Create Lightroom Presets

Create Lightroom Presets

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Easy Steps To Create Lightroom Presets

In previous article I covered Lightroom Presets and how they can speed up our post processing. In this tutorial I am going to show you easy steps to create Lightroom Presets according to your taste or style of photography.

Presets are basically certain adjustments which will be applied to images by clicking only one button. Lightroom is shipped with lots of default Presets, but you may or may not like all of them.

There are tons of third party presets available, some even free, that you can install and use them, but in most cases they may not represent your photography or branding style.

So get ready to create your very first Lightroom Preset!

How to Create Lightroom Presets

Generally speaking, you make presets for universal adjustments, which means some of the adjustments are different for each photos, such as Exposure and White Balance. Having said that, in this example I am going to create a preset for Instagram.

As you know Instagram likes square photos, so cropping the photo to 1X1 (square format) is not part of this preset. So you need to crop the photos later.

Creating Instagram “Summer Morning Preset”:

In Lightroom go to Develop module and start editing one photo. I cropped the image to 1X1, adjust the Highlights and Shadows, increased the Whites to represent the brightness and contrast of a Summer Morning.

Easy Steps to Create Lightroom Presets

Create Lightroom Presets
Set the adjustments to your liking

For this preset, I want to add more warmth to the Highlights and cooler tone for the Shadows. So I adjusted them under the SPLIT TONE adjustment. SPLIT TONE allows you to set different tones for shadow and highlight.

Split Tone Adjustment

Create Lightroom Presets
In this case I added Split Toning for more punch

Next I used the Radial Filter (one of Lightroom’s Hidden Gems) to add an effect to the edges of the photo

Using Radial Filter

Create Lightroom User Presets
You can Radial Filter, or any of the other filters to the presets

Then I compared the Before and After to make sure that I like the adjustments.

Before and After

Create Lightroom Presets
I am very pleased with the setting

I liked the effect, then I clicked on the “+” right on the preset tab. I named the preset as “Instagram Summer Morning”, marked all the adjustments that I wanted to be recorded, and saved it under “User Presets”.

Saving the Preset

Create Lightroom User Presets
I created a Lightroom User preset of all of the adjustments.

I can find the new preset under User Presets tab.

Users Preset Tab

Create Lightroom Presets
You can find the new preset under Users Preset tab

Now that I have saved the preset I can apply these custom adjustment to any photographs just by clicking on it.

Applying Preset

Create Lightroom Presets

Applying Preset

Create Lightroom Presets
Just one click and Lightroom applied the settings

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You can start to create your own Lightroom presets which match your style. As Lightroom is non destructive, your original image is always safe. Go ahead and create as many presets as you like. The sky’s the limit!

That is all for now. We love to hear from you. Let us know if you have used Lightroom Presets.Please send your questions to us and we will be more than happy to answer them. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for more Free Tutorials and Tips.

Ted and the Omnilargess Team

Our next Lightroom Training Program is scheduled for November 7th, 2018. It is a three session workshop with lots of hands on and practical examples to help you start using Lightroom power.

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