Shooting cars is one of the most rewarding challenges in photography. Whether you’re capturing a multi-million dollar hypercar or your buddy’s freshly washed project car, you’re not just photographing a machine. You’re photographing a piece of art, a symbol of freedom, or the product of countless hours of passion. But as any car photographer knows, getting the shot is only half the battle. The edit is where you truly bring that metal machine to life.

For years, Lightroom presets have been the go-to tool for photographers looking to build a consistent style and speed up their workflow. But cars are tricky subjects. A preset that makes a red Ferrari pop might turn a blue Subaru a strange shade of purple. This guide is built from my professional experience to help you navigate the world of car presets. We’ll treat them as what they are: a powerful starting line, not a one-click finish line.

Key Takeaways

  • Presets Are a Start, Not an End: A preset is a saved recipe of settings. You must always adjust Exposure and White Balance first, as no preset can magically fix these for every photo.
  • Cars Are Mirrors: The biggest challenge in automotive editing is managing reflections. We use tools like the Dehaze slider, local adjustment brushes, and masking to control them.
  • Color Is King: A car’s paint color is its identity. The HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) panel in Lightroom is your most important tool for protecting and enhancing paint color accuracy.
  • Separation Is Everything: A great car photo makes the car the “hero.” We use masking (like “Select Subject”), radial filters, and vignettes to darken the background and draw the viewer’s eye to the car.
  • Static Presets Have Limits: A traditional preset applies the same settings to every photo, regardless of light or subject. This is why they often “break.”
  • AI Is the New Workflow: Tools like Imagen offer a smarter path. Instead of a static preset, you use a dynamic AI Profile that analyzes each photo individually and applies custom edits to match your style. It adapts to different lighting conditions and subjects, delivering true consistency.
  • Build Your Own Style: The best way to stand out is to develop your own look. We’ll walk through how to build your own “Clean Commercial” and “Dark & Moody” presets from scratch.

What Makes Automotive Photography Editing Unique?

Editing a car isn’t like editing a portrait or a landscape. Cars come with their own unique set of problems that can make post-processing a headache. If your edits feel flat, it’s probably because one of these core challenges isn’t being addressed.

The Battle with Reflections

A car is basically a giant, curvy mirror. Its surface reflects everything: the sky, trees, buildings, power lines, and you. While a Circular Polarizer (CPL) filter on your lens is your best friend in the field, you’ll always have reflections to manage in Lightroom.

  • Why they’re a problem: Unwanted reflections distract the viewer. A bright white reflection of the sky on a side panel can draw the eye away from the car’s shape. Reflections of green trees can throw off the car’s white balance, making the paint look muddy.
  • Lightroom Solutions:
    • Dehaze: This is my secret weapon. In small, positive amounts, Dehaze adds “pop” and cuts through mild reflections.
    • Clarity: Adds mid-tone contrast, which can help define body lines, but use it with caution. Too much creates a crunchy, over-edited look.
    • Local Adjustments (Brushes): This is where the real work happens. I use a brush with negative Dehaze and negative Clarity to “soften” harsh reflections on windows or body panels. To remove color cast from a reflection (like green grass on a white bumper), I’ll use a brush and pull the Saturation slider down.

Nailing the Perfect Paint Job: Color Accuracy

Is that Ferrari Rosso Corsa red or Rosso Mugello red? To a car owner, the difference is everything. Your edit must respect the car’s true color while enhancing it.

  • Why it’s a problem: A simple preset might apply a global saturation boost, which can make a “classy” deep red look like a “cheap” bright red. Or, a “moody” preset might shift the hue of a “Subaru Blue” to “Teal,” which is just wrong.
  • Lightroom Solutions:
    • HSL Panel: This is your control center. Forget the global Saturation slider. Go straight to HSL.
    • Hue: If a red car looks too orange, slide the Red Hue slider slightly toward magenta. If a blue looks purple, slide the Blue Hue slider toward aqua.
    • Saturation: Want the red paint to pop without affecting the (already saturated) blue sky? Use the Red Saturation slider.
    • Luminance: This is the most powerful tool. Want the car to look “brighter” and “pop” without touching Exposure? Increase the Luminance of its color. Making the Red/Orange/Yellow luminance sliders brighter is a classic trick for red cars.
    • Targeted Adjustment Tool: In the HSL panel, click the little dot icon. You can then click and drag directly on the car’s paint up to increase saturation/luminance or down to decrease it.

