Pro Photo Show

A lot of us use and love Adobe Lightroom, and one of our favorite things is presets. One click WOW & workflow for our photo’s. There’s a couple ways to install Lightroom presets, and we’re gonna show you how, and how do do it the pro way.

Today we’re talking about develop presets, but it should be noted that this method will work with any user preset, such as a print preset, gallery preset etc. Also we’re using a Mac, but the same process will work with a Windows machine.

Start by going into the Lightroom Develop Module (shortcut key is D) and on the left panel you’ll see your presets.

The Normal Way!

With the presets panel expanded you’ll see the current folders of presets. Right click anywhere in that area and you’ll see an option to “Import Presets” From there you can select any preset file and LR will bring them in. From here you can also make new preset folders which you can drag presets into once imported.

The Lightroom FANATIC way!

There’s a far more advanced way to organize your presets, and it’s really easy! If you right click on any user preset (instead of just the preset folder) you’ll get a box with more options. Select the option that says “Show In Finder (Mac) “Show In Explorer (Win). This will automatically take you right to the location that all those presets are stored. You’ll need at least one user preset imported to do this since built in presets don;t show this option.

Here you can move presets around, add and rename folders, and get that vast array of presets in nice tidy control. If you want to rename a preset you should do that in LR itself, but everything else can be done here really easy. When your finished tidying up you simply need to restart lightroom, and all those organization changes you made will take effect.

It should be noted that you cannot currently have hierichal folders (folders inside of folders) in Lightroom. Hopefully Adobe will add this in future versions. Also we have not found a way to delete the built in lightroom presets even when their not wanted. Another feature we hope for in the future.

Back up your presets too!

You can export presets from within Lightroom, but now that you have the preset directory open, you can just copy the folders over to a backup disk, thereby by backing up your precious presets in their current order.
That’s all there is to it. You’ll find that keeping your presets orgainized will make your workflow go faster, and keep you sane.

Want the killer preset collection. Check out POWER WORKFLOW!
Use promo code “PPS” to save 10%

Sponsor

Article by Gavin Seim