As a professional photographer, let me tell you: shooting sports is an adrenaline rush. Capturing that peak-action moment, the game-winning play, or the raw emotion of an athlete… it’s a feeling like no other. But then comes the “other” part. The part where you get back to your computer and face a memory card holding two thousand, three thousand, or even five thousand photos. All of them need to be culled, edited, and delivered. And they were probably due yesterday. The editing bottleneck is where the adrenaline stops and the headache begins. For years, we’ve all chased the same solution: sports presets for lightroom. We all wanted that “one-click” magic button. This guide is about that chase. We will cover how to build a better preset and explore the limits of that approach. Then, I’ll show you the workflow I use now, which ditches traditional presets for something smarter, faster, and far more consistent: AI editing.

Key Takeaways

  • Sports is Uniquely Hard: Editing sports photos is tough. You have to deal with high-volume galleries, fast-moving subjects (requiring high ISO and causing noise), and lighting that changes from second to second.
  • Presets Are a Flawed Fix: Traditional Lightroom presets promise speed. But they are a “one-size-fits-all” tool. They apply the same settings to every photo, whether it’s in bright sun or dark shadow. This means you still have to re-edit almost every picture.
  • Build a Smarter Base Preset: If you do build a traditional preset, don’t include Exposure or White Balance. Focus your preset on the style (like HSL, Tone Curve) and the technical fixes (like Sharpening, Noise Reduction). This makes it a little more flexible.
  • AI Editing is the Real Solution: The modern solution is AI editing that adapts to each individual photo. This is what presets always promised to be but never were.
  • Your Style, Your AI: Imagen‘s Personal AI Profile is the evolution of the preset. It’s a desktop app that works with Lightroom Classic. Instead of you buying a preset, the AI learns your own unique style from your past edits. It then edits new photos exactly like you would, adjusting Exposure, White Balance, and everything else on a per-photo basis.
  • No Edits? No Problem: If you’re new and don’t have thousands of edited photos to train an AI, you can start immediately. You can use a Talent AI Profile (a pro’s style that still adapts to each photo) or a Lite Personal AI Profile (which uses AI for the hard parts like Exposure/WB and applies a traditional preset for the style).
  • A Full Workflow, Not Just a Filter: A pro workflow is more than just color. Imagen automates the entire process. This includes AI Culling (finding blurry shots and duplicates), AI Crop & Straighten (fixing horizons), and AI Subject Mask (finding the player for you).
  • Your AI Gets Smarter: The best part is the feedback loop. After Imagen edits your photos, you can make final tweaks in Lightroom. Then, you Fine-Tune your profile with those tweaks. Your AI learns from your changes and gets even more accurate over time.

The Unique Challenge of Editing Sports Photography

Before we can find a solution, we have to respect the problem. Why is sports editing so much harder than, say, studio portraits or landscapes? It comes down to a few key factors that all hit you at the same time.

The Sheer Volume

This is the most obvious one. A wedding photographer might shoot 5,000 photos and deliver 800. A sports photographer might shoot 3,000 photos… per game. And if you’re covering a weekend tournament, you can come home with over 10,000 photos. Just managing this volume is a full-time job. Culling alone can take hours before you’ve even moved a single slider.

Extreme Speed and High ISO

Sports are fast. That’s the whole point. To freeze that motion, we need fast shutter speeds (1/1000s or faster). To get that shutter speed, especially indoors or at night, our ISO has to go way up. It’s not uncommon to shoot an entire game at ISO 3200, 6400, or even higher. And what does high ISO mean? Noise. Lots of it. Every single photo needs careful, strong noise reduction, which is a slow, processor-heavy task.

Brutal and Mixed Lighting

This is, in my opinion, the hardest part. You rarely control the light.

  • Day Games: You face “raccoon eyes” from helmets, harsh overhead sun, and deep shadows. A player can run from a bright, sunlit patch of grass into the deep shadow of the stadium in two seconds.
  • Night Games: You’re at the mercy of stadium lights. These lights are often different colors (some green, some magenta), flicker, and create weird color casts on uniforms.
  • Indoor Gyms: Welcome to the worst light in photography. Dim, buzzing, orange-yellow fluorescent or sodium-vapor lights. They make skin tones look awful and require a ton of correction.