Creating “Pop”: The Art of Separation

Your photo has two main parts: the subject (the car) and the background. Your job is to make the subject the undeniable hero. A flat edit treats the car and the parking lot it’s in with equal importance. A pro edit makes the car jump off the screen.

  • Why it’s a problem: A busy or bright background competes with the car for attention.
  • Lightroom Solutions:
    • Masking (AI): This is the modern game-changer. Click “Masking,” then “Select Subject.” Lightroom will (usually) build a great mask of the car. You can then invert that mask and edit only the background. Try dropping the Exposure by -0.30, dropping the Shadows, and slightly desaturating the background. The car will instantly pop.
    • Radial Filters: My go-to. Draw a large, inverted radial filter around the car. Drop the exposure on the outside of the filter to create a subtle, natural vignette that pulls the eye inward.
    • Brushes (Dodge & Burn): This is a classic technique. Use a brush with positive exposure to “dodge” (brighten) the car’s wheels, headlights, and body lines. Use a second brush with negative exposure to “burn” (darken) distracting parts of the background or deep shadows under the car to ground it.

Faking or Enhancing Motion

Not all car photos are static. Sometimes you’re shooting panning shots (tracking the car as it moves) or rollers (shooting from another moving car).

  • Why it’s a problem: Sometimes a panning shot isn’t quite blurry enough, or a static shot feels too boring.
  • Lightroom Solutions:
    • Panning Shots: Use a Radial Filter. Draw it over the car. Invert it, so you’re only affecting the background. Then, apply a small amount of negative Motion Blur (a hidden slider in the Effects panel of the mask). This will enhance the sense of speed in the background.
    • Static Shots: You can add motion to the wheels. Use a Radial Filter and draw it perfectly over the wheel. In the mask’s Effects panel, apply some Angular blur. It’s a tricky effect to get right, but it can bring a dead shot to life.

Section Summary

Editing cars is a technical challenge. You’re fighting reflections, protecting colors, and creating separation. A good preset will try to address these things, but it will always need manual, local adjustments to get it 100% right.

The Role of Lightroom Presets in Car Photography

So, if every photo needs manual work, why bother with presets at all? Because they are incredible tools for speed, consistency, and learning.

Why Use Presets for Cars?

  1. Consistency: This is the #1 reason for professionals. When you’re delivering a set of 50 photos from a car meet, you want them all to feel like they belong together. A preset ensures your blues, your contrast, and your vignettes are all applied in the same way, creating a cohesive, professional gallery. It’s your brand’s “look.”
  2. Speed: A preset is your 80% solution. It gets all your base settings (Tone Curve, HSL, Color Grading, Sharpening) in place with one click. This lets you focus your time on the 20% that matters: the local adjustments, brushing, and masking that make the photo perfect. For a full-day shoot, this can save you hours.
  3. Learning: Want to know how a famous photographer gets their “look”? Buy their presets. But don’t just use them. Deconstruct them. Apply the preset, then go panel by panel. “Oh, they crushed the blacks and lifted the shadow point on the Tone Curve.” “Ah, they desaturate all the greens in the HSL panel.” “Interesting, they added blue to the shadows in Color Grading.” It’s like a private lesson.
  4. Exploration: Sometimes you don’t know what vibe you want. You can hover over your presets and “try on” different styles in seconds. Clean? Moody? Vintage? This rapid creative exploration is fantastic for finding new directions for your art.

The Preset Trap: Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Presets are not magic. Applying a preset and calling it “done” is the most common amateur mistake. Here’s what to watch out for.

