Premium Presets:
If you want a more extensive selection, sites like CineGrading or Cinemagraphs offer paid packages. For example, Cine Essentials V2 from Cinemagraphs offers 10 unique and stylized cinematic looks, along with a video tutorial for optimal results.
Hand-Made Presets:
Some preset creators or independent creators sell unique, one-off, or custom cinematic presets on Etsy, among other similar sites. These can add a more personal feel or niche feeling to your film looks.
How to Use or Create Cinematic Presets
Using Presets:
Most presets are applied in a couple of clicks and can dramatically transform the mood (and color palette) of your photo; however, the finished result will vary from the original photo’s lighting, color, and composition.
One common suggestion is to use presets as a starting point for adjustments when shooting to achieve the best results.
Creating Your Own:
The first step to creating your own cinematic preset is to make corrections to your image (e.g., exposure, contrast, and white balance), then you’ll begin the color grading process by applying split toning, adjusting shadows and highlights, then experimenting with the color wheel.
When you get your image to a place you like, you can save those adjustments as a custom preset to refer back to in the future.
Tips for Best Results
- Make sure to start with a well-composed image. Cinematic looks usually work best on images that include powerful stories or emotions.
- Before applying a preset, make some of the basic corrections (e.g., exposure, contrast, and white balance) to get the best chance of consistency between images.
- With that in mind, try not to include any sharpening in your presets or any image-specific adjustments. Try to keep them as freestanding as possible so they can be used with other photos.
- You can use any of the built-in Lightroom cinematic presets as a basis for experimenting and tweaking the presets until they suit your style.
Cinematic Lightroom presets are an amazing tool to create a dramatic, cinematic editing style to your photos, whether you use free, premium, or custom cinematic presets. As always, it’s important to personalize the preset to your image and creative wishes.
