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The 25 most popular Lightroom preset packs
I graded the same 40 photos with 25 bestselling preset packs to find which ones survive contact with real-world light. Five are genuinely excellent.
Preset packs promise one-click grades and deliver orange skin. To find the exceptions, I ran the same 40 photos — daylight, tungsten, neon and overcast — through 25 of the bestselling packs and scored consistency, skin tones and editability.
How I scored them
Each pack earned points for three things: consistency across lighting conditions, skin tones that don't need rescue work, and editability — clean slider separation so you can push the look further. Packs that only work on golden-hour landscapes scored badly. That's the point.
What the winners have in common
- Restrained colour shifts: the best packs move hues 10–15 points, not 40.
- Separate grain and tone curves: you can keep the grade and lose the crunch.
- Lighting-specific variants: day, tungsten and night versions beat one-size-fits-all.
- Toolkit presets included: exposure fixes and skin-tone savers alongside the looks.
The shortlist
Five packs scored above 85/100, and all five share the traits above. My personal pick is the documentary-style set in third place — it flatters every thumbnail I've cut this year. The full 25-pack ranking with sample galleries is in the companion video.