  • The “One-Click Wonder” Myth: It doesn’t exist. A preset made on a bright, sunny day will look terrible on a photo shot at night. A preset is a starting point for your final edit.
  • Ignoring White Balance (WB) and Exposure: These two sliders are your job, not the preset’s. Before you even touch your presets, get your exposure and white balance correct. A photo that is too warm or too dark will make any preset look broken.
  • Over-editing: Many cheap presets are “overcooked.” They have Clarity at +100, insane vignettes, and radioactive colors. These are a poor investment. Good presets are subtle.
  • Mismatching the Mood: You wouldn’t use a dark, moody, desaturated preset on a “for sale” listing that needs to be bright, clean, and commercial. The preset’s style must match the purpose of the photograph.

Section Summary

Treat presets as a professional tool. Use them to establish a consistent base, to speed up your workflow, and to learn new techniques. Never trust them to finish the job for you. Always be prepared to tweak and add local adjustments.

A Step-by-Step Guide: Using Presets Like a Pro

Let’s walk through a professional workflow from start to finish. This is how you integrate presets properly to get high-quality results, fast.

Step 1: The Import and Prep (Culling)

First, get your photos off the SD card and into Lightroom Classic. I recommend building 1:1 Previews on import if you have the time, as it makes culling much faster.

Now, the most important first step: culling. Culling is the process of going through all your photos (maybe 500 from a 2-hour shoot) and picking only the best ones to edit (maybe 30).

Do not edit photos you aren’t going to deliver. It’s a massive waste of time.

This is actually the first place I use an AI tool. Manually culling 500 photos is tedious. I use Imagen’s AI Culling, which is part of the Imagen desktop app. I upload my project, and the AI analyzes the entire shoot for things like focus, closed eyes (less of a car problem!), and composition. It groups all my duplicate shots together (like a 10-shot burst of one corner) and shows me the best one, already rated. This cuts my culling time by 75% or more, letting me get straight to editing the winners.

Step 2: Basic Panel Adjustments (The Foundation)

You’ve got your 30 “keeper” photos. Select the first one. Before you even think about a preset, go to the Basic Panel in the Develop module.

  1. Set White Balance (WB): Use the Eyedropper tool. Find something that’s supposed to be neutral gray or white (a white road line, a building, sometimes a white wheel). Click it. This gets your colors in the right ballpark.
  2. Fix Exposure: Is the photo too bright or too dark? Adjust the Exposure slider until the main subject (the car) looks correctly exposed.
  3. Set White/Black Points: Hold the Alt (or Option on Mac) key and click the Whites slider. Drag it right until you just start to see white dots appear. Do the same for the Blacks slider, dragging left until you see black dots.

Now your photo is “normalized” and ready for a preset.

Step 3: Applying and Tweaking Your Preset

Go to your preset library on the left. Hover over your car presets to see a live preview. Find one that fits the mood. Click to apply it.

The first thing you should do is look for the Amount slider at the top of the preset panel. This is a powerful tool. Sometimes a preset is too strong. You can slide the “Amount” from 100 down to 70 or 80 to fade the effect.

After applying, your Exposure or Contrast might look “off” again. That’s fine. Just go back to the Basic Panel and re-tweak the Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows sliders until it looks good again. This is the “tweaking” step that everyone new to presets misses.

Step 4: Refining with HSL and Color Grading

This is where you focus on the car.

  • HSL Panel: Is the red car looking too orange? Go to HSL > Hue and slide Red to the left. Is the green grass in the background too distracting? Go to HSL > Saturation and slide Green down. Want the car’s paint to “pop”? Go to HSL > Luminance and slide the car’s color (e.g., Blue) up.
  • Color Grading Panel: This panel (formerly Split Toning) is amazing for mood. For a “moody” look, I often add a bit of Teal or Blue into the Shadows. For a “golden hour” vibe, I’ll add Orange or Yellow into the Highlights.

Step 5: The Power of Masking (The “Pro” Step)

This is what separates a good edit from a great one.

