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Lightroom presets are good for more than just faster photo edits. Presets can serve as creative fodder when you’re stuck. They can introduce new effects you never thought to try. Presets can also keep the style consistent across an album or photo story. And so, if Lightroom presets can be used for more than just one thing, it makes sense to have more than one preset. Like, 5100+ Lightroom Photo Presets, right?
The 5100+ Lightroom Photo Presets Bundle from PhotoWhoa is bound to have presets that suit your work and style. But, you’ll have to sift through thousands of badly named presets to find ones best suited for your work. If you don’t remove the ones you don’t like, you’ll end up stunting Lightroom’s performance speeds. (And, let’s face it, Lightroom needs all the speed boosts it can get.)
Features
The 5100+ Lightroom Photo Presets pack is divided into 37 sets based on the genre the presets were intended for or a certain style. The set includes:
- 30 Dream Lightroom Presets
- 33 Horror Film Lightroom Presets
- 45 Insta Blogger Lightroom Presets
- 50 Sports Lightroom Presets
- 50+ Duotone Lightroom Presets
- 50+ Newborn Lightroom Presets
- 50+ Urban Retro Lightroom Presets
- 60+ Outdoor Lightroom Presets
- 60+ Portrait Lightroom Presets
- 80s Lightroom Presets
- 90 VSCO Lightroom Presets
- 90+ Moody Lightroom Presets
- 95 Monochrome Lightroom Presets
- 100 Film Look Lightroom Presets
- 100 Skin Retouch Lightroom Presets
- 100 Summer Travel Lightroom Presets
- 100 Warm Lightroom Presets
- 100+ Lifestyle Blogger Lightroom Presets
- 100+ Nostalgia Lightroom Presets
- 100+ Winter Story Lightroom Presets
- 120 Real Estate Lightroom Presets
- 120+ Fashion Lightroom Presets
- 140 Black & White Portrait Lightroom Presets
- 140+ Blogger Lightroom Presets
- 140+ HDR Lightroom Presets
- 140+ Premium Lightroom Presets
- 150 Summer Lightroom Presets
- 150+ Urban Lightroom Presets
- 240+ Wedding Lightroom Presets
- 260 Magic Lightroom Presets
- 260+ Food Lightroom Presets
- 300 Premium Lightroom Presets
- 300+ Film Wedding Lightroom Presets
- 300+ Vintage Film Lightroom Presets
- 500+ Wedding Dream Lightroom Presets
The set focuses on presets for the entire image, rather than tucking some of those 5,100 inside the brush tools. This is a bit unfortunate since some of the skin retouching presets would have been better used as a brush instead.
I don’t mean to state the obvious, but that’s a lot of presets. While I didn’t spend months trying each one, I still found several I really liked. Some of my favorites were tucked in the portrait and film inspired collections, but I also found a few gems in unexpected places, like the pack of 80s inspired presets. I largely use presets for color and contrast in my own work, and there are a few dozen that do well with both.
Several presets I tried were also quite odd. One turned the clarity all the way down for that smudge-on-the-lens look. One did nothing but turn the clarity down -5. Several adjusted the white balance, which should really be avoided in presets. (White balance adjustments in presets don’t take into consideration what the original setting was. Unless the photo was shot in the same lighting conditions, you’re going to get a very blue/orange/purple/green image.)
“I don’t mean to state the obvious, but that’s a lot of presets. While I didn’t spend months trying each one, I still found several I really liked.”
Reviews Editor Hillary Grigonis
As with any presets, you have to really look at what the preset is doing to your image. I suggest making any tweaks and saving them as a new preset. For example, some film-inspired presets add grain, which you obviously wouldn’t want to use if you already shot at a high ISO. Others have the effects applied on a gradient or radial gradient, which you’ll want to locate and move to the proper position in the image.
While I liked several presets, there were entire collections that I didn’t care for. The newborn presets, for example, were a bit odd. Some even increased the saturation, which makes newborn skin look horrible. The VSCO preset pack is also inspired by the originals, and not the actual sets available from VSCO.
Ease of Use
“Let’s start with the naming scheme. There is none. The presets in the portrait pack, for example, are all named Portrait Lightroom Preset #1 and so on.”
Reviews Editor Hillary Grigonis
Lightroom presets are easy to use — you just click on them and then make any further adjustments you’d like. But when you have 5,100 of them, that becomes an ordeal.
Let’s start with the naming scheme: there is none. The presets in the portrait pack, for example, are all named Portrait Lightroom Preset #1 and so on. There’s no indication in the name of what that preset is going to do to your photos. That means you have to hover and check the preview to find a specific preset. A straightforward change that would have made this preset pack so much more useful would be to simply name them something that’s not a number. Name the Duotone presets after their color, the Instagram presets after their inspiring filter. Even when you find a preset you like, it’s difficult to remember what number it was to apply it to another image a few days or weeks later.
The other problem with 5,100 presets is that it will slow Lightroom down. As Adobe explains, Lightroom has to generate a thumbnail for each preset. Do that 5,100 times, and the program will slow down. I noticed that loading images was taking a bit longer after I added all 5,100 presets to Lightroom. Adobe suggests limiting presets to no more than 2,000 — the threshold for where you really start to see performance degradation. This preset pack puts you at more than twice that.
The 5100+ pack will take a lot of time to go through to find the best filter, and it will bog down Lightroom itself. The best way to use the preset pack would be to find the filters you like and delete everything else. Or, don’t even install all 5,100 in the first place and just start with the packs in the genre you shoot.
5,100+ Lightroom Photo Presets Image Samples
Conclusions
The 5100+ Lightroom Photo Presets Bundle will have filters you love — but you will actually have to find them first. While more than 5,000 presets for under $50 is an excellent deal, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to find the right preset for the image. In some cases, it may have even been faster to edit the image from scratch.
This Lightroom preset bundle has plenty of editing inspiration, an excellent price, and some great looking filters. But, you spend too much time finding the right one and waiting for Lightroom to load. It’s not a preset pack that I would buy myself. But, if I did, I would only install the preset packs in the genres I shoot most. (For me, that would be portraits and weddings). I would then find the best ones and rename them.
While some excellent presets are included, this 5,100+ bundle proves there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.