I was sent the Forever Thine Wedding Workflow for Lightroom from Sleeklens in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
I already perform approximately 50% of my photo editing in Lightroom, I usually then finish each image in Photoshop. For this review, I did not move the images to Photoshop except to resize them and place them into the "before and after" preview images.
The Forever Thine Wedding Workflow is, of course, intended for you to edit your wedding images quickly and easily, but it is appropriate for other images as well. Sleeklens also makes more presets (see also on Pinterest). In this post you will see some images from my most recent wedding, one from a wedding I second shot for another photographer, and some from a recent fashion shoot. (I don't shoot a lot in July and August so I did not have many RAW images to choose from until my wedding this past weekend. I do not normally post any images until the bride and groom have seen them, so I only chose a few to edit for this review.)
If you have never installed presets before, it's very easy, and the zip file that you download has instructions to tell you what to do. Once installed, the presets are organized very well, it's pretty easy to get an idea of what each one will do for your photo, especially the adjustment presets. Each is in a category that also gives you an idea. The categories are as follows:
All-in-One
Base
Exposure
Color Correct
Tone/Tint
Polish
Vignette
Wedding Film
Wedding Fashion
Wedding Matte
Wedding Vintage
Wedding Black & White
Once I had a look around, I knew what to do. I actually edited several images then I chose my favorites from those images which to post here. It wasn't until I was writing down the recipe I followed for each that I realized I ended up choosing a lot of the same items. As you'll see if you look at the recipes, I used the All-in-One "At the Chapel" several times. I guess it really fits my style! I also used the base "Morning Spark" a couple of times. This makes sense, really, we choose what we like, what fits our style. It's hard for me to use some of the others as they're maybe darker than my style. However, it's great to see the possibilities and maybe in the future I can learn how to use those as well. With that said, there are so many options and combinations that could be done that it would take me years to try them all! There really is something for everyone in here.
The set also comes with several Lightroom brushes. I admit that I do not use brush presets much and so I am less familiar with doing this. I did play around some with them and I know some of these images here had some used on them, but I failed to write down exactly what I did. I know that the teeth whitening brush and the fix under/overexpose brushes will come in especially handy.
The one thing I did have trouble with was that some of the presets, I think mostly the all-in-one, would remove my lens profile from the photo. Lens profile is assigned to my photos on import and so is used on everything, I had to watch to make sure it was added back to these images.
Overall, this is a great set of presets and can be useful to anyone, not just wedding photographers. There are many that I know I can use often for my own workflow.
Now, I offer you my samples. The recipe is under each one. Each before image is SOOC from the RAW.
