I often hear from professional photographers promoting their paid online courses they offer free presets they use to process their shots. No doubt it’s a very generous present 🙂 but I’m not sure it is that useful for your shots, because presets are made for a specific reason, and it may be one of these:
- To maintain a particular photographer’s style.
- To compensate or emphasize certain conditions of shooting: colors of environment, lighting, etc.
- To alter the image very deeply in artistic way in accordance to photographer’s goals and ideas.
- Every shot is influenced by the camera body’s electronics and lens and presets always take into account the effects of this influence. In other words, the same preset may work a bit differently for shots taken with different hardware.
So, you got someone’s presets but they don’t work the same on your shots? Now you know why it may happen.
But, on another hand, those presets still may be useful for you. With them, you can learn how to achieve those effects professional photographers apply to their shots. You need to know your photo editor deep enough for that, but that’s not an issue, right?