Tutorial / Lightroom: presets

This post is dedicated to presets. How working with presets can make your editing easier and more fun. You can make your own presets or buy/get them on the internet. Lots of photographers make and sell presets. In this tutorial we will tell you how to make presets and how to save them.

How does it work with presets, you might wonder. Well, often used actions in Lightroom can be made into a preset. For example: if you're working on a portrait shoot and you'd like to give your pictures some extra contrast and colour straight away: use a preset. Works really well when shooting tethered. Every picture that comes into Lightroom has that little bit of extra colour and contrast. 
All you have to do is make a preset that adds contrast and colour and save it. 

There are global and local presets. A global preset affects the whole image whilst local presets affect a certain part of the image. We start with making a global preset. 

Open Lightroom and open the development module. Make some adjustments in for example the basic panel

Go to Develop > New preset in the menu

 

Give the preset a name and select the options. Make sure the box 'Process Version' is also checked! Now click on Create. You can find your new preset in the preset panel on the left side.

Now you can use the preset in other pictures. Open the picture and click on the preset.

As you can see the image has more contrast now and more vibrance. 

As we mentioned before, a preset can also be used when shooting tethered. Each time you make a picture, it will be loaded into Lightroom. And Lightroom will then add contrast and vibrance. Voila. That's all there is to it in making your own global adjustment. 

But what if you buy a preset on the internet? All you have to do is save it on the right location. Copy the preset and paste it on this location:
• Mac: (user)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets
• Win: (user)/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets

You also can open the preference folder within Lightroom. 

• Mac: Ligtroom/preferences
• Win: Edit/ preferences

Click on the button "show Lightroom presets folder" 

Browse to development presets and paste it on this location.

Last but certainly not least: how about a local adjustment. Open a picture and make a local adjustment with either the graduated filter or the adjustment brush. 

Save it in the Effect popup menu by choosing Save current settings as a new preset.

Give your preset a name and save it

Now you've got a new local preset that you can pick up in the effect menu.

Saving a local preset that you get from the internet works pretty much the same as saving a global preset. The only difference is that you have to select the Local adjustment presets instead of the Development presets.

Go for it! Make your own presets, be it local or global and let us know how it worked out. We'd love to hear from you on our Facebook page.