Cyberpunk neon look for Lightroom & Sony Alpha
Neon-lit night photography pushed to its logical extreme: magenta and cyan driven hard, blacks crushed to nothing, saturation cranked in the highlights where the signs live. It needs actual neon in frame — the grade amplifies light sources, it cannot invent them.
How to shoot and edit it
- Rain and wet asphalt double every light source. Shoot after a shower.
- Crush the blacks fully — ambient detail between the lights only muddies it.
- Keep skin slightly magenta rather than orange to stay inside the palette.
What you'll get
A Lightroom Classic preset you can import as a .xmp, a Sony Alpha Creative Look recipe for new-menu bodies, and a Picture Profile recipe that works on every Alpha back to the A7 III — all tuned to this look, in one generation.
Generate it nowRelated looks
800T is cinema film respooled for stills, balanced for tungsten light: shot at night the shadows go deep blue while sodium and neon sources bloom warm orange, with the characteristic red halation glowing around every bright point. The definitive night-city film.
The complementary grade that runs through modern cinema: shadows pushed teal, skin held warm and orange, everything else desaturated so the two poles carry the frame. Overused in bad hands, still extremely effective when the separation is subtle.
The early-2000s compact camera aesthetic that came back around: oversaturated colour, aggressive sharpening, highlights that blow flat, a faint green-magenta cast and the unmistakable look of a direct on-camera flash. Technically bad, culturally dominant.
Make your own version of Cyberpunk neon look
Adjust the description, add a reference photo, or import a preset you already own — Preset Lab returns the Lightroom values and the in-camera settings together.
Open the generator