This article discusses the important role of using Instagram Presets to achieve a beautiful Instagram Feed and create the foundations for massive Instagram growth or simply to obtain photos that you are proud of even if you don’t aim to conquer the world.

In sum, this article covers the following topics:

1. The Power of Instagram to Communicate your Own Voice
2. What is one of the Key Secrets for Instagram Success?
3. What are Instagram Presets or Filters?
4. Why Not Use Standard Instagram Filters that are available with the App?
5. What are the Best Instagram Presets?
6. What are Lightroom Presets and How to Use them?
7. What to Consider When Choosing a Lightroom Presets Pack?
8. Is it Worth Buying Lightroom Presets?

1. The Power of Instagram to Communicate your Own Voice

Instagram is a big thing, I mean a truly gigantic platform that has more than 1 billion monthly active users. This is certainly one of the biggest communication platforms humans ever created at a global scale. It gives you the opportunity to interact with users from all over the world, it gives you the power to inspire and get inspired by millions upon millions of people.

There is no doubt that Instagram's impact on people's life has been powerful and far-reaching, with reports that millions of people go on the platform several times a day and in many cases several times an hour. Obviously, the more crowded a platform is, the more difficult it becomes to stand out and have your own voice, your own style.

2. What is one of the Key Secrets for Instagram Success?

One of the most critical things you can do to achieve success on Instagram is to develop a consistent and coherent Instagram Feed...why?...because a consistent feed looks much better to the eyes and will attract the attention of a higher number of people. Just have a look at this list of 30 successful Instagram accounts and you will notice that most of them have a very consistent feed with photos that go well together. You can also have a look at my own Instagram feed @eyegusto.

The secret to achieve a consistent and gorgeous looking Instagram Feed is to use a similar editing style for all your photos or at least for a subset of your photos (e.g. edit 6 or 9 consecutive instagram photos in a similar way). The best way to achieve this is to use predefined Instagram Presets or Filters.

3. What are Instagram Presets or Filters?

Instagram Presets or Filters are a set of edits that are applied to a photo to give it a specific look. This involves adjusting critical settings of an image such as exposure, white balance, clarity, vibrance, saturation, etc. By using a predefined Instagram Preset, your photo will gain a new look instantaneously and a series of adjustments to the image will be done automatically for you. If you find high quality professional Instagram Presets, your job of obtaining a consistent feed filled with awesome photos will be much easier.

4. Why Not Use Standard Instagram Filters that are available with the App?

By default, the Instagram app already have some filters included that you can easily apply to your photos when you are posting. So why would you need something different than the standard Instagram Filters? Well, the main reason would be to create a unique Instagram Feed that stands out and have a signature look that is yours and only yours. More than 1 billion people worldwide use Instagram every single month, so if you use the standard filters, it will be almost impossible to truly standout. Of course, this is fine if you are not concerned with creating your own style and just want to share photos with friends and family. However, if you want to create something unique and eventually develop your own voice on Instagram, you definitely need to find unique and professional Instagram Presets to give a special distinctive look to your photos.

5. What are the Best Instagram Presets?

I am sure you can find several mobile apps that try to sell presets, filters or similar edits to your photos. However, I would generally advise against using any of these third party apps. Why? Well the reason is simple…you would get tied up to their app, to their system and who knows whether they are going to be around the corner tomorrow, next month or next year…apps disappear all the time. If for some reason, they vanish all your unique presets are gone and you can completely loose your signature style and have to start it all over again!

My recommendation is simple to choose the most used and recognised photography software on the market and that is Adobe Lightroom as you probably guessed from the same company that creates the famous Adobe Photoshop. The main reason to stick with Lightroom is longevity...the software will still be here in the decades to come…for some reason Adobe exists since 1982 and Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard since 1990. Hence, it seems a no brainer to focus your attention on Adobe Lightroom which is a much easier software to edit your photos. Apart from being sure the software won’t vanish overnight, there are at least a few key extra benefits.

What are the Main Benefits of Using Lightroom as your Main Source of Instagram Presets?

1. You can use Lightroom on Mobile, Tablet or Computer. Even better, the mobile and tablet versions of Lightroom are free to use!
2. Lightroom is nowadays a very powerful software, so if you ever want to adjust the photos by yourself you have that option.
3. Lightroom Presets are a great way to give a signature look to your photos in one click and there is a great choice of Professionally developed Lightroom Presets that you can use.

So my recommendation for the Best Instagram Presets is to use Lightroom Presets since they are super easy to use and there is wide range of them available in the market. Once you are feeling the need for a new look, you can easily buy a new Lightroom Presets Pack to spark you creativity and bring new energy into your Instagram photos and feed.

6. What are Lightroom Presets and How to Use them?

Lightroom Presets are predefined adjustments that can be applied to any photo with one click and can give a signature look to your images. Just check the video below to see how you can quickly and dramatically change the look of one photo using a set of Lightroom Presets. The video is done on a computer but you can do exactly the same thing on your smartphone!