A single gallery can have photos in bright sun, deep shadow, and mixed artificial light. How can one preset possibly handle all of that?

The Need for Speed (Delivery)

Sports are about now. News outlets, schools, and fans want to see photos of the game tonight, not next week. The pressure to cull, edit, and deliver thousands of photos in just a few hours is immense. This demand for speed is what drove us all to find shortcuts. And that shortcut was the preset.

The Traditional Solution: Sports Presets for Lightroom

When you’re drowning in 5,000 photos, the idea of a “one-click edit” is more than appealing. It feels like a life raft. This is the promise of the Lightroom preset.

What Is a Lightroom Preset?

Let’s get functional, as the instructions say. A preset is just a saved “recipe” of slider positions. When you create a preset, you’re saving the exact settings for Exposure (+1.0), Contrast (+20), Highlights (-50), Shadows (+40), HSL, and so on.

When you apply that preset to a new photo, Lightroom moves all the sliders to those exact saved positions. Simple as that.

Why Presets Became So Popular for Sports

We bought them. We made them. We traded them. Presets became the standard tool for sports photographers for two main reasons:

  1. The Promise of Speed: The dream was to import your photos, select all, click your “Gritty Football” preset, and export. A 5-hour job done in 5 minutes.
  2. The Goal of Consistency: A preset could, in theory, apply your signature “look” across an entire gallery. This would make all the photos feel like they belong together, which is the mark of a professional. You could create a high-contrast, desaturated look for football or a vibrant, colorful look for soccer.

This was the dream. But if you’re a working pro, you know the dream and the reality are two very different things.

The “Dry” Reality: Limitations of a Preset-Only Workflow

Here’s the problem. A preset is static. It’s dumb. It does exactly what you told it to, no matter what. It doesn’t look at the photo. It doesn’t care that one photo is a dark, underexposed silhouette and the next is a bright, overexposed shot of the sky.

This “one-size-fits-all” approach just creates “one-size-fits-none” results.

This leads to the workflow I call “Fixing the Fix.”

  1. You apply your “Awesome Sports Preset” to a photo.
  2. The photo is now way too dark because the preset lowers exposure, but this photo was already underexposed.
  3. So, you have to fix the fix. You adjust the Exposure slider.
  4. Then you notice the White Balance is all wrong. The gym’s light made the skin orange. The preset, which was built for daylight, makes it worse.
  5. So, you adjust the White Balance.
  6. Then you move to the next photo. You apply the preset. This one is too bright.
  7. Repeat steps 3-5.

You end up doing this for every… single… photo. You are manually re-editing every image you just applied a “time-saving” preset to. You’ve saved zero time. In fact, you might have added time because you had to fight the preset’s settings before you could even start your real edit.

And what about consistency? It’s gone. By the time you’ve manually tweaked 500 photos, your gallery is drifting all over the place. The workflow is broken.

How to Build a Better Sports Preset (If You Must)

I lived in that “Fixing the Fix” world for years. I eventually learned that the concept of a preset isn’t totally useless. You just have to be much smarter about what you save in that preset.

The goal is to create a Base Preset that only saves your stylistic choices, not your corrective ones.

Let’s walk through how to build a flexible base preset for sports.

The “Look”: Define Your Sports Style

First, what’s your style? Sports edits generally fall into a few buckets:

  • The Gritty Look: Very popular for football, rugby, or wrestling. This style features high clarity and contrast, crushed or faded blacks, and often desaturated colors (especially the greens of the field).
  • The Clean & Vibrant Look: Great for daytime sports like tennis, golf, or soccer. This style is all about clean whites, bright and accurate colors, and good subject separation.
  • The Cinematic Look: This is more for athlete portraits or feature images. It involves moody colors, heavy vignettes, and careful color grading to set a dramatic tone.

For this tutorial, let’s build a preset that’s a mix of Gritty and Clean. We want pop and contrast, but we still want good, vibrant colors.

A Step-by-Step Tutorial to Creating Your Base Preset

Open a good, well-lit “keeper” photo from a recent sports shoot in Lightroom Classic’s Develop module. We’ll use this as our test image.

