Culling and colour take up most of an editing session, and both are repeatable. A good preset pack turns your most common corrections into a starting point you apply in one click — then you spend your time on the creative decisions that actually need a human.
How to use presets without the cookie-cutter look
Apply the preset at reduced opacity, white-balance first, and never stack more than two. Presets built on profiles rather than baked-in contrast survive this workflow best, because they adapt to each file's exposure instead of fighting it.
Building your own starter set
Take the five edits you repeat most — indoor warmth, overcast landscapes, evening skin tones, product whites, black-and-white contrast — and save each as a preset with only the relevant sliders enabled. That personal five-pack will outperform any downloaded bundle within a month, because it was trained on your light.
Keep the downloaded packs for exploration days. When a preset surprises you, dissect which sliders moved and fold the trick into your own set.