This past week I decided to get the VSCO films presets for Lightroom.  These presets emulate the look of a variety of specific films.  I've just started playing with them, so there is still a LOT to learn.  I have the standard pack because the color profiles of my camera are not supported with the Pro edition yet, so this is the 'one size fits all' solution.

In any case, I'm finding that the presets react differently on different photos, so it's hard to get a sense of what to expect at this point.  I've had some success trying to feel out how the different presets function while practicing on this photo of Heather.

The first image is the original.  All I did to this was bump the exposure by .15 of stop.  Normally, I would do quite a bit of tweaking to get it exactly where I want it, but I decided to pretty much leave it alone for the purposes of this experiment. :)

For the second image, I applied the Kodak Porta 160 preset with the orange skin fix.  I decreased the contrast a tad and bumped the exposure by .08.

The third image uses the Ilford HP5 preset.  I think this is going to be my new favorite BW conversion... I love that you really get the elegance of the Ilford feel with this preset.  I did knock the preset down one step and then bumped exposure by .15.

The fourth one has the Fuji 800C preset on it.  The only tweak I made to this was the exposure bump by .15.

The last one is with the Kodak Porta 800.  I applied the auto black preset as well and then added a little fill.  I bumped the exposure by .15 on this one as well.

So it's been interesting to see how these presets work.  I'm excited to try them out some more as I have time.  I'd love to hear about other folks' experience with them, so if you use them, please feel free to comment on this post with how you like to utilize them.

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