• Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + Shift + E to display the Export dialog box.
• Command + Option (Mac) / Control + Alt (Win) + Shift + E to Export with Previous (settings).
• And, don’t forget, if you save Export presets, you can Control (Mac) / Right Mouse (Win) -click on an image and select the saved preset from the context sensitive menu!
• Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + Shift + N creates a New Preset in the Develop Module
• Command + Option (Mac) / Control + Alt (Win) + N creates a new Folder to put presets into.
• Once a preset is created, it can be applied to other images in the Develop module, the Library module as well as on Import (under Apply During Import > Develop Settings).
The option to store presets and templates with a specific catalog is particularly useful when there is a need for the photographer to work on several different computers. For example, in an educational “lab” environment, a student might have all of their images and catalog on an external drive making it easy to move from one machine to another during each “open lab” session. If they choose Preferences > Presets > Location and check the “Store Presets with Catalog” option, any user-created preset (such as metadata templates, develop presets etc.) will be stored within the same folder as the associated catalog (instead of in the default location). The advantage is that whichever computer you launch your Lightroom catalog on, you will see your presets and only your presets (as opposed to all of the other students’ presets).
If, however, you are working on a single computer, I would suggest that you do NOT check the “Store Presets with Catalog” option. Instead, save your presets (and templates) to the default location so that your presets will be accessible if you decide to create multiple catalogs.
Lightroom’s presets can be found/copied/deleted here:
• Mac (user)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom
• Win (user)/ Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom
Or, Control (Mac) / right mouse (Win) -click on any preset in Lightroom’s Develop module (or any Template in the output modules) and choose Show in Finder (Mac ) / Reveal in Explorer (Win) to automatically display the corresponding presets folder. Then, copy and paste (using the operating system) the preset files to the same location on the other machine.
In this Episode of the Complete Picture, I demonstrate how to quickly create a print template in Lightroom to layout a simple 8 page book from a single sheet of paper. Click here to view the episode…
If you find that you are constantly filtering your photographs using the same criteria, you can streamline the process by saving your custom filter as a preset. For example, when working on my composite images, I often look for photographs of rough paper to use as texture overlays. This requires that I click on the Text option (in the Filter bar) and then select Keywords and type in the desired keyword. Then, I refine the filter farther by clicking the Attribute option and selecting 2 or greater stars. Instead of doing this each time I need to filter for paper photos, I set up the criteria once, then click the double headed arrow to the left of the Filter Lock icon and select “Save Current Settings as New Preset”.
There are many photographers and third party developers creating and sharing interesting and complex presets. Lightroom Exchange is an excellent location for finding third party plugins for Lightroom (many are free downloads some have a small cost, and some may only be for Mac, while others are Windows only). Click the link above go to Lightroom Exchange, or, in Lightroom, select File > Plug-in Manager, then click on Plug-in Exchange (lower left) to automatically be taken to the Lightroom Exchange site On the right, you can choose to search on all catigories of Lightroom plug-ins or simply the Develop Presets.
Jeff Tranberry from Adobe blogged about presets that he has found and posted to the Lighroom Journal – an excellent resource!
Jack Davis has created over 190 free presets for Lightroom with onOne Software and several photographers also have presets for sale including (but certainly not limited to) Marcus Bell and Kevin Kubota.
Please feel free to share your resources for others!
Today I have some Effects presets to share including Post-Crop Vignettes and Grain.
I have found that having a preset for each of the Post-Crop Vignetting Styles allows me to quickly preview (using the Navigator panel in the Develop Module) the style that will work best with my selected image. Since I typically darken down the edges, almost all of my presets have a negative Amount.
There are presets for the Color Priority (CP), Highlight Priority (HP) and Paint Overlay (PO) Style. I find that they Color Priority is more subtle than the Highlight Priority but unfortunately can not recover highlights in an image. Highlight Priority is more blatant and may have color shifts in the darker values, but has the advantage of recovering highlights. Both of these styles (CP and HP) work more like a shift in exposure in comparison to the Paint Overlay (PO) style (which is similar to an overlay of black or white paint).
I have also included a Color Priority preset with the Highlights slider set to 100 to reintroduces contrast in the highlights. This will be most noticeable if the vignetting is applied over bright areas such as highlights in a sky. There is a preset to add a hard black or white edge as well. And although my presets darken the edges, you can always set the Amount slider to a positive value to lighten the edge.
I have also included a few presets for adding Grain. It is important to note, you will need to do some testing in order to see how the grain that you add will look on your final output. As you can imagine the amount, size and Roughness of the grain will appear differently depending on the size of the original file and how you choose to export it (as it will most likely need to be sampled up or down in the process).
