Once you’ve edited a photograph - perhaps using a downloaded preset as a starting point - you might wish to then take those edits and save them for use with other photos. The real power to be gained from mastering Lightroom presets comes from creating your own.Īs well as being able to apply a complete look and feel to a specific image, Lightroom presets can also be used to speed up more detailed elements of your post-production workflow.įirst of all, let’s run through how to create your own custom Lightroom preset. How to Create Your Own Adobe Lightroom Presets

(Check out these free Lightroom tutorials for more useful tips like this.) Lightroom has a useful feature: if you hover over a preset in the Presets tab, you’ll notice that the effect is temporarily applied to your image. It’s best to apply a preset to an image that has had no editing done to it because, as we will see below, existing edits might not always be overridden by the preset. If you have photos that you’ve already edited, you may wish to create a Virtual Copy and completely reset the editing so that you’re starting from fresh - and without undoing any work that you’ve already done. You’ll quickly learn when their effects are most pronounced, and get an idea of how they’re changing your image. To start to understand what presets do, a smart way is to apply them to a variety of photographs shot under very different lighting conditions. If you’ve just installed a pack of several Lightroom presets, your first step will be to spend some time familiarising yourself with them.

Adding presets to lightroom mobile