Step 1: The Non-Negotiables (Lens Corrections)

This is the first thing you should do. Scroll down to the Lens Corrections panel.

  • Check Enable Profile Corrections. This fixes distortion and vignetting from your specific lens.
  • Check Remove Chromatic Aberration. This gets rid of those nasty green and purple lines on high-contrast edges. Save these two settings in every preset you make. They are purely technical fixes.

Step 2: The Foundation (Basic Panel)

This is where we have to be careful.

  • White Balance (WB): DO NOT TOUCH THIS. Leave it “As Shot.” Every photo will have different lighting. Saving a WB value is the #1 mistake people make.
  • Exposure: DO NOT TOUCH THIS EITHER. This is the other major “corrective” setting that changes for every single photo.
  • Contrast: Give it a little bump. Let’s say +15. This adds a bit of initial pop.
  • Highlights: Sports often have bright skies or jerseys. Pull the Highlights down to -40 to recover some of that detail.
  • Shadows: Athletes’ faces are often in shadow (under helmets, caps). Lift the Shadows to +30 to see their eyes.
  • Whites & Blacks: This sets your dynamic range. A good trick is to hold the Alt (or Option on Mac) key while dragging the slider.
    • For Whites, drag right until you just start to see a few specks of white. Let’s say +10.
    • For Blacks, drag left until you just start to see a few specks of black. Let’s say -15.
  • Presence (The “Pop” Sliders): This is key for sports.
    • Texture: Leave this at 0. It can make skin look strange and over-sharpened.
    • Clarity: This is the magic “grit” slider. Be careful, as it can look bad fast. A value of +20 is a good, punchy start.
    • Dehaze: This adds contrast and saturation. A little goes a long way. Let’s try +10.
    • Vibrance & Saturation: Let’s boost Vibrance to +10 (which smartly boosts muted colors) and leave Saturation alone.

Step 3: The Style (Tone Curve)

The Basic panel was mostly corrective, but the Tone Curve is pure style. We want contrast.

  • Click on the Point Curve (the white graph).
  • Add a point in the shadows (about 25% in) and pull it down slightly.
  • Add a point in the highlights (about 75% in) and pull it up slightly.
  • This creates a gentle “S-Curve,” which is the classic way to add contrast.

Step 4: The Brand (HSL/Color)

This is where you make your style unique.

  • Greens: Is the stadium grass an ugly, distracting yellow-green? Go to the Saturation tab, grab the Green slider, and pull it down to -25. Go to the Hue tab and slide Green slightly more towards blue.
  • Blues: Want a deep, rich sky? Go to Luminance and pull the Blue slider down to -20. Go to Saturation and boost Blue to +15.
  • Oranges/Yellows (Skin Tones): Be careful here. You can boost Orange Luminance to +10 to brighten faces a bit.

Step 5: The Finish (Detail Panel)

This is the second-most important panel for sports.

  • Sharpening: Your photos need to be sharp.
    • Set Amount to around +60.
    • Masking: This is the pro-tip. Hold the Alt/Option key and drag the Masking slider. Your screen will turn black. As you drag right, white areas will appear. These white areas are the only parts being sharpened. Drag it to +70 or so, until only the edges of your players are white. This sharpens the subject, not the blurry background (bokeh) where it would just add noise.
  • Noise Reduction: You will have noise.
    • Luminance: Set this to +25. This is a good starting point to smooth out the grain from high ISO.
    • Detail: Keep this around 50.

Saving Your (Smarter) Base Preset

Okay, we have our look. Now, let’s save it correctly.

  1. Go to the Presets panel on the left and click the + icon.
  2. Select Create Preset.
  3. Name it “My Sports Base”.
  4. Here is the most important part. UNCHECK THE BOXES FOR:
    • White Balance
    • Exposure
    • Transform (which includes Crop & Straighten)
  5. Make sure all the other boxes are checked (Tone, Presence, HSL, Detail, Lens Corrections, etc.).
  6. Click Create.

You now have a flexible preset. You can apply this, and it won’t mess up your Exposure or White Balance. You still have to manually adjust the Exposure and WB for every single photo, but at least you’re not fighting the preset anymore.

