Maybe to save some time and utilize pre-made presets as a baseline on enhancing images, I am curious on the experience of others who have tried them.
I did download the Nikon D7000 RAW preset from Aperture Presets and did like that one. Of course, free is better, but I would pay for them if the quality is there.
That said, any suggestions? I am primarily interested on presets for landscape or macro photography, but occasionally will try to create an “arty” image using a dragan effect, textures, HDR, etc. I wish I could find flypaper textures similar to what is on this web sites store. Those are ok, but just not what I am looking for.
Ken
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Best Aperture presets?
#1
Ken,
I’ll let others say what they like about the presets here, but I’m curious to what you mean by “flypaper” textures? Could you give me some examples? I’m always looking for new presets to create :)
thanks!
@PhotoJoseph
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Check out what Gavin Seim has:
http://prophotoshow.net/seim_effects/seim-lf-aperture-presets/
I don’t have his presets for Aperture, but I do for Lightroom and they’re very well done and very well organized.
Bob
Bob
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Bob Rockefeller
Midway, GA
www.bobrockefeller.com
Holy crap, he’s charging $50 for his presets?! Clearly I’m undercharging ;-)
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks for providing the Gavin Seim website. Yea, some interesting presets for sure. Much of that, however, I can do with the Nik filters. But, for ease, some of those could be valuable. Also, it regards to textures, he also sells Naked Elements which has some interesting textures. One advantage of applying textures, not as a preset, is the ability to control the opacity and being able to mask off certain areas, if desired. Now that Perfect Layers is available for free, that process should be quite easy. Of course, one could also do the same in the editor of one’s choice that handles layers. Again, though, $50 bucks. Me thinks I should start photographing many textures myself!
Yes, $50. It might be a little steep when compared, but there are a great number of presets included and the organization of the whole set makes a “system” that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Check out his workflow video on how he fits them into his work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlWYgOWSNPY
Bob
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Bob Rockefeller
Midway, GA
www.bobrockefeller.com
Joeseph,
The following site has some really nice ones that are high quality.
http://flypapertextures.blogspot.com/
Not sure it is possible to create these textures as presets in Aperture? This may be especially true since one can combine more than one for the desired effect.
Ken
Ken,
Thanks for the link. Read this, and let me know what you think, as a potential user.
You can create presets with textures (that’s what my Textures presets are) however it’s not easy and there’s no UI for it. One of the problems is layering; I can’t give you ten presets with ten different textures, and let you stack one on top of another. Once you apply a preset with a texture, it wipes out the one before it. If you look at my Texture Presets you’ll see that each pack contains ten textures in five combinations, but each combo contains a random selection of five of those ten textures. When you apply a preset, you get all five textures laid down. Each can be turned off or on — you could have just one texture applied, or up to all five — and each of those can be adjusted all day long, meaning you have essentially infinite combinations available. However if you wanted, for example, a texture that was used in Stack 1 and another from Stack 3, it’s not possible to combine them.
I can have up to five layers in each preset. So let’s say I license five paper textures, then I could build a preset that has all five textures; one on each layer. You as the user would apply that single preset, then turn the layers off or on, and adjust them at will.
Really I only need to create one single preset that you can adjust from there. But of course I don’t do that; I create a bunch of variations.
In fact, maybe that’s what I’ll do… get five textures, make a bunch of presets based on just one texture, then have one mondo preset that has all five.
Which is basically what the Textures pack is already, but simplified.
@PhotoJoseph
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