But not for any bad reasons!
As you probably know, the Prolost Store is where I make some of my own personal workflow enhancements available for download. Most are presets for Adobe After Effects and Lightroom, and aside from the little bit of taco money it brings in, I get a lot of value from offering these tools. I learn a lot about products, marketing, and your creative workflows. It’s a rewarding, satisfying thing. And I am always grateful whenever someone chooses to avail themselves of something from the store, free or paid.
One of the most unusual products I dreamt up was Prolost Bespoke Vintage Presets for Lightroom. These are collections of faded, “vintage” looks for your photos in the form of Lightroom Develop presets. You may recall that I used them extensively on some street photography in New York last summer.
The unique selling point of these presets is that they are truly bespoke, in the sense that I make each set to order, using a script I wrote that generates randomized slider values within carefully-chosen limits. It’s a bit like the good old Plastic Bullet app I designed for the early iPhone days (you haven’t heard the last of that app, by the way!), but instead of cycling through random choices, you run your mouse down a long list of possibilities. Often one will simply “feel right” for your shot, and click! You’ve got a unique, vintage look for your photo. And it really is unique, because the script ensures that everyone’s set of Prolost Bespoke Vintage Presets is different.
To me, that’s pretty cool.
And it has been a fun, rewarding, and successful experiment. I’ve shipped over 67,000 unique presets to happy customers, each with that photographer’s custom 3-letter monogram baked into the preset name. Many of you have shared samples of the results with me, either personally or via the #prolostvintage tag on Instagram. Some have come back and bought more. I still use and love the set I made for myself.
But now it’s time to draw this experiment to a close. Fulfilling the orders is a manual process, and I’m ready for a break.
I’ll replace the Bespoke Vintage Presets with something else interesting and cool, and in a similar vein. But later this year, I’ll discontinue the bespoke aspect of the process.
Which means if you ever think you’ll want a set that no one else has, now’s the time.