thoughts of mcpactions lightroom presets for a non pro

I'm not a pro and I will say that I'm a complete newb in photoshop but have gotten to be very proficient in lightroom which is where I do 99% of all my editing. One thing I lack however is making photos more interesting. I can take a normal photo and fix the white balance, do some sharpening and adjust lighting and highlights and shadows but I am seriously handicapped in the altering PP department. I've thought about buying some presets before but haven't ever pulled the trigger. Mainly because most of the presets available at the time did not use adobe's new 2012 engine. so after looking it looks like mcpactions new preset bundle does use the new engine:

http://www.mcpactions.​com …ts/enlighten-presets.html

what I like most about it is it's a small price and I really want to be able to use it as a learning tool. I know when you use a preset it adjusts things like splittoning and itemized color tones and such but I want to see the look it gives and see what it changes so later on I can learn what it's doing and be able to make adjustments to it to my own taste.

Any thoughts on this for a ameture non pro type of guy?

why not try some free presets??
http://lightroomkiller​tips.com/?cat=8
http://www.presetsheav​en.com/
just use google and you'll find a bunch

Presets may help you understand how to get a certain look, but ultimately you need to understand what the sliders do and why you should use them. Personally I got more help from watching training videos than trying to deconstruct presets in my learning process.

Gators1 wrote in post #16008924
Presets may help you understand how to get a certain look, but ultimately you need to understand what the sliders do and why you should use them. Personally I got more help from watching training videos than trying to deconstruct presets in my learning process.

Any Recommendations? I mean ya I can jack with the sliders all day long but the whole "understand why to use them" is the part I'm oblivious about.

Lynda.com and kelby training are the ones most people use. Have not tried Lynda but kelby was pretty good. I think the one that got me over the hump was Serge Ramelli's training for landscape He has several that are cheap and he walks you through the whole process. You may not like his style, but you will learn some functionality by watching and repeating the steps on the included files. He has some YouTube videos that are similar to the training so you can check those of and see if that is for you.

Another vote for Lynda.com from me. Also try the free videos by Adobe's Julieanne Kost here:

http://www.jkost.com/l​ightroom.html

The only video by JK I didn't like was regarding soft proofing.

If you like the bright, saturated images that MCP presets go for, the SLR Lounge tutorials would be a great place to start.