The Problem We Still Haven’t Solved

This is a better workflow. But is it a good one?

No.

We still have to go through 3,000 photos and manually set the Exposure and White Balance for every single one. We still have to manually straighten every crooked horizon. We still have to manually create a mask for every player we want to brighten.

The “one-click” dream is still dead. The bottleneck is still there. This is the exact problem that forced me to change my entire workflow.

The Evolution of “Preset”: AI Editing with Imagen

I hit my breaking point after a long weekend covering a swim meet. I had 6,000 photos, all shot under the worst, green-hued, mixed-light gym lamps you can imagine. My “base preset” workflow was useless. Every photo had a different color cast. I spent 12 hours editing and my eyes were bleeding.

I didn’t need a better preset. I needed an assistant. I needed something that could look at each photo, understand the bad lighting, and know how I would fix it.

This is when I found Imagen.

What is Imagen and How Does It Replace Presets?

Imagen is a desktop app that integrates directly with my Adobe Lightroom Classic catalogs. But it is not a preset.

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It’s a Personal AI Profile.

Here is the key difference, and it’s the most important part of this entire article:

  • A Preset applies the same static settings to all photos.
  • An Imagen AI Profile analyzes each photo individually and applies dynamic, custom settings to each one based on your style.

When I send a photo to my Imagen profile, the AI (which processes in the cloud for speed) doesn’t just slap a filter on it. It looks at the photo and says, “Ah, this one is underexposed by 1.2 stops. The white balance is 500 points too warm. The subject is in shadow.” Then, it moves all the sliders in Lightroom (Exposure, Temp, Tint, Shadows, HSL, everything) to the exact spot it knows I would, based on how I’ve edited thousands of photos in the past.

It’s not an assistant. It is me, editing at a speed of half a second per photo.

How to Create Your “Sports Preset” in Imagen (Your Personal AI Profile)

This is the part that feels like magic. You don’t “build” this AI profile by moving sliders. You teach it, simply by showing it your best work.

  • Step 1: Gather Your “Training” Photos: This is the one-time “homework.” The Imagen docs say you need a minimum of 2,000 edited photos. I found the best results come from using 3-5 of my recent, consistently edited Lightroom Classic catalogs. For my sports profile, I fed it two full football seasons and one track season. The key is that you must be happy with these edits. The AI will learn exactly what you show it.
  • Step 2: Point Imagen to Your Catalogs: You open the Imagen desktop app and start creating a new Personal AI Profile. You tell it which catalogs to learn from.
  • Step 3: Upload and Train: Imagen scans your catalogs (it doesn’t move or copy your photos) and uploads only the edit data (your slider positions) to the cloud. Its AI system then analyzes all your decisions—how you handle high ISO, how you fix green gym light, how you crop for action—and builds a profile that thinks like you. This process can take a day or so.
  • Step 4: The Result: You get an email. Your Personal AI Profile is ready. It’s now listed in the Imagen app, ready to edit for you. This is your style, not a filter you bought.

What If You Don’t Have 2,000+ Edited Photos?

This is what I tell all my new mentees. You’re not stuck. Imagen has two great solutions.

  1. Talent AI Profiles: This is the closest thing to “buying a preset,” but it’s so much better. Imagen has partnered with world-class photographers and turned their editing styles into AI profiles. You can pick a “Talent AI Profile” that you like (say, a clean and vibrant one) and use it right now. The key is that it’s still an AI profile. It will still adapt to each of your photos individually. It’s like having that pro photographer edit your gallery for you.
  2. Lite Personal AI Profile: This is the perfect bridge from the “Base Preset” we built earlier. You give Imagen a preset you like (like the “.xmp” file we created). Then, you just let Imagen‘s AI handle the two hardest, most time-consuming parts: White Balance and Exposure. Imagen will analyze each photo, set the WB and Exposure perfectly, and then apply your preset’s stylistic settings on top. This alone solves 80% of the preset problem.

Beyond the Preset: Imagen’s AI Tools for a Complete Sports Workflow

Here’s where the whole game changes. Remember our broken workflow? The problem wasn’t just color and tone. It was culling, straightening, and masking. Imagen is a complete workflow, not just an editor.