 

7. What to Consider When Choosing a Lightroom Presets Pack?

A good Lightroom Presets pack should include different looks and be designed for certain subjects and scenes. For example, you can find Lightroom Presets that are designed for landscapes, portraits, night photography, sunsets, nature shots, weddings and others that focus on achieving a certain look or exploring a certain color range like aqua, turquoise, tropical, vintage, etc. There are numerous options out there but many of them are really low quality and badly designed, so you really need to be careful.

These are the main things to look for when looking to buy Lightroom Presets:

• Get a pack with a good variety of presets – There are people selling packs with a single preset (!) or a very small number of presets which makes your task much harder since it is very unlikely that one preset will work in most of your photos. Having a variety of presets will ensure you have more options to find one that works with a particular scene but still keep a similar look. With a single preset or a small number of them, you will be very limited. That is why on our Lightroom Presets Store, we offer a least 10 presets per pack but many packs have 12, 16, 20 and even 30 presets to ensure you have a wide range of options to get the right look.
• Get a pack with presets that have different exposure options – Most packs don’t give you different exposure options of certain look, so your photo tends to look too dark or too bright in most cases, which then leads to frustration and more time lost in trying to correct the problem. If you get a pack that already includes as default presets for bright, dark and medium light conditions you will speed up your workflow and get great results more quickly, usually with just one click or touch!
• Get a pack that was designed for your photography style and/or subject – If you usually shoot landscapes and nature photos, it is better to look for preset packs that were designed with this in mind. However, it is also important to consider whether the photography style of the preset creator matches your style. If someone has a very colorful style and you don’t like colorful photos, it won’t probably be a good match or if someone likes really dark and moody photos and you prefer bright vivid photos, it will also not work. Hence, I would always recommend you have as quick look at the photography style of the person that created the Lightroom Presets pack before you buy.
• Get a Professional and High Quality Pack – It goes without saying that you usually get what you are paying for. I am sure you can find very cheap Lightroom Presets out there but many times those are created by people with little or no photography experience and they just want to make some quick money. It is usually easy to see this since normally this people won’t have a professional website with proper photography and won’t even have a popular Instagram feed, the only thing you see is a website filled with cheap lightroom presets.

8. Is it Worth Buying Lightroom Presets?

One question that is usually a matter of discussion is whether it is worth to buy Lightroom Presets. Obviously there are valid points on each side of this argument but reality is if you truly want to speed up your photo editing workflow and get creative with your photos, buying Lightroom Presets can be a great investment.

What are the Disadvantages of Buying Lightroom Presets?

• It costs money – The first disadvantage is that you usually have to pay for the best lightroom presets
• Dodgy Presets on the Market – There are many cheap and dogy lightroom prests being sold and advertised all over the internet, so it is easy to be misled and buy something that does not deliver what is expected of a professional lightroom presets pack.
• You don’t learn to edit (?) – This is one of the arguments usually mentioned by some people but I truly don’t buy it. You can certainly learn to edit and still include the use of presets to speed up your workflow. I have quit a bit of experience editing photos and I still use presets all the time to see the photographic possibilities of a photo.

What are the advantages of purchasing Lightroom Presets

• Once you buy a presets pack, it is your forever– This is unquestionable, once you buy a presets pack, you can for as lon as you want, so from that point of view it is a great investment!
• Obtain a Unique and Awesome Style Quickly- When you find the presets that you really like, the ones that truly match your style, editing your photos and obtaining a consistent Instagram Feed will be a breeze.
• Trying out different presets is fun – Quickly being able to see how you can change a photo and give it a completely new look is usually super fun and enjoyable!
• Sparking your creativity – By trying out a range of presets, it is much easier to spark your creativity because you can quickly experiement with different looks and easily see the possibilities for an image
• Using Presets while taking photos in the field – This is quite an overlooked way of using Lightroom Presets and it can definitely make you a better photographer. Nowadays with the ability to take photos on your smartphone and edit them in real time, it is great to just quickly take a photo and try a few lightroom presets to see whether you need to change your composition or other settings. I still use my full frame Sony camera to take most of my shots but when I am in the field, I usually take photos on my iphone and edit them with iphone filters in real time to really see the possibilities of a shot. Obviously, I don’t do this in every circumstance but I do it for the most important shots.
• Using presets as a foundation to start your more advanced editing process – If you still like to edit all your photos individually, using presets can still be useful as a starting point. This is actually the way I like to start editing my photos because it allows me to fully see all the possibilities and directions I can take to edit a particular photo. That will usually help me decide my photographic vision for a particular photo and help me decide which direction I will take on my editing workflow.

 

The Most Important is to Just Have Fun with your Photo Editing

I hope this article helped you to fully understand the importance of Instagram Presets and Lightroom Presets to speed up your photo editing workflow and obtain great results quickly. However, it is worth highlighting that despite all of this, the most important is to make the process of editing photos something fun and enjoyable. I hope you have lots of fun in the process and create some awesome photos that make you happy.

If you would like to check our large range of Lightroom Presets, just have a look at our Lightroom Presets store.