Recently, an employee from SleekLens.com reached out to me and asked if I would review some presets and brushes for Adobe Lightroom CC.  In exchange I would be allowed to keep the presets free of charge, for my honest review on my blog site.  Since I primarily shoot landscapes, they sent me the “Through The Woods ” workflow which contains 80 presets and 42 brushes to help speed up my landscape editing.

Installation was very easy since I’ve installed presets before, however Sleek Lens has numerous tutorials and online support for those that may be less tech savvy.  I was pretty excited to try out the presets since I’m always looking for ways to speed up my workflow.  I grabbed a couple raw files of mine to test out the presets and brushes since the weather has been pretty lousy out.  I decided to use a shot from Iceland of Kirkjufellfoss, which is a very popular waterfall and mountain that is a landscape photographers dream.  Now because there are so many presets and brushes, I can’t go through them all so I picked a few all-in-one presets from the workflow to give you an example.  (The top photo is the raw image with no processing applied)

Now the great thing about presets is that they are a good starting point.  Sometimes you may not know what direction you want to go with editing your images, so a preset is a great way to experiment until you find something you like.  Then you can start tweaking the photo even more by combining multiple presets or painting particular areas of the image with the Sleek Lens brushes.  Photography can be very subjective, just like art, so having the ability to alter the presets is very beneficial.

The next image I tested was a sunset over tall reed grass near Union Beach, New Jersey.  It was a beautiful sunset and you can see from the raw file the foreground is a little under exposed.  I picked a couple presets that raised the shadows and increased the intensity of the sunset.  Nothing else was altered on these all-in-one preset options since I wanted to show you how it looks in just one click.  Again, this is just a starting point in which you stack more presets together or isolate an area with the brush set.

So within a matter a seconds I was able to create 4 completely different moods for this photo!  The ability to move your settings around so quickly is such a great tool to have.  When I come home from traveling with thousands of photos I dread the arduous process of editing them all.  And for someone who makes a living selling those pictures, time is money.  I know that saying is a such a cliche, however it is true for many photographers.

But what if you are just an enthusiast or novice photographer?  These presets are still great, because they help you explore your creative side.  Lets face it, programs like Lightroom and Photoshop take some time to learn.  I’ve been creating images for over a decade and I’m still learning new things in Lightroom and Photoshop.  So I would recommend this software to anyone that lacks the time or the knowledge to learn a program like Lightroom inside and out.

Overall I feel these presets can be a valuable asset to all photographers regardless of skill level.  According to the SleekLens.com website The “Through The Woods” workflow cost $39.00 which is pretty reasonable in my opinion.  It is targeted for landscape photographers, however you can apply these presets to other images if you like.  Sleek Lens offers numerous of presets for different styles of photography as well, like wedding photography, HDR, portraits and much more.  They also have a Professional Photo Editing Service for clients that don’t have time to edit their own photos or need professional retouching.  If you are interested in learning more, I will leave several links below to get you pointed in the right direction!

Through The Woods Workflow – https://sleeklens.com/product/landscape-lightroom-presets

Professional Photo Editing Service – https://sleeklens.com/product/professional-photo-editing-service/

SleekLens.com Lightroom Preset Workflows – https://sleeklens.com/product-category/lightroom-presets

Sleek Lens On Pintereset – https://www.pinterest.com/sleeklens/lightroom-presets/?