Daylight
Open shade, and sun and shade in one frame. The one that fixes rather than flatters.
Shade doesn't just make skin blue
The blue cast is the part white balance fixes. What's left after that is the actual problem, and it's two things happening at once, in opposite directions.
Skin loses colour. Even after a perfect white balance, skin in open shade comes out about 15% less saturated than the same skin in sun, and drifts toward yellow. That isn't a white balance error — it survives a correct one — which is why pushing the Temperature slider never brings the life back.
The greenery gains colour. In exactly the same light, foliage gets more saturated.
So someone standing in open shade in front of a hedge is being drained at the same moment the hedge behind them is being boosted. They meet in the middle. That's why shade portraits look sallow and flat even when the white balance is right, and it's what this pack is for.
One click, or five
Set your white balance and exposure first. Then click 00a for a subject in shade, 00b when both sun and shade are in the frame, or 00c for direct midday light.
Or build it. Same number means same job — pick one. Different numbers stack.
The three colour slots are deliberately independent — 02 only touches skin's hues, 03 only greens, 04 only the sky. So you can fix a face without the grass moving, which is usually what you want.
Shot and edited with these
My own work, straight out of this pack.
Sun and shade in the same frame
This isn't a white balance problem, and no global setting will fix it.
A sunlit subject and a shaded one in the same picture are 3 to 4 stops apart in brightness and — the part people miss — a long way apart in colour too. Whatever single white balance you pick, one of them is wrong.
For scale: correcting open blue-sky shade to daylight is about the same size of colour shift as converting tungsten film to daylight stock. The old trick of putting an 81B warming filter on for shade closes less than 40% of the gap. It was always a partial fix — the arithmetic just says so out loud.
Since the problem is local, the fix has to be local. That's what M1 in the masked folder does: it warms only the shaded part of the frame, using a local temperature that doesn't touch your own white balance at all.
Read this bit before installing them
The bonus folder has two presets that add a mask, and masks work differently:
- Lightroom adds preset masks, it never replaces them.
- No preset can remove a mask. Not these, not anyone's.
- Apply one twice and you get two. Delete the spare by hand in the Masking panel.
That's how Lightroom works, not something wrong with these files. It's also why the main pack has no masks and none of the one-click looks contains one — the two folders are separate in the download, so you can install the main pack and never see a mask. Needs Lightroom Classic 11 or newer.
Details that shaped it
- 02b is stronger than darker skin usually needs. Shade rotates light skin a fair way toward yellow and darker skin barely at all, so the same correction isn't the same correction on every face. The presets taper by tone to allow for that, but check 02b before you commit to it.
- Open shade has almost no modelling, and there's a number behind that. A surface turned fully sideways to an open sky still gets half the light, so the whole tonal range across a face is only about one stop. Under sun it's effectively unlimited. That's what 05 is stretching back out.
- A clear sky sits exactly between Lightroom's Aqua and Blue sliders. Both act on it, neither is centred on it — which is why moving one alone always looks wrong. 04 moves both, in opposite directions, to pull a big sky together into one colour instead of a cyan-to-blue smear.
- A bright sky next to a sunlit subject routinely clips its blue channel. Once that happens the sky goes flat cyan and the gradient across it disappears. 04 pulls it back off the ceiling.
There's no grain in this one
Every other pack in the line is imitating a film. This one isn't — it's a correction for something cameras genuinely get wrong in daylight, and adding grain would be pretending it's a look.
It stacks cleanly under any of the other four, so take the grain from whichever of those you're using.
This is the one that goes underneath
It's a correction, so run it first and put a look on top.
With Emulsion or Reversal: those write the tone curve, so use their curve rather than 05 Shape — whichever you click last wins. With Nightfall: no conflict, because this pack leaves Colour Grading alone specifically so Nightfall's illuminant presets still work. With Silver: apply the colour corrections before converting, since the mixer reads the colours underneath.
Same as the rest
Lightroom Classic
Develop → Presets panel → the + button → Import Presets.
Lightroom desktop
File → Import Profiles & Presets → select the zip.
Lightroom mobile
Open a photo → Edit → Presets → tap Yours → three-dot menu → Import Presets.
That's the line finished
Five packs, and every fix in all of them came from running the presets on real photos rather than from theory. So if something's off, say so — and if you make something with them, post it. I'd like to see.
Use them on anything
Personal work, client work, prints, commercial jobs — all fine, no attribution needed, though it's always nice. Just please don't resell the files, put them in a paid bundle, or re-host the download somewhere else. Link back here instead so people get the current version. Provided as-is; every photo you make with them is entirely yours.