Prolost Graduated Presets for Lightroom, Version 2.0

Adobe has just released Lightroom CC (AKA Lightroom 6), featuring facial recognition, HDR and panorama merging, and GPU-accelerated editing. There are also updates to Lightroom mobile for iOS and Android. They are great updates, and I'll have more to say about them in the future.

But today I have an announcement of my own: The release of version 2.0 of my Prolost Graduated Presets for Lightroom. This is the first major upgrade to my unique workflow presets that allow you to make powerful adjustments to your photos without needing to be an expert in Lightroom.

If you’re not familiar with the Prolost Graduated Presets, you can brush up with this video. These Lightroom Develop presets, arranged in gradations, allow you to dial in common color adjustments by previewing and reacting, rather than moving a bunch of sliders. In version 2.0, I’ve added several more complex sets of presets that do things no slider can, including four variations on the “blockbuster” (cool shadows, warm highlights) look that I previewed at the Bay Area Lightroom Users Group earlier this year.

While other presets give you canned effects, the Prolost Graduated Presets put you in control. Dial in just the right amount, and combine multiple presets together to create a look all your own. It's all the power of Lightroom editing, with the ease of picking an Instragram filter.

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Ximending Taipei, shot on Canon 5D Mark III and processed with Blockbuster Cyan.

These presets have completely changed the way I work in Lightroom, and I’m making them available here in the spirit of keeping color work fun, powerful, and intuitive.

Here’s the complete list of what’s new in 2.0:

• Color Temperature II (JPEG) – 29 gradations of white balance adjustments (warm to cool) that produce more pleasing results than Lightroom’s default controls on non-raw images.
• Blockbuster Blue – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a deep blue tint.
• Blockbuster Cyan – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a green-blue tint.
• Blockbuster Gold – 15 gradations of a cinematic, cool-shadows look with a warm tint.
• Blockbuster Sundrench – 15 gradations of a warm cinematic look with pale colors and low contrast.
• Blockbuster Hues – 15 gradations of a cinematic color adjustment that allows separate control over the hue isolation used in Blockbuster Blue, Blockbuster Cyan, and Blockbuster Gold.
• Blue Squeeze – 11 gradations of compressing only blue hues toward cyan. This provides a more granular control over the Blue to Cyan preset found under Color Treatments (HSL).
• Candy Apple Red – 12 gradations of boosting red toward a rich, saturated shade.
• Invisible Vignette – 15 gradations of a subtle vignette that range from unnoticeable to pronounced, but still organic.
• In Prolost Creative, three new subtle vintage looks:
  • Aged Olive
  • Aged Teal
  • Aged Umber

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Florence, Italy, shot with Canon 5D and processed with Blockbuster Gold and Candy Apple Red presets.

The Prolost Graduated Presets 2.0 work in Lightroom 4 and up, including Lightroom 6, with or without Creative Cloud. They are available now at the Prolost Store for $49.99. If you purchased a previous version, you could be eligible for a discount on the upgrade — details here.

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Using the New Film Tools in Magic Bullet Looks

Magic Bullet Suite 12 includes the all-new Magic Bullet Film, an easy-to-use effect that gives your footage the real look of motion picture film, thanks to hundreds of feet of 35mm film we shot, processed, scanned, and measured.

This film simulation is also included in Magic Bullet Looks, where we broke it into two separate Tools — one for simulating camera negative stocks, and one for print film stocks. You can use these together, or on their own, and optionally in combination with the other powerful Tools in Looks. Here's how.

How to Kick the Tires on a Color Corrector

The 2015 NAB Show starts next week in America’s Release Valve, Las Vegas. I’ll be there for some of it, to catch up with friends and check out the latest gear.

NAB is always an opportunity to see some new color correction tools. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about the show. Here are some things I do when I sit down at an unfamiliar color correction system to get a sense of how it operates.

• First and foremost, I check my gut: Am I daunted or welcomed by the interface (physical and/or on-screen). Does it make me feel powerful, or stupid? Does it feel solid, or like a toy? Do I like it?
• After that, my recommendations get more specific. For example, if there’s a three-way color corrector, try grabbing the shadows wheel and pushing it toward the hue of your choice. Does the image get more pleasing to your eye, or will further adjustments be necessary?
• Also on a three-way color panel, try pushing the midtones down. Do shadows block up quickly? Or can you make an extreme adjustment that’s still useful?
• Find the Saturation control. Try cranking it way up. How far can you go before the image falls apart?
• Are there controls for adjusting the appearance of individual colors? How quickly can you get the results you desire? Does the image fall apart if you push these controls too far?
• Is there a keyer? How quickly can you get a useful key?
• Are there “look” presets? Are they actually useful? How intuitive is the browsing experience? Are they black-boxes, or can you adjust them? Save those adjustments? Share them?

One last one, and it’s a biggie. If you’re seeing a demonstration of a color correction system (rather than trying it out yourself) watch the demo artist carefully. Do they actually demonstrate color correction and grading? Or do they apply a LUT or a “look” and then nudge some things, claiming they could do a lot more if they had more time?

More time for what exactly? Aren’t we here to see a demonstration of color grading?

Color correction tools are a lot like cameras. After all the bullet-lists of features and capabilities, after the sexy demo shots and lists of big clients, what matters more than anything is the feel in your hands. This is as true of software as it is of hardware, from an iPhone app all the way up to a color grading suite.

This is something automotive journalists have known for years. Yes, they’ll dutifully list off the horsepower and foot-pounds of torque—but what they’ll spend the most time describing is how it feels to drive.

Trust your gut. If a color correction tool feels hard to use, it is. It’s not your fault for not learning how to use it. If a demo artist can’t make an image look great in less than a minute—in a way that matches how you expect to actually work, they are wasting their time and yours, and revealing something about their product and the culture that created it.

These are the hard questions I want you asking when you try out Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista III. I want you to hold us up to these high standards. I believe that usability is not the exclusive domain of the low end. I believe that the easier-to-use tool is the more powerful tool.

I believe in color that’s a joy to drive.

Colorista III in Final Cut Pro X

Colorista III, new in Magic Bullet Suite 12, gives you powerful, layered color correction in Final Cut Pro X. Three-way color, Highlights and Shadows controls, a built-in vignette, intuitive control over individual colors, and the easiest, most powerful keyer, all running in real time.

There's a more in-depth overview of Colorista III here, but we worked so hard to get Colorista working great in FCP X, I wanted to show it off on its own.

Remember, when you buy Colorista, you can use it in all supported host apps, including After Effects, Premiere, and Final Cut.

Want to give it a try? Download the free trial below.

Using LUTs in Magic Bullet Looks

Sometimes you feel like a LUT.

LUTs, or Look Up Tables, are a handy way to store and share color adjustments, but they work best when integrated with a complete color correction workflow. In this tutorial, I show you how to use LUTs in Magic Bullet Looks—and then customize them with additional color tweaks, and a couple of tricks that no LUT can do.

Want to try it yourself? You can download the LUT I used in this tutorial below. Stay tuned for more of these short tutorials, including one on how to make your own LUTs like a grown-up.