I decided to revisit this photo and try out a preset called BW Charcoal. I don’t usually use presets as such, although I have made the odd one myself for a specific set of (similar) shots.

I tend to think that although they can, on occasion, give you a basic start to the editing process, in many/most cases so can just hitting the ‘auto’ button. Either way, much tweaking tends to be necessary and generally I find it more interesting/fun/pleasing to ‘go your own way’. Not to everyone’s liking or taste, of course, but each to their own I suppose.

Anyway, I applied the preset…and then almost immediately began fiddling (or ‘tweaking’ as the professionals call it). Some elements/settings of the original preset remain but, in generally, I found myself pulling back many of them to varying degrees and I added a subtle vignette for good measure.

I can see the advantages, of course, if you have either a): have lots of images with same camera settings, exposure etc from a shoot (time saving), or b): want to find out the basic (possible) settings for a particular or specialist ‘look’ are. However, in the first instance, you can edit your first image and then copy your settings to the rest of the photos in the set, an alternative way of saving a bit of time.

This is the image purely using the BW Charcoal preset, no ‘fiddling’…

Not overly different in the grand scheme of things, all boils down to personal taste in the end…