I had a hard time finding a good preset that gave that 1920s feel so I made this free 1920s Lightroom Preset.
I photographed an event that had a 1920s casino theme. When it was time to edit the photos, I thought it would be fun to make the photos look like they were taken in the 1920s. I researched and analyzed a bunch of photos from that era and found a few great examples. I looked at their contrast, grain, and sharpness and recreated it the best I could. This preset is based on how those photos looked and felt.
The download is just one preset for making photos look like black and white vintage photographs. It works best on well-lit warm-toned photos. Once you apply the preset to your photos, you can easily tweak the brightness, contrast, and other adjustments. To fix the way people’s skin look, adjust the red and orange color sliders until the people’s skin have the look you like.
Download
Hope you enjoy it, let me know if you have questions about it. Good luck!
If you need help installing it, you can follow the instructions outlined here by Adobe.
Inspiration
The following three photos made in the 1920s inspired the settings in this preset. Americans have been celebrating the 1920s for almost a hundred years because of the unique style that was popular then. That amazing era gave us the flapper, the mobster, the bootlegger, and Art Deco. Because of how unique those styles were to that era when people see those types of people they immediately think of the 1920s. Here are a few beautiful photos that capture the style and feeling of that time that I believe my preset emulates well.
Hi man !
Your 1920s preset looks really awesome. Thanks a lot for sharing this for free.
Unfortunately, I cannot add to my Lightroom. I have tried many times but without any luck.
By any chance, would you agree to share with me the steps that you took in Lighroom to create this preset?
Best,
Sorry it’s not working for you, perhaps you have an older version of Lightroom. For me it works on Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic. If you download the file and right click on it and choose to open it with TextEdit on an Apple or Notepad on a Windows computer you will see some XML which shows a list of all the settings and what they are set to.