Review: Sleeklens Landscape Lightroom Presets

Review: Sleeklens Landscape Lightroom Presets

Recently I received the opportunity to review one of the Sleeklens products, the Through The Woods workflow for Adobe Lightroom. The workflow contains a bundle of 51 presets and 30 brushes targeted specifically for landscape photography. Besides the Through The Woods bundle Sleeklens provides many other bundles, e.g. for portrait, wedding and b&w photography. Check out their website for a full view of their offering.

Installation:
The bundle comes as a .zip-file. Once extracted it includes clear instructions how to install the presets and brushes into Adobe Lightroom, which is as easy as copying the files into the right folder. It also includes a useful document with recipes on example photos. Furthermore, on the Sleeklens website there are several easy-to-follow tutorial videos available on how to use the workflow.

Using the bundle:
The presets are very easy to use. In the Develop module in the Presets panel there is a list of 51 different presets divided over 6 categories. These presets can be used in combination of each other to create the desired effect. While hovering over one of the presets a preview of the preset is shown in the Navigator panel to get an idea of the effect before applying it. The brushes work equally as easy. When the Adjustment Brush has been selected all 30 brushes are available in the effect list and the effect can be painted into the photo.

I have tested the presets and brushes on various photos. Below you will find two examples of edited photos with the Sleeklens bundle from a photo trip to the island of Utö in the Stockholm archipelago in October last year during the autumn. For both photos I have used a combination of all six Sleeklens preset categories and made local adjustments where necessary with the Sleeklens brushes. As you can see I was able to bring the photos to life by adjusting or enhancing the exposure, colors, contrast, etc without spending too much time in the Develop module.

Since each photo is unique in its own way it is difficult to get a desired effect by using standard presets or brushes. I found that tweaking of the develop settings is absolutely necessary after applying each preset or brush to get the optimal result. Nevertheless, the presets give me a quick starting base from where to adjust further on, without having to manually select and set all the different develop settings from the start. Especially when editing a large number of photos this will be saving a lot of time.

An additional advantage I found is that you do not need to leave Adobe Lightroom to apply the presets and brushes. I am used to work in my digital workflow with third-party plugins, e.g. OnOne Photo 10 or Google’s Nik Collection, but need to leave Adobe Lightroom to apply the effects, which takes time and creates multiple files in my database.

Example Photo 1: Autumn over Utö
Camera: Nikon D810
Lens: Nikon 24-70mm, f/2.8
Focal Length: 44mm
ISO: 200
Exposure: 1/200sec at f/8
Tripod: Manfrotto 190CXPRO3

Example Photo 2: Silent Autumn
Camera: Nikon D810
Lens: Nikon 24-70mm, f2.8
Focal Length: 38mm
ISO: 200
Exposure: 1/3sec at f16, -1EV
Tripod: Manfrotto 190CXPRO3

Conclusion:
The Sleeklens Landscape Lightroom Presets (Through The Woods) gives the ability to quickly apply standard develop settings to each photo saving time in the editing process and without having to leave Adobe Lightroom. The presets and brushes give a good starting point from where to tweak the develop settings further from.

August 2014 wallpaper

August 2014 wallpaper

august-2014-free-desktop-wallpaper

The August 2014 free desktop wallpaper is taken at Sandhamn in the outskirts of the Stockholm archipelago. A few sailboats are passing by the coastline during midday in this high-key image.

From this month and onwards I will no longer put the calendar in the image to create a cleaner look at the photo.

To use the photo as your desktop wallpaper simply click the image above, then right-click (or control-click) and choose “Save image as…” or “Set as desktop background”.

July 2014 wallpaper

July 2014 wallpaper

july-2014-free-desktop-calendar-wallpaper

At summertime the Stockholm archipelago is packed with ferries that will bring you to many of the 30,000 islands around the capital of Sweden. The Stockholm archipelago is vast and covers 1,700 square kilometers (150 km from north to south and 80 km from east to west). It is a very popular tourist attraction to take an archipelago ferry for half a day or a full day from central Stockholm and visit one or multiple islands.

For more information and timetables of the ferries please visit Waxholmsbolaget.se or Strömma.se.

The July 2014 wallpaper was taken from Västerbron (The West Bridge) and shows one of the ferries sailing from Slussen to Drottningholm Palace, the private residence of the Swedish Royal Family.

To use the photo as your desktop wallpaper simply click the image above, then right-click (or control-click) and choose “Save image as…” or “Set as desktop background”.

The coastline of Fårabäck

As earlier mentioned in a post, this summer I have been traveling on the east coast of Sweden. One of the last stops was the small summer house village of Fårabäck. This idyllic place has an amazing coastline, which is full with large stones. Since the water is very shallow even up to 50 meter from the shore, the large stones raise majestically above the water level. In the evening sunset there was a beautiful mix of blues and magentas in the water and the sky.

I was knee-deep in the water moving my tripod around, constantly fearing I would glide in the slippery soil and dump my equipment in the salty water. Additionally there was a lot of jellyfish around, but luckily I recognized them as the “non-stinging ones”. The things we do for our images!

This image was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikon AF-S DX 17-55mm lens @ 18mm; f/20.0 – 25sec – ISO100.