How to Install Lightroom Presets

Add Presets to Lightroom in a Couple of Minutes

A Lightroom preset is a saved set of editing decisions: exposure, white balance, tone curve, color grading, grain, all of it, applied to a photo in one click. Every current version of Lightroom can import a preset file directly, and the whole process takes about as long as it takes to unzip the download.

This guide covers Lightroom Classic, the cloud-based Lightroom desktop app (which syncs your presets to your phone for you), and Lightroom on your phone. Here is the whole job in three steps.

Prefer a printable guide? Download the PHLEARN Lightroom Presets install guide (PDF). It is also its own download on every pack page.

What’s Inside a Preset Pack

The .XMP files are the presets every current version of Lightroom imports, and Camera Raw in Photoshop reads them too. The .DNG files are sample photos with each preset already applied, a fallback for very old versions of the mobile app. Lightroom Classic can import straight from a .zip, but Lightroom and Lightroom on your phone cannot, so unzip the download first.

Install Presets in Lightroom Classic

This is the method for Lightroom Classic 7.3 (April 2018) and every version since. It works the same way on Mac and Windows.

Select every .XMP in the folder at once, or select the .zip itself, and Lightroom Classic imports the whole pack in one go.

Older versions of Lightroom Classic (7.2 and earlier)

Versions before 7.3 can’t read .XMP presets, so you’ll use the .DNG files instead. Import the DNGs into your Library like any other photos, open the first one in the Develop module, click the + in the Presets panel and choose Create Preset. Give the preset the same name as the DNG file, put it in a new folder named after the pack, make sure every box in the Settings section is checked, and click Create. Repeat for each DNG. If you can update Lightroom Classic, though, the .XMP method above is far quicker.

Install Presets in Lightroom Desktop (and Sync Them to Your Phone)

Lightroom desktop is the cloud-based app that shares its library with Lightroom on your phone and on the web. If you use it, this is the easiest route of all, because anything you import here syncs to every device signed in to the same Adobe account. No file transfers required.

Install Presets in Lightroom Mobile

Lightroom on iPhone, iPad and Android imports .XMP presets directly. The only real work is getting the files onto your phone. Unzip the pack on your computer first, then move the .XMP files over however you normally move files: AirDrop to an iPhone, a USB cable or Google Drive to Android, or a cloud service like Dropbox or Creative Cloud Files on either. Emailing the files to yourself works too.

Import Presets also accepts .DNG and .lrtemplate files, so if you only have the DNG versions of a pack on your phone, the same menu imports those as presets too.

3 Tips for Using Presets Well

Something not working? The fixes for the common problems are in What Trips People Up below.

Once one photo looks right, push the same look across the rest of the shoot. In Lightroom Classic, select the edited photo plus the others from the same light and click Sync in the Develop module, or use Copy Settings and Paste Settings. In Lightroom on your phone, tap the three-dot menu, choose Copy Settings, then select the other photos and Paste Settings. And when you’ve dialed in a look you’ll want again, click the + in the Presets panel and choose Create Preset.

Where Lightroom Classic Stores Your Presets

You don’t need to touch these folders to install presets. But knowing where they live explains a lot of odd behavior, and it’s the fastest way to back up a preset collection. Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw share one presets folder:

• Mac: Users / [your user name] / Library / Application Support / Adobe / CameraRaw / Settings
• Windows: C: / Users / [your user name] / AppData / Roaming / Adobe / CameraRaw / Settings

Both folders are hidden by default. The reliable way in is from inside Lightroom Classic: open Preferences (Lightroom Classic > Preferences on Mac, or Settings on the newest versions of macOS; Edit > Preferences on Windows), click the Presets tab, and click Show Lightroom Develop Presets.

Your presets also work in Photoshop

Because the folder is shared, every .XMP preset you install in Lightroom Classic also shows up in the Presets panel of Adobe Camera Raw, so you can apply the same look to a raw file opened in Photoshop. Nothing extra to install.

Leave “Store presets with this catalog” off

In the same Presets tab of Preferences there’s a checkbox called Store presets with this catalog. With it on, presets are saved inside the current catalog’s folder instead of the shared folder, so they vanish the moment you open a different catalog. Unless you have a specific reason to turn it on, keep it off.

What Trips People Up

I imported the pack and nothing shows up

Besides the collapsed group (see the Lightroom Classic card), restart Lightroom Classic, and check that Store presets with this catalog is off. In Lightroom and on your phone, imported presets live under Yours > User Presets, not in the Premium or Recommended tabs.

Lightroom Classic says the presets are already imported, but I can’t see them

Right-click any preset group in the Presets panel and choose Manage Presets. Every group has a checkbox there, and an imported group can arrive unchecked, especially after the update to Lightroom Classic 15. Check the box for your pack and click Save, and it appears in the panel immediately.

The preset is grayed out or shows a warning icon

A grayed-out preset is only partially compatible with the selected photo, usually because it uses a raw camera profile and you’ve selected a JPEG. Lightroom still applies everything it can. To see those presets in the panel, open Preferences > Presets and turn on Show Partially Compatible Develop Presets.

Import Presets does nothing on my phone, or the files look dimmed

The files are almost always still inside the .zip: unzip on your computer before transferring, or extract with a file manager on the phone. If the .XMP files look dimmed, you started from the photo import screen. Go back and start from Presets > Yours > Import Presets.

My presets disappeared after an update

Lightroom Classic migrates presets forward when it updates, so first check whether the group is simply collapsed. If they really are gone, import the .XMP files again from your original download, which is a good argument for keeping the zip somewhere you can find it.