The color in a preset is built on the 8 sliders found in Lightroom. While those sliders have a huge impact on an image, there are a lot of important colors left out! 

Skin tones for example...

Imagine having color sliders specifically designed to affect skin tones. That's not possible with a preset as skin tones are affected by the limited adjustability of those 8 sliders.

That's where profiles come in. Profiles are built using far more colors than what are available in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. Those skin tones we already talked about? Profiles have the ability to target skin tones more accurately for results that are much more film like.

From the beginning it has been our goal to not only build photo editing products that result in beautiful photos but also be a true representation of what film is. The power of profiles has allowed us to analyze and capture the true qualities of film.