Most Lightroom presets are built for portraits shot in soft studio light or landscapes photographed at golden hour in a temperate climate. Neither describes African bush light, which swings between flat, dusty midday and short, intense sunrise and sunset windows — and rarely behaves the way a general-purpose preset expects.
Building Golden Hour Safari
The brief for this preset was specific: warm rim light on fur without pushing skin and sky tones into orange mush. That meant working the Color Grading panel harder than the basic sliders — lifting warmth selectively into the shadows and highlights rather than just cranking the temperature slider, which flattens everything evenly instead of following the direction the light is actually falling.
Why Dust & Light Needed Its Own Preset
Backlit dust — herds moving at midday, the haze that hangs over a dry riverbed — has almost no contrast to work with straight out of camera. Standard “punchy” presets crush it into mud. This preset leans on Dehaze and a lifted black point instead of a contrast boost, which keeps the haze itself visible as atmosphere rather than trying to remove it.
A Preset Is a Starting Point, Not a Finish Line
None of these are meant to be applied and exported unchanged — they’re calibrated for a typical file shot in that light, and every RAW file will need a small nudge to exposure or white balance on top. Think of them as skipping the first ten minutes of an edit, not skipping the edit.
The full set — eight new presets built for African light, alongside the original Black & White and Vintage packs — is available in the Presets collection.