Lightroom Import Presets

This really depends on how you want your images to look on import, based on how they come out of the camera. And it's rare for me to leave everything the same as the import preset, it just gets it closer to "typical" settings for my photos taken with my equipment. The only thing that I almost never mess with is importing with lens correction turned on.

+1 for what Jeff wrote about making presets work for you, your style, your subjects, and your gear. But since you asked, here's what I use:

WB as shot
Blacks +2
Brightness +50
Contrast +40
Clarity +20
Vibrance +10
Saturation+10
Darks +20
Strong Contrast
Sharpness 75
Noise Reduction 25
Vignette -10
Enable profile corrections
Profile: Adobe Standard

Please note that I shoot people about 100% of the time, and I make a session-specific Color Checker profile for each shoot. My first step after importing with the settings above is to adjust white balance and use the custom camera profile sync'ed across all the images.

As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

Thanks, Peter. That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. But I noticed you don't use the Auto setting for exposure. I wonder if most folks don't use it.

I never, ever use the Auto setting for exposure - LR rarely gets it right - in most cases the picture looks worse after applying Auto than it did before!

Thanks. Any suggestion for the sub-menus for sharpening and noise reduction? Masking and Details and so on?

The problem is that - one more time - what you are asking about is specific to what you are shooting and what the RAW images look like in LR. For example, I pump up the masking in portraits but not for anything else. Your photos aren't going to be that good unless you look at them for what they are. Everyone's are different, and photographers should put the effort into the post processing to make them look the way they want them to look.

BTW, like Juergen, I have found the Auto Exposure setting to be horrific, but you should be able to figure that out without using presets. In fact, your import presets will work best if they mirror your settings.

I totally agree with Jeff and Juergen re: Auto exposure settings. Sometimes the auto WB is OK, but I have never had an auto exposure setting that wasn't outright laughable. I have a Photoshop action that I use for sharpening, so I don't get into the submenus on sharpening and noise reduction. I've read in several places that PS does a much better job at sharpening than does LR.

I don't know about sharpening (I'm OK with Lightroom's sharpening), but if I am doing noise reduction for the web, I will use LR, but I won't use it for prints. I use Nik Dfine for prints, it's about 1,000,000 better than LR noise reduction when it comes to anything bigger than a web image. Once again, it's why I don't think my presets would be useful - I never do noise reduction in my preset and use virtual copies for printing.

I'm just looking for a starting point. I know each image needs individual attention, but I'll bet there is a preset that will be closer than what comes out of the camera. I shoot a lot of images I'll never print or spend much time processing. Cheers.