Neutral grey background, even studio light, no distraction. The canvas for the face itself. Timeless and skin-neutral — works exactly as well on every skin type, because the colour palette is deliberately empty.
- XMP · Lightroom Classic, CC & Camera Raw
- .costyle · Capture One
- .cube · 3D LUT (DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro)
Or get all presets with a subscription from €49/year.
Classic Studio
See the effect
Drag the line to compare before and after
Or test Classic Studio on your own photo
You've reached the maximum of 3 photos for this session.
Color rendering varies per monitor and camera model. Your photo is not saved.
Character and mood
Classic Studio is not a preset that draws attention to itself. That is exactly the point. The mood is neither cold nor warm, neither dramatic nor flat. It is studio work the way it should be: the face takes centre stage, the background recedes, and nothing in the colour or light pulls focus away from the subject. You see the result and think: this is right.
Technically, the preset uses a restrained tone curve. Highlights are brought down slightly, shadows stay open without lifting to grey. That gives depth without drama. The colour temperature is intentionally neutral, and the HSL values are set so that skin tones do not shift toward yellow, red or orange. The colour palette is empty in the best sense: there is no colour cast that favours one skin type over another. What you bring in stays intact. The preset enhances structure and texture in the face without making it heavy.
The preset works best for portrait photography in a controlled light environment. Think studio setups with a softbox or ring light, but also window light on an overcast day. Corporate headshots, actor photos, casting images, model portfolio shoots. Any situation where you want the face to do everything and the surroundings to do nothing. It also works well as a starting point for black-and-white conversions, because the neutral colour balance makes the transition smoother.
You reach for Classic Studio when you want a consistent look across a full series of portraits, regardless of the skin tones of your subjects. That makes it practical for diverse castings or for photo series where you photograph different people in a single session. You need to make fewer adjustments per image. The neutral base does the heavy lifting.
A practical tip: adjust the exposure of each image before applying the preset, or use it as a final step after your base exposure corrections. Classic Studio is calibrated for a correctly exposed photo. With underexposed images, the shadows will break sooner. Exposing one stop brighter when shooting gives you more room to work with in post.
Installation
Lightroom Classic & CC (desktop)
Unzip the downloaded file on your computer. Open Lightroom Classic and go to the Develop module. Right-click the Presets panel, choose 'Import Presets', and select the .xmp file. The preset appears in your list immediately and can be applied to any photo straight away.
Lightroom Mobile
Lightroom Mobile syncs presets via the cloud. Import the .xmp file into Lightroom CC on your desktop first. Once cloud sync completes, the preset is automatically available on your phone or tablet. An Adobe CC subscription is required for this sync feature.
Capture One
Unzip the file. Open Capture One and navigate to the Styles panel. Click the arrow next to 'Styles' and choose 'Import Style'. Select the .costyle file. The style is available in your library immediately. Works with Capture One version 21 and later.
DaVinci Resolve / Premiere Pro (3D LUT)
Copy the .cube file to your application's LUT folder. In DaVinci Resolve via Project Settings → Color Management → LUT folders. In Premiere Pro via the Lumetri Color panel → Creative tab → Look → Browse. The LUT works on both LOG and standard exposed video footage.
