Playing with Lightroom Presets

Playing with LR presets compared, originally uploaded by Mervin Chiang.

It's been a while since I actually written a blog or posted any photos on Mikaela. So I decided to combine this post of a recent photo of her plus a little bit of "tech-photo-speak"...

Today while researching on Photoshop plug-ins and presets, I found a whole cool new world of Lightroom presets! I downloaded about 130 presets and tried most of them for fun. To see what are the creative possibilities with them.

This got me thinking... So does using some presets constitute to "creative cheating"? Or simply easing the photographer's time? Pretty much anyone with LR and these presets could get the color tones and exposures seen here. I used a combination of 2 or 3 presets plus some minor tweaking of my own.

Hmm.. interesting thought isn't it?

Anyway, which do you prefer? I know most would like the one on the left because for a child, it's warmer and more personal. However, I believe if I didn't present you with 2 options and merely the one on the right, it'll work too as Mikaela's facial expression shows a little tint of coldness in it as well. So the colors would have played on that emotion.

You decide! Please comment!