I was approached by SleekLens a few weeks a go when they asked if I would be interested in trying out one of their products in return for an honest review. I've never been asked to do that before so admittedly I was excited, but before I accepted I did some research.
Sleeklens offer a lot of tools, all aimed at Photographers using Lightroom and Photoshop. When you first hit their site you'll notice most of the images they use target portrait photographers, weddings, babies etc. From what I could see there were no examples of cars, but that's ok. The second thing you'll notice is the price, on average you're looking at spending about £40 for a pack of presets. That's not bad, but if you're not getting payed for your work then you may have to think about it. If you're on the fence at that point there is a free set to give you a taste of the results you should expect.
Anyway, on with the review. The workflow I received was "Through the Woods", a selection of presets for use with landscape photography. Ordinarily I would have tried these out on some recent car shots, but instead I chose some from our trip to the Forest of Dean. The pack came with all the necessary files and a little guide on how to install them. Once you get them into Lightroom you can see you get 12 different presets which I thought was quite a generous amount. Along with that you get a whole bunch of tools to help adjust those presets, things to brighten, darken, sharpen, boost colours etc. Now if you're new to Lightroom then I can see how this would be a massive benefit to you, but for those who know their way around, this may just be more convenient than tweaking the sliders around to get the look you're after.
I found that most of the presets made my photos look a little over the top for what I like, however they are fully adjustable. I started with the one called "Warm Shadows", it fitted best with the woodland shots which already had quite an autumnal feel. Then I used the additional tools to help it get to a final image I was happy with. I found that using the "Auto Tone" helped to knock back some of the extreme saturation and help the image look a little more natural. I like my edits to be subtle, nothing too fancy but not so much that it looks like it just came straight from the camera, something that can definitely be achieved with this workflow, but I can't help but feel that I wouldn't be using them to their full potential.
Overall I was impressed with the results, l wasn't really sure what to expect or if the built in styles would be for me or not, but I'm happy with how they turned out. I would recommend checking these out if you're new to photography and trying to define your style, maybe you're looking into workflows and how they can help your efficiency or you use them already and just want to try something different. Either way, head to the Sleeklens site and have a look for yourself.
