About LR presets: Vintage look of sea lavender

Presets in Lightroom are a great way to turn a mundane image into something different. Like the image below. I took it as a stock shot. A good idea apparently, as I made a series of still lives recently and images were approved on Shutterstock yesterday in the morning, and I already sold three. But although seamless white works great for stock, the image is visually boring. So after I submitted my batch, I went back to the picks, and started going though my ever growing preset collection looking for a look. I settled for this 300 v1 look, coming from a movie I haven’t seen and never heard of. But I like the result. I added some color to the white background, accentuated the purple color of flowers, making yellow and white a bit less visible, and some vignette which draws the eye to the composition. The colors are less intesive, and the finished image has a vintage look.
(Scroll down to see the rest of the post :) ).

Back to presets. What I find the most exciting about them is that you can go through your list and try different ones and see which you like most on a particular image. And then tweak it, to make it work even better.
You can also try stacking presets, but the way they work, if two presets use the same slider, you will see the effect only of the last applied preset. What is saved in presets are values for a slider, not “add to” or “subtract from” amount.

There are few sources of presets I typically use:
1) Lightroom Killer Tips blog – I guess the name says it all, and Matt Kloskowski offers not only free presets, but video tutorials and short tips and advice.
2) X-equals
3) Presets heaven

Update – whenever I will find a new great presets resource, I will be adding it here:
4) Inside Lightroom blog
5) Sean McGrath presets
6) Sean McCormac at pixiq

Where are you getting your favorite Lightroom presets? Leave the link in the comments below.