This is where Imagen‘s “Additional AI Tools” come in. These are simple checkboxes you add to your editing project.

First, AI Culling

Before you edit, you have to cull. This is the other time-suck. Imagen has AI Culling built-in. You point it at your folder of 3,000 new photos. The AI scans them all and gives you ratings based on:

  • Blurry shots (critical for sports)
  • Closed eyes
  • Subject’s face is out of focus
  • Grouping duplicates (so you can pick the one best frame from a 20-shot burst)

It does in 10 minutes what used to take me two hours. I just review its “Selects” and make final adjustments.

AI Straighten and AI Crop

When you’re panning with a fast-moving player, your horizon is never straight. I used to spend an hour just going through a gallery with the Straighten tool.

Now, I just check the Straighten box when I send my photos to edit. Imagen‘s AI finds the horizon in every single photo and straightens it perfectly. I also check the Crop box, and it applies an intelligent rule-of-thirds crop to every photo, framing the action beautifully.

The Game-Changer: AI Subject Mask

This is the one that blows my mind. A preset can’t find the player. It can’t brighten a face under a helmet. You have to go in, grab the masking brush, and paint on every single player.

Or, you can just check the Subject Mask box.

When Imagen edits your photo, its AI also finds the person (or people) in the shot and creates a perfect mask for them. When you get the photo back in Lightroom, the mask is already there. You can have your Personal AI Profile learn to automatically apply settings to that mask (like “+0.5 Exposure” and “+10 Sharpness”) every time.

Think about that. You can tell Imagen: “Go through my 3,000 photos. Find the player in each one. Straighten the horizon. Crop it. Fix the white balance. Set the exposure. Apply my signature gritty style. Sharpen the player. And reduce the noise. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.”

My Pro Workflow: Combining Lightroom and Imagen

This is my exact, step-by-step workflow for a typical high school football game (2,000-3,000 photos).

  • Step 1: Ingest. I import all the photos into a new Lightroom Classic catalog.
  • Step 2: Cull with Imagen. I open the Imagen desktop app and create a new project. I select Cull. I point it to the new folder and let it run.
  • Step 3: Review Culling. After about 15 minutes, the cull is done. I use Imagen‘s culling interface to quickly review its “Selects” (the keepers). I uncheck any I don’t like or add any it might have missed.
  • Step 4: Send to Edit. From that same screen, I click the “Send to Edit” button. The 800-or-so keepers are now ready to be edited.
  • Step 5: Choose Profile & Tools. A new screen pops up.
    • I choose my “Personal AI Profile – Sports”.
    • I check the boxes for Straighten, Crop, and Subject Mask.
    • I also check the Denoise box (which is free in beta) because I shot at ISO 6400.
  • Step 6: Go Get Coffee. I click “Upload.” The Imagen app uploads the photos (or Smart Previews, which is faster) and sends them to the cloud for AI processing. A gallery of 800 photos takes about 10-15 minutes.
  • Step 7: Download & Review. Imagen notifies me the edits are ready. I click “Download.” The app pulls all the edit data (the slider settings, the crop data, the AI masks) down from the cloud and applies it directly to my photos inside my Lightroom Classic catalog.
  • Step 8: Final Touches & Fine-Tuning. I open Lightroom. It’s like magic. Every photo is culled, straightened, cropped, noise-reduced, and edited in my style. I’ll spend 10 minutes scrolling through, maybe making a tiny tweak on one or two key shots.
  • Step 9: Fine-Tune! This is the most important step. After I’m 100% happy, I go back to the Imagen app, find the project, and click “Upload Final Edits.” This tells Imagen to re-scan my final tweaks. The AI learns from them. If it sees I consistently made my edits a little brighter, it will learn to edit brighter next time. My profile is always evolving with me.

That’s it. A job that took me an entire day is now done in under an hour.

Conclusion: Stop Adjusting, Start Creating

The “sports preset for Lightroom” was a good idea. It was a tool we built to try and solve a massive problem. But the tool was flawed. It promised speed but gave us more work. It promised consistency but forced us to be inconsistent.

