Why I Don't Use Presets
(Except the Ones I Made)

Let me be upfront about something before I spend the next few hundred words telling you why presets are ruining wedding photography.

I made a preset pack. It's called Australian Summer. I'm considering selling it.

I know.

The problem with presets

If you've been in wedding photography for more than a year, you've watched the trends cycle through. The dark and moody era. The orange and teal era. The desaturated film era. The "we're all shooting on a disposable camera now apparently" era.

Each one had a preset pack behind it. Each one produced a generation of wedding galleries that look exactly the same. And each one will date those photos faster than almost anything else could.

I've looked at wedding photos from the 1980s and they look like wedding photos from the 1980s, which is fine, that's what they are. But there's a difference between a photo that looks like its era and a photo that looks like a trend. One is honest. The other is borrowed.

When a style is coming from a preset someone else built, you're not developing your aesthetic. You're renting theirs.

What I actually do

My editing style is natural colour. Accurate skin tones, true whites, greens that look like the grass outside and not a teal filter. The kind of editing where the light in the photo feels like the light that was actually there.

It sounds simple. In an industry full of heavy processing, it's actually a deliberate choice you have to keep making, especially when a client sends you a Pinterest board full of moody backlit silhouettes and you have to gently explain that those were taken at golden hour in Iceland.

Natural colour ages well because it's not trying to be anything other than accurate. In ten years those photos will look like photos, not like a specific two-year window in wedding photography trends.

You can see the approach across my wedding work.

So about Australian Summer

Here's where I have to reconcile my principles with my actions.

A while back I spent time building a preset that codified what I already do. Warm Australian light, natural skin tones, the specific way golden hour looks in this part of the world. I called it Australian Summer because that's exactly what it captures.

And here's the distinction I've made peace with: there's a difference between using a preset as a destination and using one as a starting point that reflects your own vision.

I didn't build Australian Summer and then start shooting to match it. I shot hundreds of weddings, developed a consistent eye, and then reverse-engineered what I was doing into something repeatable. It starts where I already am, not somewhere else.

Whether that's a meaningful distinction or just something I tell myself, I'll leave to you.

Should you use presets?

Honestly, it depends on what you're using them for.

If you're new and trying to get consistent while you develop your eye, a good preset can help you stop obsessing over colour and start focusing on everything else. That's legitimate.

If you're using someone else's heavily stylised look because it's popular right now, you're building your portfolio on a trend that will expire. And when it does, you'll either chase the next one or start from scratch figuring out what you actually like.

The photographers whose work I've always admired have a recognisable look not because of what they apply in Lightroom, but because of how they see. The editing follows the eye. It shouldn't lead it.