  1. Mask the Car: Go to the Masking panel and click Select Subject. Lightroom will create a mask of the car. On this mask, I’ll often add a tiny bit of positive Exposure (+0.15), Clarity (+5), and Sharpening.
  2. Mask the Background: Create a duplicate of the Subject mask, then Invert it. Now you have a perfect mask of everything but the car. On this background mask, I’ll drop the Exposure (-0.25), drop the Shadows, and maybe drop the Saturation (-10) to make the car pop.
  3. Mask the Wheels: Use the Brush tool and paint over the wheels and tires. Add Clarity (+15) and Dehaze (+10) to make them look crisp and defined.
  4. Mask Reflections: See a distracting reflection on the windshield? Grab a Brush, set Dehaze to -20, and paint over it. It will magically soften and fade.

Step 6: Final Touches and Export

Almost done.

  • Lens Corrections: In the Lens Corrections panel, check “Enable Profile Corrections” and “Remove Chromatic Aberration.”
  • Transform: Is the car at a weird angle? Use the Transform panel’s “Auto” or “Guided” tools to get your vertical and horizontal lines straight.
  • Sharpening: Add a final bit of sharpening. The key here is the Masking slider in the Sharpening panel. Hold Alt/Option and drag it to the right. The white areas are what’s being sharpened. You only want to sharpen the hard edges of the car, not the soft sky or blurred background.

Now, you’re ready to export.

Section Summary

A professional workflow is methodical. You cull, then correct, then apply the preset, then tweak global settings (HSL), and finally, refine with local adjustments (Masking). A preset doesn’t skip these steps; it just speeds up the “apply” part.

How to Create Your Own Signature Car Presets

The best way to get a unique style and ultimate efficiency is to make your own presets. You are creating a starting point that is perfectly tailored to your style.

Here’s a guide to creating two of the most popular styles.

CRITICAL RULE: When you save your preset, DO NOT include “White Balance,” “Exposure,” “Transform,” or “Lens Corrections” (unless you always use the same lens). You want to set these manually for every photo.

Tutorial: Building a “Clean Commercial” Preset

This style is bright, sharp, and true-to-color. It’s perfect for “for sale” listings, auction sites, or a bright Instagram feed.

  1. Start Photo: Choose a well-lit, correctly exposed photo of a car, preferably shot on a sunny day.
  2. Basic Panel:
    • Contrast: +10
    • Highlights: -40 (to recover sky detail)
    • Shadows: +30 (to see detail in the grille and wheel wells)
    • Whites: +15
    • Blacks: -15
    • Clarity: +5
    • Vibrance: +10 (Vibrance is smarter than Saturation)
  3. Tone Curve: Add a very gentle “S” curve. This adds contrast in a more controlled way.
  4. HSL Panel:
    • Saturation: Leave most colors alone. You might slightly desaturate Greens/Yellows (-10) if the background is distracting.
    • Luminance: Slightly boost the luminance of common car colors: Red (+10), Orange (+10), Yellow (+10), Blue (+10). This makes the paint “shine.”
  5. Color Grading: Leave this alone. You want clean, accurate colors.
  6. Detail Panel:
    • Sharpening: Amount 40, Radius 1.0.
    • Masking: Hold Alt/Option and drag to 70-80. You only want to sharpen edges.
  7. Effects Panel:
    • Vignetting: Amount -10. Just a tiny bit to pull the eye to the center.
  8. How to Save:
    • Click the “+” icon on the Presets panel > “Create Preset.”
    • Name it: “My Clean Commercial V1.”
    • Uncheck the boxes for: White Balance, Exposure, Transform, and Lens Corrections.
    • Click “Create.”

Tutorial: Building a “Dark & Moody” Preset

This style is popular on Instagram. It’s desaturated, high-contrast, and atmospheric. It works best on overcast or golden-hour photos.

