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How to Create and Import Presets in Adobe Lightroom

June 10, 2014 by mitchrichie 23 Comments

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Adobe Lightroom is an extremely powerful software tool for serious photographers. From their webpage:

Lightroom 5 makes digital photography easier, faster, and more amazing. Experiment without limits in a nondestructive editing environment. Perfect your shots with advanced controls for tone, contrast, color, and more. Efficiently organize all your photos and share them almost anywhere.

One of my favorite things about Lightroom is the ability to save adjustments that you make to your images as presets. These presets can be exported and shared. Over time you end up building a collection of Lightroom presets and it can really speed up your workflow. I have different presets that I like to use as a starting point when editing portraits, landscapes, and products. Most of the time I find that an image still needs some adjustment after you apply a preset, but they can definitely save you time when you find yourself making similar adjustments on a regular basis.

Lightroom presets

Creating Presets in Adobe Lightroom

To create a preset, simply start editing a photo in the develop tab of Lightroom. Make all the adjustments you want to be part of the preset. Then just click the “+” icon on the right side of the Presets drop-down panel that’s located on the left side of the interface.

create preset

You will then be presented with a dialog box where you can name your preset, select which folder to put it in, and select or deselect which attributes you want to be saved in the preset.

Lightroom presets

Make your selections and then hit “Create.” That’s it! You can now easily apply your new preset to any image in  your library. You can right click on your preset to export and share it.

Importing Presets in Adobe Lightroom

The internet is full of Adobe Lightroom presets that other photographers have created and made available. I’m even sharing my own collection of 100 Free Adobe Lightroom Presets right here.

To import a preset:

1. Presets are usually downloaded as a zip archive. Unzip the archive into a folder on your computer.

2. I like to create a folder for custom or downloaded presets to keep thinks organized. Right click anywhere inside the Presets panel and select “New Folder.”

3. Give your folder a descriptive name and then right click on the folder and select “Import…”

4. Navigate to the folder where you unzipped your presets and use shift + click to select them all.

5. Click import.

Your presets will load into the folder you created and will be available to apply to any image in your library.

 

Related

Related posts:

  1. How to use the Adjustment Brush in Adobe Lightroom
  2. Tutorial: How to Create Basic Panoramas in Photoshop
  3. How to Post Process Landscape Photos in Photoshop to Make them Pop

Filed Under: Post Processing Tagged With: free presets, lightroom, post processing, presets

  • Dean Mower

    Hi, I keep trying to download the 100 Presets but when I am in LR and try to ‘Import…’ CC LR does not recognise the files – am I doing something wrong?

    • Mark Richardson

      Hi Dean. Did you manage to unzip the folder of presets before trying to import? Here’s a video that might help as well. Let me know if you can’t get them imported. https://youtu.be/P2_28b1zW3M

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  • Vanessa Gantt

    The video helped me so much Thank you!

    • mitchrichie

      Glad it helped!

  • Hannelore Brown

    Thank you so much for the video… very detailed… one quick question, … I was able to follow everything right up till you mentioned “right click”. In using a iMac, there is no “right click”… consequently no dropdown menu to import the presets. How do I import the unzipped presets into lightroom in to the new folder that was created?

    • Mark Richardson

      Hi Hannelore – on a mac, you can simulate a right click by pressing and holding the Control key on the keyboard while clicking. Hope this helps. – Mark

      • Hannelore Brown

        Wow!!! That worked beautifully! I didn’t know that little trick… thank you so so so much!

        • Mark Richardson

          You are welcome. 🙂

  • alesha

    Hi! I am really excited to install these presets but I seem to be
    having a problem. I unzipped the file and when I try to import them
    into lightroom I get an error message saying that these are the wrong
    type of presets and I cannot install them. Am I doing something wrong?

    • Mark Richardson

      Hi Alesha,

      Are you on a mac or pc? What are you using to unzip the presets? Here’s a great video that walks through the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2_28b1zW3M

      • alesha

        Thanks so much for your quick reply! The video was super helpful and I was able to get the presets installed! Thanks so much! I am really looking forward to using these in my work and being apart of your group on facebook!

        • Mark Richardson

          No problem! Glad that helped. Welcome to the group!

  • Achmad Taufik

    Thank you so much Mark

    • Mark Richardson

      Sure thing!

  • Santos Hermaone

    Thank you so much Mark

    • Mark Richardson

      You’re very welcome

  • Destiny Hampton

    No matter what I do, I can’t get these to unzip. What programs are you guys using to unzip these files?

    • Mark Richardson

      Hi Destiny – Are you on a mac or windows machine?

      • Destiny Hampton

        Windows

        • Mark Richardson

          Have you tried this? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14200/windows-compress-uncompress-zip-files

  • Eve Lyn

    i am trying to import them on my windows and im recieving a masage in my LR , the preset file was at the wrong type of preset

    • Mark Richardson

      Eve, usually this occurs if you don’t have the files in the zip folder extracted to your computer. Can you confirm if you have them extracted?

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