How To Create Your Own Lightroom Presets | by Amy Selleck
Customize your workflow to save time and have more control over your editing.
Presets are a great way to add consistency to your photographs and streamline your workflow, saving you time! We all love to save time, especially when it comes to editing. More often than not, I find myself using the same adjustments on most of my images; +15 contrast, +10 clarity, +5 vibrance, and so on. You can buy presets in different styles from artists you admire, or you can easily make your own. After making similar, if not the same exact adjustments to hundreds of images over the years, I have found creating my own Presets in Lightroom can really help speed up the editing process, even if it’s a few minutes per image. Plus! You can apply presets when you import images, saving even more time!!! Here’s how you do it:
Step 1 : Identify the Purpose of Your Preset
To begin, I use my preset called “Starting Point”. This has basic and universal settings that I apply to all of my images. When making a preset, you’ll want to decide what you want it to do. Is it going to be universally applied, a mask, color adjustments for your grass or trees?
A few of my presets
RAW Unedited image
Step 2 : Make Adjustments
Let’s get started! With an image open in the Develop Module in Lightroom, make the adjustments that you want to be in your preset in the adjustments panel. It can be as little or as many adjustments as you like. Do you add a hazy back light often? Masks can also be made into presets, which is a huge time saver for me.
A few of my standard adjustments that I make to all of my images
Image after the “Starting Point” preset has been applied
Step 3 : Save Your Preset
Once you’ve finished making your adjustments, click on the + in the Preset Panel, it will be in the top right hand corner. Select “create preset”. A window will pop up titled “New Develop Preset”.
Enter a label for you new preset in the Preset Name. Add it to a group if you like to keep things organized, or create a new group! Don’t worry though, you can always rearrange them later.
In the settings portion, put a check mark next to all the items you want this preset to control. I like to only select the options I know I’ve used so it doesn’t override other presets if I apply those first. Or you can “check all” and it will select all of the options. Keep in mind though, LightRoom will apply all of your edits, this includes cropping, transforming, masking, etc.
After all your options are selected, hit that “create” button in the bottom right and now you have your very own preset!
If you apply your preset and want to make changes to it, you can! Make the adjustments to your preset in the right Adjustment panel and then right click on your preset name in the “Preset” panel on the left and select “Update with Current Settings”. The same large grey window will pop-up so you can select which settings you want to be in the updated preset.
Hopefully this will help speed up your editing and I’m happy to answer any questions you may have!
Final Edited Image
