The folks over at Priime have been doing some really interesting stuff over the years. They’ve had tutorials and tend to focus in some way or another on the fashion industry; but their newest Lightroom presets are expanding on the company’s iOS app and bring presets to the world’s most famous photo editing software: Lightroom. Now, I know what you’re thinking: not some more film-emulsion based presets. In fact, that’s not the case.
Priime CEO Arthur Chang tells us these aren’t based on film emulsions, but instead on just getting pleasing looks. “The presets are a set towards creating a set of modern day presets, stuff that is actually seen commercially and not strictly film based,” he says in an email to the Phoblographer. To that end, they’re named after some cool locations and hubs for photographers to go shoot.
Features
They’re honestly just presets, and for that I recommend checking out their website.
Ease of Use
My main editing software these days is Capture One and so coming back to Lightroom is a bit odd for me. I genuinely believe that if these presets were in Capture One I’d have better colors and editing capabilities, but that’s not at all to say these presets are bad. In fact, they’re a nice and refreshing difference from all those other film based presets out there.
The oddest thing about the presets though has to be their names. Like Instagram, the names aren’t designed to really talk about what you’re getting. For example, when I think about Atlantic, I think about shooting portraits along the shore of the ocean. But the look? It’s got its own considerations. To be fair though, I understand this as La Noir Image subscribers get automatic access to our black and white Presets.
That’s not to say that Priime’s presets aren’t nice. In fact, they’re some of the nicest yet most subtle that I’ve seen and in some ways remind me of a lot of more common VSCO work and edits.
In addition to the presets, you get a few image tweak variations which are OK again if you don’t really know what you’re doing. But if you’re a photographer that is more or less set in their ways, then it’s just another option I’m not sure you will need. Very personally, I’m a photographer who goes even as far as manually setting my white balance in camera and tweaking images to be perfect in-camera. So when they hit Capture One, very small adjustments are made.
But again, I understand that I’m not every shooter out there.
Extra Image Samples
Conclusions
For around $50 and an introductory price of $40, I genuinely think that Priime’s presets are very worth it. However, that statement has more to do with how much Lightroom knowledge you have. If you’ve gotten to the point where Lightroom frustrates you because you can’t get photos out of it you really, genuinely like, then it’s time to move up to Capture One. If Lightroom does stuff that satisfies you well enough though (and even for me, that’s possible) then depending on how satisfied with your own editing skills this probably isn’t for you. Instead, I believe the Priime presets to be targeted at the photographer that doesn’t understand a whole lot of what can happen in the editing process. You may just be working in nothing more than the basic editing panel. If I stop right there, I’ve clearly identified the photographer that these are targeted towards.
But if you’re the type of photographer that works from the bottom of the development panel all the way up to get the images that you want, then you probably don’t need this. However, I’d again tell you that the presets are a refreshing look at how some editing is done.
