LAM Guides · Colour & recipes

Lightroom editing recipes and LAM film looks

~7 min read

The internet is full of "editing recipes": Exposure +50, Highlights −80, Shadows +40, Temp −10… Copying every number rarely gives you the same photo. This guide explains why, what those recipes are really doing, and which LAM look gets you the same spirit at the moment you press the shutter.

Why copying numbers doesn't copy the photo

Every number in a recipe is relative: it is added to a starting point. In Lightroom, the starting point is the original file from the author's camera. In filter apps (codes like PL1, MT2, YU4…), the starting point also includes that app's own proprietary filter. Change the phone, the light or the app, and you change the starting point — the same "Highlights −80" lands somewhere else.

There is a second problem: a phone's default photo is already processed (HDR, sharpening, noise reduction). Editing on top of it is a second pass on data that has already been squeezed — see The double-processing trap.

What the popular recipes actually do

Read the most-shared Lightroom recipes side by side and they nearly all repeat one pattern:

Slider	Typical value	In film terms
Contrast	−25 to −50	A low-contrast negative film with wide latitude
Highlights	−46 to −100	The film curve's "shoulder": highlights roll off softly instead of clipping
Shadows	+26 to +84	Lifted shadows — the film's base never goes to pure black
Temperature	−5 to −30 (or +6 to +21)	Each film's own colour balance: cool and clear, or warm and golden
Vibrance / Saturation	+10 to +30 / −20 to −36	A muted film, or a vivid slide film
Grain	+20	The film's silver grain

In other words, most recipes are trying to imitate a roll of film — a soft highlight shoulder, lifted blacks, a colour signature and a little grain. LAM does that from the start, on the sensor data at capture, instead of pushing sliders after the photo is already a JPEG.

Skip the extreme values. Highlights −100 with Shadows −100, or Contrast −100, pushes every tone towards the middle: grey, flat, skin without shape. Real film never looks like that — even a low-contrast stock keeps a black point and a white point.

Familiar recipe → LAM look

The table pairs common styles with recipes and films already in LAM. It is the same spirit, not a number-for-number copy, because LAM doesn't work by pushing sliders on a JPEG.

Style	LAM look	Film
Bright backlit, cool and airy	Hanoi DreamFree · Chiang Mai Mist	Pastel 400
Sweet warm, morning sun	Gold Sea Morning · Golden SEA	Gold 200 · Portia 800
Korean clean, soft rosy skin	Seoul Soft · Busan Bright	Portia 160
Warm vintage, nostalgic	Gold Summer · Bukchon Vintage	Gold 200 · Gold 400
Muted, Pinterest-style	Aesthetic Muted	Pastel 400
Cool cinematic street	Eternal Street · Jakarta Street	Eternal 160 · Cinema 800T
Night street, neon	Saigon NoirFree · Tungsten Night	CCD 2000 · Cinema 800T
Blue skies, vivid travel	Velvet Vivid · Cali Sun	Velvet 50 · Ultra 50
Natural vlog, barely "filtered"	Vlog BrightFree	Gold 400
Documentary black & white	Tokyo Mood	Silver 400

Fine-tuning in LAM instead of sliders

Film strength — lower it for a lighter touch, like reducing a preset's "Amount".
Grain — instead of the Grain slider; LAM's grain sits in the mid-tones like real film, not evenly across the frame.
Kelvin white balance (Pro mode, 2700–7500 K) — instead of Temperature, but applied at capture.
EV compensation (±3) — instead of Exposure. A touch over suits the backlit looks.
True Skin — instead of tweaking orange/red HSL to rescue skin: pick a skin mode (Warm SEA, Golden Hour, Neutral, Cool) and LAM corrects at capture.

Once you like a look, share it as an 8-character recipe code — anyone who pastes it gets exactly that look, no numbers to copy.