Photo Session Tips

10 Best Portrait Presets for Lightroom

Taking portraits, selfies, or other photos with friends? It’s good to have a handy collection of portrait presets ready to go for editing your new pics.

This roundup features the best Lightroom Presets for portrait photography, designed to enhance skin tones, lighting, and details in the face and hair.

Whether you’re aiming for a natural look or a more dramatic effect, we have different presets to offer a variety of styles for your photos. 

Presets are easy to use photo filters that work right in the Lightroom desktop and/or mobile apps. They are perfect for beginners and professionals alike.

Save time and find the ideal portrait presets for your needs in this roundup.

Shop the Best Portrait Presets →

1. Sam Dameshek Lightroom Presets

This bundle of photo filters was created by travel and lifestyle photographer, Sam Dameshek! His presets are perfect for adding bright colors with vivid effects to instantly make your photos pop.

With Sam’s presets you’ll be able to create deep rich tones in your images and learn how to utilize them in the best ways possible. From his natural and cool lifestyle filter to his emotional black & white preset, Sam’s bundle is a concise set of crisp presets.

Start your workflow with these incredible presets built by Sam Dameshek.

2. Hayley Larue Lightroom Presets

Colorful effects created by dancer and blogger, Hayley Larue. These filters will help you add warm, vibrant colors to your lifestyle photos!

Here’s a little bit from Hayley about her work, “I am a fashion and decor blogger, and the look and feel of my blog photos and Instagram feed is very important to me. I am asked daily on my Instagram what filters I use for my photos, and I feel like it never helps when I say “I use Lightroom and I have specific presets I use for specific photos depending on lighting.” So when I discovered there was a way I could put my presets online, I knew it was something my followers would be so excited about! I’ve named my presets according to the types of photos I use them for. For example: “Mirror Selfie” is what I use for all mirror selfie photos taken in my bedroom. ”

3. Laurent Castellani All Lightroom Presets Bundle (115 presets)

Get All of Laurent Castellani’s Custom Lightroom Presets

Custom luxury and editorial fashion presets by Laurent Castellani. Here are my 131 presets for my portrait photos that I use regularly. From products: Portrait v1, Portrait v2 ,Portrait v3 and Night.

Features

  • 115 Lightroom Presets (.xmp format)
  • Subtle Portrait Effects v1 and v2
  • Night-time Filters + Flash
  • Beige, Black and White, Golden Tones, blue.
  • Ability to sync presets to mobile

4. Dennis Tejero Lightroom Presets

Vibrant Portrait Effects for Adobe Lightroom

These colorful presets were created by photographer and member of the Pursuit of Portraits Team, Dennis Tejero. This pack of filters will help you perfectly edit skin tones and add a vintage look to your photos.

This bundle was made for the photographers looking for a unique preset bundle to edit various kinds of photo styles. Dennis has included high contrast effects along with vibrant tones and enlightening effects.

Get your editing workflow started with these vibrant tones made by Dennis Tejero.

5. Stewart Clementz Ivory Lightroom Presets

Created by photographer and founder of Hive Creatives, Stewart Clementz. This pack of filters will help you perfectly edit skin tones and add a vintage film look to your photos.

This bundle was made for the photographers looking for a unique preset pack to edit various kinds of photo styles. Pulling inspiration from 90’s film looks, these presets were crafted through years of shooting editorial, lifestyle, studio, and anything else you can think of. My goal was to create a versatile set of presets that could match any photographer's style flawlessly. Get your editing workflow started with these retro tones made by Stewart Clementz.

6. Ryan Dodson Lightroom Presets

This bundle of lifestyle filters was created by photographer Ryan Dodson. Ryan’s presets are perfect for adding subtle effects and vintage tones to your portrait and lifestyle photos.

A few words from Ryan about the style of his presets, “This is my newest and most stunning pack of presets. Compatible with LR Desktop and Mobile. In this pack you will get 4 color filters; each crafted to most resemble film and how I edit daily, a black and white filter in its most creamy and delicious state. You will also get a bonus filter (Party 6) which is my most used preset. 

7. Clay Moss Opal 02 Lightroom Presets

The second set of the beautiful Opal Lightroom Presets developed by portrait and fashion photographer Clay Moss. This pack of filters will help you add instinctive detail effects and delicate tones to your photos.

Clay has redeveloped his Opal presets and created a new set of effects for you to add to your lifestyle and portrait photos. Learn how to create cool, opal effects and produce amazing edits with these incredible presets.

Add crisp tones to your photos with the second set of Opal presets from Clay Moss.

8. Ohjustpaul Lightroom Presets

Skin Tones & Portrait Looks for Adobe Lightroom

Ohjustpaul, also known outside the photography scene as Paul Cuthbertson, has handpicked his favorite presets for you all. These include presets that he uses in his daily workflow, to give that unique style to his work. Moody, dark, emotional and vintage.

These are the main attributes that Ohjustpaul puts towards all his photography work. He strives for natural light and uses it to light his subjects in contrasting ways. When a flash is needed, that vintage and moody style still shines through.

These presets will give your photos the unique style which Ohjustpaul uses. However, certain photos will require extra tweaking to highlights, exposure, contrast etc to gain the desired look.

9. Portrait Tones for Lightroom from the Swopes

Developed by portrait and fashion editorial photographer Eliyah Swopes @eliyahswopes. These presets all have a unique style, giving you a wide range of editing options. Great for portraits, fashion and editorial projects, along with other lifestyle or commercial photography work.

Eliyah uses beautiful bright tones and soft, warm effects to make clean natural light effects every time.

Add warm natural tones to your photos with these presets from Eliyah Swopes.

10. Gail Bowman Fashion Desktop Lightroom Presets

Detailed Portrait Effects for Adobe Lightroom

These 16 Presets will bring beautiful depth and clean tones to your Lightroom work flow. Gail has created different types of cool and warm textures to provide an amazing mood and feelings to your photos. Along with this, Bowman has also played around with hue/saturation and color tone-curve and used different kind of images to see the results of individual presets.

Here’s a little from Gail, “These are my Ultimate Favorite Presets and I use them regularly. It took me years to create and find the right formula of editing for what I do best – “Fashion Photography.” I am very critical with my editing since I work with a lot of high fashion models that don’t require tons of editing so I made sure that these filters are not over done, but instead I made them clean and cohesive with the right amount of contrast and exposure and to create great skin tone. You can still do your own adjustments and customize the presets accordingly. You won’t feel limited. Enjoy and have fun!

Start your Fashion and Portrait edits with these Lightroom Presets from Gail Bowman!

How to Use Lightroom Presets

Learn how to use desktop presets here.

Watch this video for using mobile presets:

How to Install Mobile Presets into the Lightroom CC App (DNG) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXzScwtw3o

Looking for even more photo filters from your favorite photographers? View all Lightroom Presets on FilterGrade here.

Share your edits on Instagram with #filtergrade.

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