  1. Start Photo: Choose a photo shot in soft light (overcast, dusk, or in a shadow).
  2. Basic Panel:
    • Slightly underexpose the image to begin.
    • Contrast: +25
    • Highlights: -60
    • Shadows: +20
    • Whites: -20
    • Blacks: -30 (You want deep, rich blacks)
    • Clarity: +10
    • Saturation: -15 (Pull down the global saturation)
  3. Tone Curve: This is key. Create a “faded” look by grabbing the bottom-left point (the black point) and dragging it up slightly. Create a gentle “S” curve in the middle.
  4. HSL Panel: This is where the style comes from.
    • Hue: Shift Blues toward Teal. Shift Reds toward Orange.
    • Saturation: Heavily desaturate colors you don’t want. Greens (-70), Aquas (-50), Purples (-70), Magentas (-70).
    • Saturation: Boost the colors you do want: Oranges (+20), Yellows (+10). This makes taillights and skin tones pop against the desaturated world.
  5. Color Grading Panel:
    • Shadows: Add Teal or Blue.
    • Highlights: Add Orange or Yellow.
    • Blending: Slide toward the Highlights (~70).
  6. Effects Panel:
    • Vignetting: Amount -25 (a heavier vignette).
    • Grain: Amount 15 (adds a filmic texture).
  7. How to Save:
    • Name it: “My Dark & Moody V1.”
    • Uncheck the boxes for: White Balance, Exposure, Transform, etc.
    • Click “Create.”

Section Summary

Creating your own presets is the key to mastering your style. You learn what every slider does and build a workflow that is 100% yours. I recommend creating a “pack” of 3-5 variations (e.g., a cool version, a warm version, a high-contrast version) to cover different scenarios.

Beyond Static Presets: The Limitations and the AI Solution

I’ve spent years building and refining my own presets. They’re fast. But at the end of the day, they have a fundamental flaw.

The Problem with Traditional Presets

A preset is “dumb.” It’s a non-thinking recipe.

It applies Contrast: +25 whether the photo is a high-contrast sunny day shot or a low-contrast foggy morning shot. It applies Blue Saturation: +10 whether the car is blue or red.

A preset does not adapt.

This means you still have to do a ton of work. You apply the preset, then you fix the exposure, fix the white balance, then tweak the HSL for that specific car’s color, then adjust the contrast for that specific lighting.

For a professional shooting thousands of photos a week, this “tweaking” is the bottleneck. This is where I hit a wall in my own business, which led me to look for a smarter solution.

The AI-Powered Alternative: Imagen

This is the next step in the evolution of editing. Imagen is not a preset. It’s an AI-powered desktop app that integrates directly with my Lightroom Classic catalogs. It doesn’t apply a static recipe; it uses an AI Profile that has learned a specific editing style.

How Imagen Works

The process is different, and it’s much faster.

  1. I still do my culling first (often using Imagen’s AI Culling).
  2. Instead of editing in Lightroom, I upload my selected RAW files from my catalog to the Imagen app.
  3. I choose my AI Profile.
  4. The Imagen cloud servers analyze every single photo individually.
  5. For each photo, the AI makes dynamic adjustments. It will see one photo is underexposed and raise the exposure. It will see the next is too warm and cool it down. It will see a blue car and adjust the blue HSL sliders, and on the next photo of a red car, it will adjust the red sliders.
  6. It does all this (Exposure, WB, HSL, Tone Curve, etc.) to make every photo match my target style.
  7. In about 10-15 minutes (for a full shoot), Imagen tells me the edits are ready. I download them, and they appear in my Lightroom catalog as if I had edited them myself.

My job is reduced from “edit every photo from scratch” to “review and apply final local adjustments.” It’s a 96% time-saver.

Your Style, Your AI: The Personal AI Profile

This is the most powerful feature for a professional. Imagen lets you create a Personal AI Profile by training its AI on your own past edits.

I pointed Imagen at several of my completed Lightroom catalogs (you need at least 3,000 of your best, final-edited photos). It uploaded them and “learned” my unique style. It learned how I expose, how I treat my colors, my tone curve, my sharpening.

Now, when I send it new photos, it edits them like I would. It’s like having a team of editors who I’ve personally trained, available 24/7, for a few cents a photo.

And the best part? It Fine-tunes. After I review the edits from Imagen, I might make a few final tweaks in Lightroom. I can then upload those final-final edits back to my profile. The AI learns from my changes, and my Personal AI Profile gets smarter and more accurate over time, evolving with my style.

