SLR Lounge and DVLOP have teamed up to form Visual Flow, a new preset development company with a patent-pending approach to image processing called “Lighting Condition-Based Development.” This system leverages the two companies’ combined 15 years of preset development experience to create the most intuitive, fast, and powerful Lightroom Presets available to photographers.
Visual flow is launching with two products, The Modern Preset Pack for Lightroom and ACR and The Retouching Toolkit for Lightroom and ACR.
See how the system works here:
Why Most Lightroom Presets Don’t Work
Most presets don’t work because they are designed for ideal lighting conditions like soft natural light, shade, or window light. But when these same presets are applied to images shot different lighting conditions, like scenes with a strong backlight, indoor tungsten lighting, mixed lighting, or fluorescent lighting, for example, they don’t yield the right colors. Because lighting conditions constantly change, after applying a preset we are stuck making multiple adjustments to get images to look right. This process is time consuming, and we often never get to where we want to go.
The answer is the Visual Flow lighting condition-based approach.
The Modern Preset Pack for Lightroom and ACR
The system starts with DVLOP’s camera profile technology which unifies raw files between camera makes/models and provides more consistent color toning through its use of Dual Illuminant Profiles. From there, Visual Flow adds a patent-pending approach to raw processing called Lighting Condition Based Development. For the user, this means you simply:
- Identify the primary lighting condition in the image.
- Click the preset for the lighting condition
- … That’s It!
From there, the Visual Flow algorithms take over and apply the Color Engine while correcting it to the selected lighting condition. Mid-day sun, no problem! The Hard Light preset will automatically compensate for unflattering highlights and deep shadows. For high dynamic range scenes, the HDR Natural preset will reveal detail while retaining natural skin tones. Working indoors, outdoors, in tungsten/orange environments, or fluorescent/green tinted lighting conditions? It doesn’t matter. With each lighting condition preset the tone curve, highlights, shadows, colors, contrast, and even exposure is adjusted to get your images looking how they should.
Modern Pack Image Examples
Below are a few “before and afters” from the Modern Preset Pack.
01. Soft Light Preset
Use on images shot in shade, window light, overcast, or other soft light sources
Click the right arrow to see the before
02. Backlit Preset
Use on images that are backlit from golden hour flares or flash that suffer a loss in contrast scenes with backlight.
Click the right arrow to see the before
03. HDR Natural Preset
Use on images shot in scenes that have a wide dynamic range from shadow to highlight.
Click the right arrow to see the before
04. Hard Light Preset
Use on images shot in harsh mid-day, sun or hard and direct light sources.
Click the right arrow to see the before
05. Oversaturated Lightroom Preset
Use on images shot in over saturated lighting environments, like a dance floor or saturated direct sunlight.
Click the right arrow to see the before
The Retouching Toolkit for Lightroom and ACR
The second product released is The Retouching Toolkit for Lightroom and ACR. These comprise 47 retouching brushes and 26 tools for advanced editing directly in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. They give photographers editing capabilities previously thought to be only feasible in Photoshop, such as retouching skin, eyes, and lips, dodging and burning; adding sun flares; enhancing skies; and more.
Here are a few favorite tools and visual examples of what they do.
Retouching Tools – Smooth skin tones, adjust skin color, diminish lines, enhance eyes, thicken lashes, and more. To reduce/strengthen an effect, hold alt/option and click and drag the pin.
Dodge and Burn – Powerful dodging and burning tools that make Photoshop a thing of the past for most of your portrait imagery.
Click the right arrow to see the before
Sun Flare Lightroom Brush – Easily add sunflares to any backlit scene, transforming 2pm light into 6pm golden hour.
Click the right arrow to see the before
Sky Enhancing Brush – Take full advantage of your camera’s full dynamic range and bring back the color in your skies.
Dark Mode Brush – Apply your favorite development preset, then apply Dark Mode to create a completely new dramatic dodge and burned variation that features the same color tones as the selected preset.
Click the right arrow to see the before
For more information
For more information, visit the Visual Flow Website. You can also see how the system works in greater detail in the two Primer videos below.
Intro to the Modern Preset Pack – How to Shoot & Process Images
Intro to the Retouching Toolkit – The Power of Lightroom Retouching
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