The Secret to Creating Your Own Signature Photo Look in Lightroom

Have you ever scrolled through a professional photographer's Instagram account? If you're reading this article, I'm gonna guess that you're interested in photography, and I'm gonna take that guess one step further and assume that, yes, you have scrolled through the Instagram accounts of a number of professional photographers. And when you did, you probably noticed something: all of there photos have a uniform look to them. I used to scroll through these Instagram accounts and wonder how they achieved this. Each photo was different, yet there was something that gave them all a similar feel.

I tried editing all of my photos with the same Instagram filter to achieve a similar look. It didn't work out so well, as I found out Instagram filters didn't always make my photos look the best. But, it turns out, the idea I had in mind wasn't too far off. There's something out there even better than an Instagram filter. It's called a Lightroom preset.

Basically, a Lightroom preset is a way for you to save all of the edits you made on one photo so that you can apply them to any other photos. If you adjusted the exposure by +2 and decreased the contrast by -10, every photo you apply the preset to will have an exposure increase of +2 and contrast decrease of -10. So, yeah, pretty much an Instagram filter... but better, I promise!

One of the key factors that makes presets better is that you can create them yourself. You can create your own signature look like the photographers on Instagram. Hello, aesthetic! But there's one tool in particular on Lightroom that will really take your signature look to the next level. Allow me to take you through the process of creating a signature look and turning it into a preset to use on all of your photos.

The HSL Sliders

Below the temperature, tint, vibrance, and saturation sliders, you will find the HSL sliders. HSL stands for hue, saturation, luminance, and this tool allows you to adjust the levels for each color individually. To give you a better idea of what this all means, let's edit this lovely sailboat photo together.

Saturation

Even if you're a beginner photo editor, you're probably familiar with the idea or saturation, and how it makes the colors in your image pop. But the cool thing about the HSL sliders is that you can saturate, or de-saturate, one color at a time. Let's try working with our yellows, for example. Click the yellow circle. And let's drag the saturation all the way to 100.

Here is the result on the photo:

And if we do the reverse...

Here is the result:

Pretty cool! Plat around with it, see which colors you like seeing more of and which you prefer to see less of. And when you're ready, let's move on to luminance.

Luminance

This slider allows you to control the lightness or darkness of each color. Let's try making our oranges nice and deep.

The result...

Ok, that one got a little crazy, but you get the idea, right? Finally, let's move on the hue.

Hue

I saved this one for last because it's my favorite, and, in my opinion, the best slider for creating your own unique look. It allows you to change the shades of your colors. Greens, for example, can be pushed more towards yellow or more towards blue. Yellow can be pushed more towards orange or more towards green. I personally love pushing my yellows towards the orange end of the slider. Let's check out what that does!

Now that you know a little bit more about the HSL sliders and what they do, play around with them until you get a look you like. Then you're ready to create a preset to apply to more photos!

Click the three dots in the upper right corner of your phone screen, the select, "create preset."

I like to name my presets based on the photo I used to create them. This one, I would call, "sailboat." You can find your presets under "user presets" in the presets tab. (How many times can we fit the word "presets" into a sentence?)

And there you have it. Get sliding! Adjust your hues, saturations, and luminances. Create beautiful presets, apply them to your photos, and before you know it, you'll have a uniform and aesthetic Instagram!

Happy editing!