sunday school: lightroom presets for the {unapologetically} nostalgic

She wants a puppy, just like any other happy-go-lucky six-and-a-half-year-old little girl. Alas, I am in no position to get a dog of her own, so we visit Mayu, my friend's lovely and playful Peruvian pup. The sun peeks out, slightly warming the frigid March air, giving us hope that spring is finally remembering to return to us.

Someone once characterized my photography as being "nostalgic." I like that description. It's true; one of the reasons I take photos is because I am nostalgic-to-the-core, and unapologetically so. I sometimes exhibit this side of me in the way I choose to edit my photos in Adobe Lightroom, by applying "vintage-esque" effects that accentuate my emotional ties to the memory captured in the photo.

To celebrate spring finally coming back to the Windy City (fingers-crossed/knock-on-wood...), I've created a set of spring-and-nostalgia-inspired Lightroom Develop Presets for you to play around with. To see larger photos of these examples, you can go to this gallery of images and click on any thumbnail on that page to see a larger version.  To download a zip file of these presets, click here.  You can view instructions on installing presets here. Please note that these presets were developed for RAW (uncompressed) files, but most of them should work for JPEG files as well; you'll just need to tweak a little more here and there. You'll also want to change the basic exposure/brightness to your liking, as most of these presets do not affect those settings.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only nostalgic vintage-effects-loving photographer around here. Please share with us today your favorite vintage editing effects, or, if you're a Lightroom user, try one of these presets and share the results with us!

Comments

[ajira]

Love these presets. Only wish they'd work in Aperture! :D If anyone knows of good resources for Aperture users, please share!

[Gali]

I've never edited photos in Lightroom (actually I rarely use it even though it's installed on all my computers). I'll have to give that a try.

[Katy]

Thanks for the presets! I've played around with the standard ones in Lightroom, but never installed any new ones.

This is one that I did without using a preset, but I think it still has that vintage feel to it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katyharmer/5143651416/

[Eva Maria]

I just got Lightroom about a month ago and absolutely love it! These presets are awesome! Thanks for sharing.

[Jess]

Love your presets and I'm looking forward to playing with them. I enjoy experimenting with Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions to enhance my images and give them a different feel. I'm always drawn to the old-time vintage photos. For this photo, I used a Photoshop action and also played with the saturation of individual colors in an adjustment layer.

http://jessicavescera.blogspot.com/2011/03/those-little-toys.html

[Winn]

I really like "new deal". That'd be awesome for Elements too.

[Rebecca]

I love Lightroom. Great presets!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebeccasmithphotography/5587471612/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebeccasmithphotography/5587455888/in/photostream/

[removeyourlenscap]

thanks for sharing!
jessy

[Chantal]

great how presets can change an image, I have to work on that one sometime

[Chantal]

My whole 365-[project is in a vintage stylisch tone:

http://chuijbregts.wordpress.com/365-project/

[Kat]

I definitely love the nostalgic! These are lovely presets you have created, I wish I used Lightroom to try them out. Here is a favorite "nostalgic" image, where I've tried to capture some vintage Italy:
http://www.kateyeview.com/2011/02/birth-of-series.html

[lea]

love the presets. i'm a photoshop actions girl myself. but i did discover through a friend the hipstamatic app for the iphone and i LOVE it. i won't bother taking photos on my iphone without using this app.

http://hipstamaticapp.com/

here's some of my favorite shots using this app:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamlea/5564524911/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamlea/5565101754/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamlea/5565100214/

[Bonnie]

I'm very new to Lightroom and it seems like a steep learning curve to me at the moment. I'll get there eventually and it's probably not as hard as I think. Thanks for sharing these presets . . . whole new world to know that I can 'borrow' expert work and apply with a mouse click :)

I used the years ago preset here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjakobsen-martin/5593773592/