Download my free moody Lightroom presets that will give your photos dark & moody looks in just one click. You can add dramatic effects, saturated dark moods, muted tones and our presets carefully increase brightness, add warm tones and give a moody feel to images while protecting skin tones. Get Free Lightroom Presets including Dark & Moody, Airy Landscape & many more. These presets will bring the exposure down and you’ll have dark tones in your image as you see in the before/after imagery below. Sometimes the presets will give you a high contrast moody look. But don’t worry you can easily create a soft moody look by reducing the contrast. You can also increase the shadows levels for soft effect using the Curve Tool.
Workflow with seven modules and 56 presets that are specifically designed for dark and abstract landscape photography. These presets showcase their full potential in coastal, forest, and mountain landscapes with clouds, fog, or overcast skies. Achieve an atmospheric and dreamy look for your forest landscape photos with only a few clicks. The presets work with a wide variety of forest landscapes, including dark fir forests, misty coastal woodlands, and abstract details such as foliage, and mushrooms.
If you're a fan of the dark and moody look of my landscape series, then this unique workflow for Lightroom and Camera RAW (Photoshop) is perfect for you! It's ideal for photos taken in Nordic countries such as Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Greenland, or the Faroe Islands. Quickly achieve an atmospheric and cinematic look for your landscape and urban photography with these presets and create images that resemble stills from movies. Completely transform the narrative and mood with just a few clicks in Lightroom. Get an idea of how my moody Lightroom landscape presets work and download these FREE presets for moody landscapes. 8 professional Lightroom workflows for moody landscape, travel and aerial photography.
My name is Jan, and I'm a visual artist and fine art photographer based in Hamburg. My work focuses on atmospheric and abstract landscape photography of the distant North: Norway, Iceland, Greenland and beyond. Dark and moody is one of the most powerful styles in wedding and portrait photography. Dark and moody is one of the four foundational styles in professional wedding and portrait photography. It is defined by deep shadows, desaturated or earthy tones, lifted blacks, a subtle matte finish, and a cinematic atmosphere that creates emotional weight.
The biggest problem with generic dark and moody presets is that they were built for one lighting condition and applied to all of them. Apply a dark and moody preset developed in golden hour light to a tungsten reception hall and the result is muddy skin tones, color casts, and flat shadows. This is the core problem Visual Flow was built to solve. Most preset companies organize their products by aesthetic: dark and moody, light and airy, film grain. Visual Flow organizes by lighting condition: soft light, hard light, tungsten, backlit, HDR natural, mixed tungsten, red tint, oversaturated, green tint, and black and white.
The Mood Pack is Visual Flow’s dark and moody collection, featuring 10 presets each developed for a specific lighting condition. The Mood Pack delivers warm cinematic tones with a subtle matte finish in the shadows and highlights. It creates an earthy, organic look with rich color depth and carefully protected skin tones. Every preset in the pack was developed by Pye Jirsa in partnership with DVLOP, using the same patent-pending Lighting Condition-Based Development system used across all Visual Flow packs. For photographers who want dark and moody tones with a warmer, golden character, the Radiant Pack is worth exploring alongside Mood.
Where Mood leans earthy and cinematic, Radiant brings rich amber warmth to the shadows with a more romantic, luminous feel. The style is less effective in flat midday light or bright overcast conditions without directional contrast. The Mood Pack works with Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC, Lightroom Mobile for iOS and Android, and Adobe Camera Raw. Presets are delivered in XMP format for Lightroom Classic and DNG format for Lightroom Mobile. The single most important thing you can do to get the best result from any dark and moody preset is to match the preset to your actual lighting condition. Start by identifying the dominant light in your scene: is it tungsten, soft natural light, backlit, or mixed? Select the corresponding Mood preset. Apply it, then fine-tune white balance and exposure for the specific image.
For wedding photography specifically, the Mood Pack is most commonly used for reception coverage, intimate ceremony moments, and any session where you want to create a cinematic, storytelling feel. Dark Dream free Lightroom preset gives photos a dark and surreal feel using elegant matte tones. As its name suggests, the preset has a dim vintage film look. It complexly blends a photo’s colors and tones to produce a mysterious, magical, atmosphere. Its creative and dramatic aesthetic looks incredible on landscapes and portraiture. If you want to make the most of its soft haze, it is best to apply it to images with diffused lighting. This is a stunning preset to use as an Instagram filter. Not only does it give an artistic look, but it also applies a professional and cohesive look throughout a social media feed. It can even set a visual identity.
Complex Moods. The preset has a complex style. Dark Dream puts together its unique look by first blending the effects of a few fundamental settings. It cools color temperature and heightens its green tint. Darm Dream also optimizes light and color by moderately increasing both contrast and exposure. As a result, the After photo looks brighter and vivid. You can now see more of the subject. Cinematic Film. Dark Dream sets a compelling and cinematic atmosphere. It gives off a mysterious and enchanting feel because of its dim yet tender aesthetic. There are a series of adjustments behind this dark film preset, too: it lowers highlights and deepens dark regions. You can easily notice how the preset transforms the scenery in the After photo. The light regions look somehow muted, while the dark ones are reinforced. Light Portraits. Dark Dream looks enchanting on portraits as well. It produces such a dreamy look, as you can see in the After photo above. The tones are subdued on the subject’s face, and her skin tones look more complex. Also, observe how the subtle warm-green tint adds a surreal glow. The result is reminiscent of analog photography: the subdued tones, matte finish, and pastel hues that tint the image. What makes Dark Dream special is how it expertly balances and blends tones. It, almost paradoxically, produces a light look but dark feel. Fine Textures. Dark Dream also enhances textures by increasing sharpening and adding grain. To complete the look, the preset also applies vignetting. This adds an unmistakable analog look. As you can tell from the example above, this simple finishing touch also complements Dark Dreams’ smokey aesthetic. Like all our presets, you can absolutely use Dark Dream film preset as is, right out of the box. With any preset, you might need to make adjustments to accommodate your specific camera, settings, lighting, and subject matter.
- Identify lighting: tungsten, soft natural light, backlit, or mixed.
- Choose the Mood preset that matches the dominant light.
- Apply and then fine-tune white balance and exposure for the image.
- Adjust contrast, shadows, and color balance to taste for the final look.
These presets are designed to work across diverse environments-from coastal and forest to urban scenes-and to help photographers craft moody narratives with consistent skin tones and cinematic mood.
Lightroom Photo Editing Tips for Moody Street Photography
In practice, you can use a single Dark Dream preset to achieve a cinematic, dim atmosphere on portraits and landscapes, then blend additional textures, sharpening, and vignetting to taste. The result is a cohesive, professional look suitable for social media, portfolios, and editorial projects.