To install, download and unzip the JKost Grain Enhancement and JKost Post-Crop Vignetting file. Launch Lightroom and choose Lightroom > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (Win). At the top of the dialog, click “Presets” and click the Show Lightroom Presets Folders button. Copy the “JKost Gain Enhancement” and “JKost Post Crop Vignetting” folders into the “Develop Presets” folder. They will appear in the Presets panel in the Develop Module in Lightroom.
Many of you have probably set your default settings in the Develop module so that the Lens Profile Corrections are enabled by default. But there might be occasions when you want to quickly enable/disable lens profile correction. In order to do so, I created two presets, one to enable and one to disable this option. In addition, I created a preset to enable lens profile correction for Distortion and Chromatic Aberration, yet suppress any Vignetting correction (because sometimes I want the edges darkened when shooting with a wide angle lens).
Note: you can also apply any develop preset to multiple images in the Library module. In Grid view, select the images and add the preset from the Quick Select panel’s Saved Preset drop down.
Today I am sharing my Split Tone panel presets. Like yesterday, these presets are really simple. The first one “*Auto B/W Mix “will convert the image to B/W using Lightroom’s default conversion. You will want to click this first if you are trying to create a single color toned image. (Note: I didn’t include the B/W conversion within each preset because I thought some photographers might want to add a creative color cast to an image, instead of making it a single color toned image.) The second preset “*Reset” sets the image back to color. The third preset “*Sepia 40H 30S” is my personal favorite for creating a sepia tone image.
The rest of the presets set the Saturation slider (in the Shadows) to 20 and simply change the Hue Slider. For example, “Cyan H180 S20” has a hue that I think looks like cyan but because this is subjective, I have also added the exact Hue (in this case 180) and the saturation setting (S20).
Obviously from here you can customize them as you see fit, create your own, and delete the one’s that you don’t want to use. Try experimenting adding Hue and Saturation to the Highlights and then changing the Balance Slider between the two. Play, and save a new preset when you see something that you like and may want to use again. Remember, these are only a starting point!
JKost Single Color Split Toning. Launch Lightroom and choose Lightroom > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (Win). At the top of the dialog, click “Presets” and click the Show Lightroom Presets Folders button. Copy the “JKost Single Color Split Toning” folder into the “Develop Presets” folder. It will then appear in the Presets panel in the Develop Module in Lightroom.
A number of people have been asking me to post the presets that I have showed when demonstrating Lightroom so although I don’t feel that they are earth shattering by any means, I do hope that they may prevent us all from individually recreating the wheel.
The first set all decrease the amount of saturation in one or more color ranges in the HSL/Color/B&W panel.
The “*Default Saturation Settings (0)” preset will set all of the Saturation values to 0 (zero) and can be used at any time to quickly reset the sliders. The next four presets decrease the overall saturation of the image by reducing the values of all sliders equally (-30, -50, -75 and -100). From there, I started targeting specific color ranges – reducing multiple sliders at one time to -100 (GAB for Green, Aqua, Blue and ROY for Red, Orange Yellow). Finally, there are presets for desaturating each individual color range -100. As I mentioned, these presets aren’t complex, but I do find myself making these changes enough to warrant the creation of the preset so that I don’t want to have to drag the sliders each time.
Note: since each preset captures all of the color range sliders, they’re not additive. Therefore if you click on one preset in this folder and then a second, the second one will replace the first.
And of course, this is just a starting point, you can customize any of the presets as you see fit, create your own, and delete the one’s that you don’t want to use.
JKost Selective Color Removal. Launch Lightroom and choose Lightroom > Preferences (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (Win). At the top of the dialog, click “Presets” and click the “Show Lightroom Presets Folders” button. Copy the “JKost Selective Color Removal” folder into the “Develop Presets” folder. It will then appear in the Presets panel in the Develop module in Lightroom.
To help minimize mistakes throughout your workflow, you can set up your favorite way to import files into Lightroom and then save them as presets. To do this, select your source on the left, by choosing your card reader, navigating through connected drives or by using the downward facing arrow to select from common locations. Then select how you want to import the files (Copy as DNG, Add etc.) and choose the options that make sense for your workflow on the right (Adding metadata, renaming files etc.). When finished, click “None” in the Import Preset drop down menu (at the bottom-center of the window) to save your settings as a new preset.
After defining your preset(s), you may want to tap the Tab key to display the window in it’s “Compact” format for ease of use on subsequent imports (where you can make changes such as keywords and metadata with out having to return to Expanded view).
And don’t forget, you can choose to eject or un-mount a volume from your system after import (using the checkmark next to the volume), and preview the size of the import using the File Size indicator in the lower left of the window.
In part 1 of this 2-part episode I will demonstrate how streamline Lightroom 3 by taking advantage of presets, templates, collections, virtual copies (and more) in order to eliminate much of the repetitive post-capture tasks such as importing, tagging, developing, exporting and sharing photographs. Watch the video here…
