Nikkor 50mm F1.8 AF-D, originally uploaded by Gavin Lewis.

I’ve been spending a bit of time trying to find out what plugins are available for Aperture 3 and which ones are worth getting. As it turns out, I may have been missing out on half of the fun. One of the things that the 3rd incarnation of Aperture brought with it was the ability to create and share presets between users.

There are dozens of sites offering free presets and just as many offering to give you some presets in exchange for money. I personally don’t see much benefit in paying for something you can replicate yourself with a bit of time, but as there are many places to get free ones from, why pay?

I’ve come across a couple of sets that are worth sharing:

RB Design – Nikon D200 NEF preset

This site has a load of presets for Nikon cameras. I’ve linked to the D200 as it shares a similar CCD to my D80, but there is one for the D300 and the D5000 there too.

D90 Vivid Preset – Courtessy of the Aperture Blog

Light Study by Gavin Seim

I also quite like this one by Gavin Seim, although I haven’t spent much time playing with it yet.

Sin City by Pavel Sigarteu – gives your image a muted look. (direct download)

Dust Storm by Nathan Smith – For that yellowish wild west desert look. (direct download)

There’s now a whole blog for Aperture presets here

Gian  Zurli’s presets – a selection of “historic” looks.

Preset Pond – another repository for Aperture presets

Lomofy – from the unofficial Aperture blog

ND Grad preset – from the unofficial Aperture blog

To install them, download them to a folder on your mac, click on the Adjustments tab and then drop the Presets box down to reveal “edit presets”.  Click on the button at the bottom left with the gear icon and choose “import”.  Simply navigate to the place where you saved the files and click ok.