Never run out of looks Lightroom presets

A working card is rarely one subject. A wedding runs into a night street on the drive home, a commission runs into the walk back to the car, and a pack built for a single look leaves most of what you shot untouched. These are the purchases that cover the rest of the card.

Whole Library by Wholeframe is the largest thing here, 4,176 presets across 232 collections, reaching from studio lighting patterns out to Milky Way Core, from Subway Tile to Fur Coat. Every Subject by Everyshot is 2,556 across 142, sorted the way a photographer actually sorts work: people, events, indoor sport, buildings, street, product, food, landscape, weather, seasons, botanical, wildlife, water, and the night sky.

Subjects Library by Subjectbook holds 1,548 and stops where the subjects do, leaving out landscape, weather and the night. Editor's Library by Editbench holds 1,476 and is filed by grade rather than by subject: colour harmony, mood, film and darkroom process, difficult light, retouch and technical bases, and output prepared for paper or for a screen. People and Places by Townscene is 1,044, faces and events and indoor sport together with the buildings and streets they happen in. Outdoor System by Openterrain is 1,008 and never once comes indoors: ground, sky, seasons, botanical, wildlife, coast, and everything after dark.

The Complete Library by PresetStacks sits apart from those at 325, a single collection called Stack 001 Everyday rather than a shelf of them, meant as the one set that stays loaded whatever you happen to be photographing.

Buying a library is a decision about breadth and nothing else; the same hand-built work goes into an eighteen-preset pack. Where your pictures already sit in one place, a narrower group is the better purchase, and the portrait studio group or the open landscape group will serve you better than a shelf you never walk down.