You Bought the Presets. They Don't Work. Here's Why.

Five-star reviews. Beautiful before/afters. You apply the preset and... your photos look nothing like the previews.

Shadows crushed. Skin tones orange. Sky blown out. You spend 20 minutes tweaking every slider the preset was supposed to handle.

This happens to everyone. And it's not the preset's fault—it's how presets work.

The Simple Problem

A preset saves exact slider values. When you apply "Warm & Airy," it adds +15 to temperature. Every time. Every photo.

But your photos aren't the same:

• Cool indoor shot at 4500K + preset = nice subtle warmth ✓
• Warm reception at 6500K + preset = muddy yellow mess ✗

The preset creator shot outdoors at 4500K. Their photos look perfect. Your indoor reception photos look terrible with the same preset.

Presets don't read your photo. They just apply the same settings blindly.

What This Means for Your Workflow

You have 500 wedding photos:

• 150 outdoor ceremony (sunny)
• 200 indoor reception (tungsten lights)
• 150 dance floor (flash + ambient)

Apply a preset. Check results. Maybe 150 outdoor shots look decent. The other 350? Broken. Now you're manually fixing each one.

Total time: 3+ hours of corrections.

This is why photographers hate editing. Not because editing is hard—because presets create more work than they save.

Try Summrs Instead

Summrs doesn't apply static presets. It reads each photo first, then adjusts.

Here's how it works:

1. Upload your 500 wedding photos
2. Describe your vision: "warm romantic tones with lifted shadows"
3. Summrs analyzes each photo's lighting, histogram, color temperature
4. Applies your aesthetic—but adapts to each image

Your cool indoor shots get more warming. Your already-warm sunset photos get less. Same vision, different execution per photo.

Result: Consistent color grading across all 500 photos in about 15 minutes.

The Difference in Practice

With presets:

• Apply → Check → Fix broken ones → Repeat
• 2 minutes to apply, 3 hours to fix

With Summrs:

• Describe → Process → Done
• 15 minutes total, minimal corrections

The outdoor ceremony, indoor reception, and dance floor all look cohesive. Same aesthetic, adapted to each lighting condition.

When Presets Still Work

Presets aren't useless. They work when lighting is uniform:

• Studio portraits with controlled lighting
• Same location, same time of day
• Creative effects (grain, vignettes) that don't depend on lighting

But for real-world shoots with mixed lighting? Presets break. You need tools that read before they edit.

Try Summrs Free

Upload 10 photos. Describe the look you want. See how adaptive grading compares to preset-based editing.

No more fixing what presets break. Just consistent results across your entire shoot.