I've been into photography as a hobby for a couple of years. I've also quit a long time in between. I've started picking it up again the last couple of months. Got myself a new camera and I'm really enjoying shooting and editing pictures with Lightroom.

I never used presets in the past. It just somehow felt like "cheating" or as if it wasn't really mine. But a couple of days ago, when I just wanted to get a couple of pics done quickly as some kind of "preview" of what I shot, I used some presets to see if I could get the pictures done a bit quicker.

I fell for the Cinematic presets that are build into Lightroom. Used it on some industrial pics I shot and it came out amazingly. Now, however, I feel like I'm using them a bit too much...

It's hard for me to find the right balance & know when to use them. I'm all over the place with them sometimes as I just think "oh this one looks nice for this pic", changing the colors of the original picture (which is fine but the next picture tends to be in another preset, with other colors).

So because of this I was wondering: How often do you use presets? Do you also use custom presets you downloaded or made yourself? I haven't yet really figured out how they change the colors with them so nicely, but it works I guess.