The Preset Lounge started long before Lightroom did. I joined the photography club at school, where there was one enlarger, a drawer of expired film, and a teacher who let me stay after hours. I shot everything: school discos, family holidays, the high street in the rain. Then I spent my pocket money getting it developed.

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Then life happened.
I tried my hand at portraits, editorial and street. Digital took over, the darkroom became a laptop, and my cameras got better every year. But whenever I looked back through my work, I kept coming back to the same thing: my new photos were sharper than ever, and they'd lost the colour I fell in love with.

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So I went looking for it.
I dug out my old prints, slides and negatives, and the films behind them. There were the rich reds and deep skies of Kodachrome and the glorious excess of 1950s Technicolor. There was the soft, flattering skin of Portra and the everyday green-tinged prints of Fujicolor Superia. I had Velvia and Ektachrome slides that looked like stained glass on a light box, the grit of Tri-X and HP5 pushed a stop too far, Polaroids fading on the fridge, and Super 8 reels of summers long gone.

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Then I set about rebuilding those looks in Lightroom. It started as a hobby and turned into years of tweaking curves late into the night.

The Preset Lounge is the result.

Every pack is inspired by film I've shot, printed or projected myself, and tested on my own work. No gimmicks and no one-click miracles: just honest film colour for photographers who remember why they started.