Need Speed Now? Talent AI Profiles

If you don’t have 3,000+ edited photos, or if you just want to try a new style, you can use a Talent AI Profile. These are AI Profiles built by world-class photographers.

This is not like buying their presets. It’s like hiring them to edit your photos.

You can browse the Talent AI Profiles inside Imagen and find a style that fits. For car photography, you might pick:

  • A “Clean & Crisp” profile for a bright, commercial look.
  • A “Dark & Moody” profile for that atmospheric, cinematic vibe.
  • A “Warm & Filmic” profile for a vintage feel.

When you apply this Talent Profile, it still edits every photo individually. It’s a “smart preset” that actually adapts to your lighting, your subjects, and your colors, all to match that pro’s style.

Imagen vs. Presets: A Quick Comparison

FeatureTraditional Lightroom PresetImagen AI Profile
How it worksApplies a fixed set of saved settings.AI analyzes each photo and applies dynamic settings to match a style.
AdaptabilityStatic. Does not adapt to light, color, or subject.Dynamic. Adapts to each photo’s unique needs (lighting, subject).
Key SlidersIgnores Exposure/WB (usually).Edits Exposure and WB as part of the style, analyzing each photo.
ConsistencyConsistent settings, but inconsistent results.Consistent results by applying varied settings.
LearningCannot learn or evolve.Evolves. Your Personal AI Profile learns from your final edits.
Best ForA quick starting point, learning, simple batch edits.High-volume editing, true consistency, and reclaiming your time.

Section Summary

Presets are a tool to work faster. Imagen is a tool to stop doing the repetitive work altogether. It allows me to focus my energy on the fun parts: shooting, and the final creative, local adjustments that make a photo truly mine.

Finding and Evaluating Car Presets (Alternatives)

If you’re not a high-volume professional and just want to explore traditional presets, there are thousands out there. As a professional, I must be objective. The “look” is subjective, but the quality is not.

What to Look for in a Quality Preset

  • Subtlety: Good presets are not extreme. They don’t have sliders maxed out. They make subtle, artful changes.
  • Good “Before & Afters”: Does the seller show the preset on one perfect photo, or do they show it on 10 different photos (sunny, cloudy, day, night, red car, blue car)? You want to see how it performs in the real world.
  • Modern Format: The best presets are .XMP files, which can include modern masking (like a pre-built sky mask).
  • Tutorials: The best preset creators include a guide or video on how to use their presets, including what to adjust first.

Popular Marketplaces for Presets

Here are a few places photographers look, with functional descriptions.

  • VSCO: Best known for its mobile app and film emulation presets. The look is often subtle, moody, or faded. They offer a desktop version that integrates with Lightroom.
  • Mastin Labs: This company’s entire focus is on hybrid photography—making your digital photos look like they were shot on specific, classic film stocks (like Kodak Portra 400 or Fuji Pro 400H). Their presets are known for being very accurate and subtle.
  • Creative Market / Etsy: These are massive, open marketplaces. You can find thousands of presets for very low prices. The quality varies dramatically. You can find some hidden gems, but you’ll also find many low-quality, overcooked presets. It’s a “buyer beware” environment.
  • Pro Photographer Stores: Many popular automotive photographers (you probably follow them on Instagram) sell their own preset packs. This is the best way to get a specific modern style. You are buying that artist’s “secret sauce.”

Free Presets: Are They Worth It?

Sometimes.

  • Pros: They are free. This is the best way to start learning to deconstruct presets and see how they work without spending money.
  • Cons: They are often “lite” versions of paid packs, are built with poor quality, or are extremely trendy and will look dated in a year.
  • Where to find them: Adobe actually includes a good set of free presets right inside Lightroom. You can also browse the “Discover” community in Lightroom to find presets and see how people made their edits.

Section Summary

When buying presets, you are paying for an artist’s time and expertise. Look for creators who show their presets working on a wide variety of images and who provide education on how to use them.

Conclusion: Your Workflow, Accelerated

At the end of the day, editing a car photo is about solving a series of technical problems to achieve an artistic vision.

Traditional Lightroom presets are a fantastic tool. They help you learn, they establish consistency, and they speed up your workflow. But they are a blunt instrument. They are a “dumb” recipe that you must manually adapt to every single photo.

