Lightroom Presets are an important part of a photographer’s workflow. Whether you’re creating them yourself or buying pre-made presets from a company or photographer, having them in your workflow has the potential to save you hours of time. Instead of starting from scratch with each image, a preset can give you a good starting point, and some of the better ones will even get you to a final, print-ready (or social media post-ready) image within a click or two. In addition, a good set of presets can expand your creative possibilities, providing you with looks and styles that you may not have considered when applying the settings manually. A good set of presets also gives your images consistency, which is especially important for professional photographers when telling a story or marketing their work.
We at Photo Argus have tested and reviewed dozens of different preset packs over the years. From that testing, we encountered presets of the entire spectrum of quality and found our favorite packs. We’ve also been working on our own set of presets that, we believe, fills a gap in the market. Below are our recommended Lightroom for wedding photographers presets:
Visual Flow
Visual Flow is a partnership between SLR Lounge and DVLOP. These companies have over a decade of preset development experience each and have sold tens of thousands of presets to professional photographers. This experience and their approach is why they land on top as the best wedding photography Lightroom presets in our book. They base their presets on their patent pending process of “Lighting Condition Based Development,” meaning that the presets are separated by lighting condition. This approach gives wedding photographers a consistent look to their images regardless of their scene. So an indoor wedding reception will have the same tones and mood as a high dynamic range scene, for example.
Visual Flow currently has 6 packs, as listed below.
- Pastel – Light and Airy Style
- Modern – Warm, Vibrant, Editorial Style
- Mood – Dark and Moody, Boho Style
- Crush – Bold and Vivid Style
- Black and White Mixer – Complete, Powerful B&W Toolkit
- Retouching Toolkit – Lightroom Brushes and Tools for Dodging and Burning, Sky Enhancement, Sun Flares and More
DVLOP
DVLOP partners with popular wedding photographers to help bring their style to market. This allows you to get a similar look as the influential photographers in the wedding space. The most notable features of DVLOP Lightroom Presets are 1) their installer and 2) their DVLOP profiles.
The Installer – The installer solves a common problem with Lightroom Presets. Installing Lightroom Presets and Brushes without an installer like DVLOP’s is a manual process, as we’ve outlined here. With the installer, on the other hand, it’s as simple as a few clicks.
The DVLOP Profiles – Their unique profiles unify the look of images photographed with different camera makes and models. So if you’re a wedding photographer shooting on Canon, for example, and your second shooter is using a Sony, then the profiles do the work of unifying the looks before applying the presets.
Note: These two benefits are also available for the Visual Flow Presets listed above.
Here are our favorite DVLOP Lightroom Preset packs.
- Jose Villa’s For the Love of Film – Fuji
- Two Mann Mixology
- Gabe McClintock’s Roam
- Fer Juaristi’s Visbons
- Chris Burkard’s Sunlight
Refined Co
Refined Co creates beautiful Light and Airy presets for wedding photographers looking for a soft, filmic look. The brand began as a personal project by the founder and award winning photographer, Marta Locklear. Like most photographers, she was looking for solutions to speed up her workflow and create a consistent look and style that matched her film photography. Refined has also partnered with award winning photographers such as Caroline Tran and Tac Petaja to expand their preset offering and styles. If you’re looking for a clean set of professional presets, these are worth a look.
How to buy Refined Co Presets:
Noble
Created by the Grovers, a husband and wife team, based in California, Noble Presets are one of the best Lightroom Preset Packs for hybrid photographers, i.e. photographers who shoot both digital and film. The Grovers have been featured in notable publications like Harper’s Bazaar, Martha Stewart Weddings, Style Me Pretty, People Magazine, US Weekly and many more.
Created specifically for hybrid or digital photographers, the signature Noble Presets gives you a bright and airy look, filmic look that looks very close to the true film. This means “cooler greens, subtle contrast, and fine-tuned grain – all applied with a few simple clicks,” according to their website. Noble also offers 20 “Enhancers,” which are one-click fixes.
How to buy Noble Presets
Conclusion
The best wedding Lightroom presets will depend on your personal style. If you’re going for a more vibrant and punchy look, you’ll want to stick with DVLOP’s Two Mann or Visual Flow’s Crush or Modern Presets. If you’re seeking a Light and Airy, Filmic Look, then your best options are Jose Villa’s Pack, Noble Presets, Refined Co, or Visual Flow’s Pastel Pack. While none of the presets listed above are free (or cheap), they are all professional solutions that get you close to a finished product. We always advise against using too many “free” presets because the general rule of thumb is that if they were good enough, then people would pay for them. Also, presets that generate revenue generally have better technology and development time behind them. They are also supported with customer service and usually have large communities to join and participate in.
