Presets super overexposed..Why?

Well, I have some time on my hands at work today as evidenced by me being full of questions for this forum! Here's another...How come so many presets, whether the one's that came with lightroom 3 or one's I get (free) online, look so extremly over exposed when I apply them? I always have to decrease exposure, brightness, fill light, etc...? Does this have anything to do with the fact that I (heaven forbid ) still shoot mainly Jpeg? I am moving into the RAW realm, however I can't think if I have used any presets on a RAW file. Thanks

Because the presets are built badly?
IMO, no preset that is set to give an "effect" (color, tone, vignette, grayscale, whatever), should alter the "basic" settings, such as exposure.
If I have adjusted exposure and WB to what I like, I don't want a preset to alter it.

Simply un-tick the "basic" settings when creating the preset.

Can you "untick" the exposure and WB in a preset thta you import from another area such as the web?

Apply it, create a new preset based on the settings that were just applied.

idsurfer wrote in post #12371532
Can you "untick" the exposure and WB in a preset thta you import from another area such as the web?

Presets are just text files. Change the extension to .txt and open it in Notepad. Edit it, save and change the extension back to .lrtemplate.

My question would be are you clear that the presets are raising Exposure or is it just a matter of applying a high-contrast effect of some sorts. A lot of "styles" produce results that tend to produce what to some are "over-blown" highlights but to others are, well, desireable "starting points".

Fortunately, in Lightroom these are all non-destructive and easy to deal with -- if you don't like the effects of a preset you can change the settings, go back in your History panel, do an Undo (Ctl-X). And, as has been mentioned it's easy to create your own User Preset as a modified pre-installed one.

I like the idea of creating my own preset as a modified version of the pre-installed one. I can open them as a text file and remove the parts that I don't want. I'll play around with that. Thanks.

It occurs to me that something else hasn't been mentioned - the presets bundled with LR and and the vast majority of those available on the 'net are intended for application to RAW files and as such are based on certain assumptions that cannot be assumed for jpgs. For instance, a preset may contain a setting of contrast +50; that is 0 + 50 where 0 is the basic tone curve applied to the RAW data. However the jpg may have been produced with contrast added to the basic curve, which means that the image will have received a double dose of contrast boosting, something which the designer of the preset did not intend. Another preset might set the RAW conversion profile to Adobe Standard, but your jpg was made in the camera with Canon Neutral P.S. This could change its affect on colors. A lot of the value of presets is lost if they are not consistent and predictable, but when they are applied to jpgs that not only can be all over the board but also already have a collection of processing parameters baked into them (sometimes irreversibly so), it is not surprising that the results are less than satisfactory.

tzalman wrote in post #12374424
It occurs to me that something else hasn't been mentioned - the presets bundled with LR and and the vast majority of those available on the 'net are intended for application to RAW files and as such are based on certain assumptions that cannot be assumed for jpgs. For instance, a preset may contain a setting of contrast +50; that is 0 + 50 where 0 is the basic tone curve applied to the RAW data. However the jpg may have been produced with contrast added to the basic curve, which means that the image will have received a double dose of contrast boosting, something which the designer of the preset did not intend. Another preset might set the RAW conversion profile to Adobe Standard, but your jpg was made in the camera with Canon Neutral P.S. This could change its affect on colors. A lot of the value of presets is lost if they are not consistent and predictable, but when they are applied to jpgs that not only can be all over the board but also already have a collection of processing parameters baked into them (sometimes irreversibly so), it is not surprising that the results are less than satisfactory.

This is exactly what my suspicions were when I opened this discussion. There are ways to work around it though. I'm finding that the presets are a nice starting place and then I have been able to take it from there. Thanks!

I dont know of any preset that is a "one click and done" kind of deal. They are made with an origional exposure, contrast range, color balence...etc...etc.. in mind from the start. SO if you dont have that same in your picture you will not get the same results. What you get may be good or bad, but they are not what they preset was made for. Otherwise every preset needs tweeking to make it for your image.

Some presets boost exposure, and probably intended to work with underexposed originals. Because the preset author likes how Lightroom pushes the exposure for certain looks as opposed to pushing it in camera. So purposely underexpose so he can "correct" it in post. This is one reason why on a lot of web pages that have preset they show the origional next to the image with the preset applied.