For the modern professional photographer, time is the one resource we can’t get back. The bottleneck is no longer how to edit, but the hours it takes to do it.

This is why AI-powered, dynamic editing is the clear next step. By using a Personal AI Profile with Imagen, I’ve moved past the “tweaking” phase. The AI handles the 95% of repetitive work—the exposure, the white balance, the color correction—that used to take me hours. My job is now to review the finished product and add my final 5% of creative magic, the local adjustments, and the final polish.

Whether you are just starting and building your first presets or you’re a seasoned pro looking to get your life back, the goal is the same: Spend less time on sliders and more time creating.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What’s the one thing I should always fix before applying a car preset? Exposure and White Balance. Always. No preset can read your mind or know what your lighting was. Get these two right, then apply your preset.

2. How do I deal with strong reflections on a car’s windshield? A CPL filter on your lens is the best way. In Lightroom, your best bet is to use a Brush mask. Select the windshield and lower the Dehaze slider. This will reduce the “glare” and make it look smoother and less distracting.

3. My preset makes the car’s paint color look wrong. How do I fix it? Go to the HSL Panel. Find the car’s main color (e.g., “Blue”). First, try adjusting the Hue slider until the color looks correct. Then, adjust the Saturation and Luminance sliders to get the “pop” you want.

4. Can I use car presets on photos from my phone? Yes. Lightroom presets work on JPEGs (which phone photos are) as well as RAW files. However, a preset will look much different on a JPEG than a RAW file. You will have far less data to work with, so you won’t be able to recover highlights or shadows as much.

5. What’s the difference between a preset and a LUT? A preset is a set of slider instructions for Lightroom. A LUT (Look Up Table) is a mathematical formula to change colors, mostly used in video editing. You can use LUTs in Lightroom’s “Color Grading” panel, but presets are much more powerful as they control all of Lightroom’s panels.

6. Why do my presets look different on my RAW files vs. JPEGs? RAW files are “flat” and contain a huge amount of data. JPEGs are already “cooked” and compressed by your camera. A preset designed for the flat look of a RAW file will often look way too strong (too much contrast, too much saturation) when applied to an already-cooked JPEG.

7. How many photos do I need to create a Personal AI Profile with Imagen? You need a minimum of 3,000 of your final, edited photos from Lightroom Classic catalogs. The more, the better. This gives the AI enough data to truly learn your unique style across different lighting conditions and subjects.

8. Does Imagen replace Lightroom? No. Imagen is a partner to Lightroom. It’s a separate desktop app that reads your Lightroom Classic catalogs, sends the photos to its cloud for AI editing, and then downloads the edit settings back into your Lightroom catalog. You still use Lightroom for your final tweaks, local adjustments, and exporting.

9. What is “culling” and why is it important for car photography? Culling is the process of choosing the best photos from a shoot to edit. When you shoot a car, you might take 10 photos of the same angle (a “burst”). Culling is where you pick the one sharpest, best-composed shot. It’s vital because it saves you from wasting hours editing photos you’ll never use.

10. How can I make the wheels and tires “pop” more? Use a Brush mask. Paint over the wheels and tires. Then, in the mask’s settings, add Clarity (+15), Dehaze (+10), and a little Sharpening. If the tires look “faded,” drop the Blacks (-20) on that mask to make them look rich and dark.

11. What is a CPL (Circular Polarizer) and why do car photographers use it? It’s a filter that screws onto the front of your lens. When you rotate it, it cuts reflections. It is the single most important piece of gear for a car photographer. It removes the reflections from the windshield and body paint before the photo is even taken, saving you hours of editing.

12. Can Imagen edit black and white car photos? Yes. When you create a Personal AI Profile, Imagen will ask if you are building a color profile or a black & white profile. You can train a separate B&W profile on your black and white edits to get consistent monochrome results.

13. Is it better to buy presets or make my own? It’s best to do both. Buy presets to learn and see how other professionals edit. Make your own presets to define your unique style and speed up your personal workflow.