HOCUS POCUS Lightroom Presets by kaydargs
HOCUS POCUS Lightroom Presets by kaydargs
Can’t believe it’s been a year since I released my first ever preset! Hocus Pocus is the sequel to last year’s maiden voyage preset, Halloweentown. Similar in mood, but with the addition of smokey lavenders and pops of green to add dimension to your spooky season.
One note on these right off the bat; if you’re using a camera with the option, SHOOT IN RAW. And very important: SHOOT DARK. Underexpose a tad. Hocus Pocus does not get along well with blown out highlights and will throw a temper tantrum if you try to throw them on photos that are too bright.
Your purchase comes with 7 starting points/variations to ensure that you’re able to find a good jumping off point for your raw photos- some of them being more gentle thus ideal for portraiture or iPhone photos in different lighting scenarios, and a couple for highly stylized landscape and still life images for when you don’t have to worry about maintaining skin tones. These guys will make skin red af or purple af or green af if the white balance sliders can’t find harmony.
This preset is a great learning tool for those looking to learn more about Lightroom and to gain some insight into methods I use in my work. Be sure to tag me in your creations so I can give you my love!
Pssst… the #1 email/DM I got when I released my first preset was people not downloading their link within 24 hours and then it expires and I’d have to send a new one- please download your file right when you purchase to save yourself a headache later!
DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS: Unless you are using an older version of Lightroom, all you need are the .xmp files, but there are also .lrtemplate files for anyone who has evaded updating in a few years.
All you have to do is unzip the file on your computer, press the ‘+’ on your preset window, and navigate to your unzipped presets and they’ll appear in your preset column and be ready for use.
For the .lrtemplates, you’ll need to go ‘Lightroom’ > ‘Preferences’ > ‘Presets’ tab > ‘Show Lightroom Presets Folder’ > ‘Develop Presets’ > then copy your new presets into that folder, and finally restart Lightroom.
For Lightroom Mobile: The .dng photo files are for you. Save those into your LR mobile catalog and you can copy and paste the settings off of them and/or save them as a preset. On some newer updated phones, you can unzip the file from your phone. But for most phones unless you download software, they are unable to unzip the file containing the presets, so you’ll have to open the .zip on a computer, download, and then send/airdrop the .dng’s to your phone.
A NOTE ON THESE PRESETS and probably all presets in general: they are going to take some playing around with! If any unnatural banding occurs in your photos, just take the red and/or orange saturation sliders down. After getting your photo properly exposed, start with the white balance sliders. The tiniest tweak of those can give a huge range from these presets because they are so stylized and sensitive. They’ll need to be toyed with because no camera rig, lighting, environment, skin tone, outfit or what have you is ever the same.
SHOOTING TIPS: Most presets (these DEFINITELY included) work best on images that were shot in diffused lighting, without the sun or any other harsh light source hitting your lens directly and creating flares. If you start off with images shot in soft shadows (these presets especially love DARKER photos, shooting under-exposed is going to be the move) or backlit with the sun blocked by something (tree, building, etc.) you should have no problem getting fun and usable results from these with minimal tweaking. If your subject is in direct sunlight and the photographer’s back is to the sun, you may need to slide the white balance to the blue/green side to compensate. The wild ones loooove photos taken during blue hour and sunset/sunrise.
These presets latch onto blues especially, I think they’re most fun to throw on photos that have a lot of blue sky and clouds! If the purple in the sky is overwhelming, raise the luminosity in the blues and lower their saturation. They are very dramatic.