HOW TO CHANGE LIGHTROOM PRESET OPACITY: QUICK THOUGHTS ON OPAL

HOW TO CHANGE LIGHTROOM PRESET OPACITY // If you keep up with photography news, you might have noticed this new plugin called Opal. I immediately got excited about testing it as it allows you to adjust strength and opacity of your presets in Adobe Lightroom. And it’s pretty awesome.

HOW DOES THIS LIGHTROOM OPACITY PLUGIN WORK?

After everything is set up, you just hit arrow up and a small window shows up. By moving the slider left or right, you adjust the strength and opacity of your tone curve, HSL settings, split toning and everything else you’ve adjusted. All at once. Technically the plugin doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do manually yourself, but it is crazy fast and surprisingly very reliable.

Here are few notes after playing with the plugin for a while:

  • I don’t really need it. But there are definitely situations when it helps a lot (and saves some time) to adjust the overall strength of the preset instead of playing with your contrast, curve and other settings manually.

  • It works very well on presets that are simple. But if your preset has a lot of split toning or is already pretty strong, you might end up with some funky results.

  • I was able to save softer and more aggressive versions of my presets because the plugin adjusted all the settings for me. That alone was definitely worth the $15.

I should also mention this is not a sponsored post or any type of collaboration. Here’s the link to the official website if you’re thinking of getting Opal.

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