We’ve been stuck in the “Fixing the Fix” workflow for too long.

The goal was never to find the perfect preset. The goal was to get our time back. The goal was to spend more time behind the lens and less time behind the computer. AI editing with Imagen is the first and only tool I’ve found that actually delivers on that promise.

It gives you the consistency and style of a preset but with the intelligence and adaptability of a human editor. It automates the 90% of editing that is boring, repetitive, and technical (culling, straightening, white balance). This frees you up to spend your time on the 10% that matters: the creative part. You can focus on that one “hero” shot, or just close your laptop and go to bed. And that is worth everything.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What’s the biggest problem with using traditional Lightroom presets for sports? The biggest problem is that they are “one-size-fits-all.” A preset applies the exact same settings to every photo, whether it was shot in bright sun or dark shadow. This forces you to manually re-edit almost every photo, which defeats the purpose of a “time-saving” preset.

2. Why is editing sports photography so uniquely difficult? It’s a combination of challenges at once: high volume (thousands of photos), fast action (requiring high ISO, which creates noise), and extreme, mixed lighting conditions (from harsh sun to green-tinted gym lights).

3. What are the key settings to adjust for a good sports edit? Technically, you need excellent Sharpening (to make the action crisp) and Noise Reduction (to clean up high ISO grain). Stylistically, you need control over Contrast, Clarity (for “grit”), and the HSL/Color panel (to manage ugly field/gym colors).

4. Should I include White Balance and Exposure in my saved “base” preset? No. This is the most common mistake. Exposure and White Balance are corrective settings that change for every single photo. Locking them into a preset is what causes the “Fixing the Fix” problem. Your preset should only save your stylistic settings (like HSL, Tone Curve, Detail).

5. How is Imagen’s Personal AI Profile different from a preset? A preset is static; it applies the same recipe to all photos. An Imagen Personal AI Profile is dynamic; it uses AI to analyze each photo individually and applies custom settings to it based on your unique style. It intelligently adjusts Exposure, White Balance, HSL, and more on a per-photo basis.

6. How many photos do I need to create a Personal AI Profile? You need a minimum of 2,000 of your already edited photos from Lightroom Classic catalogs (or using .XMP files). The AI learns your style by studying the decisions you made in these past edits.

7. What if I’m new and don’t have thousands of edited photos? You have two great options. You can use a Talent AI Profile, which is the adaptive AI style of a top professional photographer. Or, you can use a Lite Personal AI Profile, where you provide a traditional preset for the “style” and Imagen‘s AI intelligently handles the difficult White Balance and Exposure corrections for you.

8. What is a Talent AI Profile? It’s an AI editing profile created by a leading professional photographer. You can “rent” their style, but it’s not just a preset. It’s their AI-powered style, meaning it will still intelligently adapt to the different lighting and exposure needs of your specific photos.

9. Does Imagen just edit color, or can it do more? It’s a complete workflow. Beyond the AI editing profiles, Imagen also offers additional AI tools you can add to your edit, including AI Culling, AI Straighten, AI Crop, AI Subject Mask, and AI Denoise.

10. What is AI Culling and why is it useful for sports? AI Culling is a tool within Imagen that scans your entire photo shoot (thousands of photos) and flags the blurry, out-of-focus, or bad shots. It also groups all the duplicates from your action bursts. This lets you review only the best photos, saving hours of manual culling.

11. Can Imagen automatically straighten my photos? Yes. You can add AI Straighten to your edit. The AI will find the horizon line in every photo (even on crooked fields) and straighten it automatically.

12. How does Imagen’s AI Subject Mask work? When you add Subject Mask to your edit, the AI identifies the person (or people) in your photo and automatically creates a perfect mask for them. This mask appears in Lightroom, allowing you (or your AI Profile) to apply specific adjustments only to the player, like brightening them or making them sharper.

13. What does “Fine-Tuning” my Personal AI Profile mean? This is how your AI profile gets smarter. After Imagen edits your gallery, you might make a few final tweaks in Lightroom. You then use the “Upload Final Edits” feature. Imagen analyzes your changes, learns from them, and updates your Personal AI Profile. So, the next time you edit, it will be even more accurate to your evolving style.