I am so happy to be able to post a freebie today! If you have been following my blog
you know that my family and I have mono. We are all at the fatique part of the disease (which can apparently last for weeks to months) but we are over the fever, sore throat, headache part. I still have acute bronchitis and have lost my voice the last days. Bad for the boys because I haven't been able to read to them for weeks, but great for my husband who doesn't have to hear me complain! I tell you, the last few days he has been walking around with a smile on his face. ;-)
So I feel like a weak old woman... I still can't work too long on the computer before I need to rest, but we actually spent an hour outside today in the backyard so we could get some sun and fresh air. We have been stuck inside for weeks... The boys got wonderfully muddy and I got a tiny bit of color on my face.
So things are going so much better. I have really missed playing around on Photoshop and LightRoom, so while the boys were napping I decided to work on a little freebie. I have at least 10 actions for Photoshop and PSE waiting to be finalized, but since I like to include tutorials with the actions I decided to release a LightRoom and Photoshop ACR preset. Presets are so easy to write and incredibly easy to post as freebies since I only have two simple files to post.
I love LightRoom. I still have LightRoom 2.7, but now you can buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Upgrade. I have heard it has great noise reduction ability, so I plan on upgrading one of these days. I usually skip a few versions before upgrading (I still have PSE6 and I didn't upgrade my Photoshop 7 until I purchased CS4), but LightRoom is a great program that I could not live without and it sounds like it might be worth checking out the newest version.
I use LightRoom for all of my basic color edits and some of my B&W editing for my photo albums. 99% of the images I edit I only do a basic color pop or B&W treatment. I love artsy effects (as you know), but I prefer to do those in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and on images I plan on hanging on the wall, using in cards/letters, or posting on the web. I still prefer doing B&W conversions in Photoshop , but I also use my CoffeeShop CoffeeBar B&W Presets in LightRoom quite often.
There are what seems to be millions of free LightRoom presets out there but I hadn't found any great basic color/contrast pop preset that I liked, so I wrote my own. I wanted this preset to be useful in basic color editing when I want a subtle color/contrast boost. I didn't want drastic color shifts so the color boost is mild, and I wrote this preset so that it wouldn't bring out the red in skin or hair.
This preset was written to be run on RAW files (not jpgs) and will not set your white balance or exposure, so adjust that before running it. I have had a few coughing fits as I sat here typing, so it is time to get this posted so I can go relax and get well. :-)
I hope you enjoy using the CoffeeShop Color Pop LightRoom Preset! You can download the free LightRoom preset HERE and the free Photoshop ACR Preset HERE.
For details in loading presets in LightRoom and Photoshop ACR please go here.
