How to Save a Preset in Lightroom Classic, Masks Included – Day 12

Create Your Dream Presets

A preset is a saved edit you can drop onto any photograph. That much most people know. What is less obvious is how much a preset can actually contain — not just exposure and colour, but colour grading and even masks, which re-target themselves to each new image.

Day 12 builds a preset from scratch, covers the one dialog choice that decides whether it is useful or destructive, and looks at exporting presets as files you can share or sell.

Build the Edit First

A preset is just a recording of an edit, so start by making one you like. The example here is a warm summer look, built from three layers:

Basic adjustments. Temperature pushed warmer, shadows lifted, a little Vibrance.

A mask. A radial gradient dragged in from the top of the frame, with exposure and temperature raised inside it to warm the sky.

Colour grading. Midtones nudged towards greenish yellow, shadows towards green. Barely there.

Keep it subtle

This is the single most useful piece of advice about preset building. A strong edit is tuned to one photograph — its exposure, its colours, its light. Move it to another image shot in different conditions and it falls apart.

Subtle presets travel. And because every preset applies with an Amount slider, a gentle one can always be pushed harder on an image that suits it. The reverse is not true.

Saving It — and the Checkbox That Matters

Click the plus icon at the top of the Presets panel in the Develop module and choose Create Preset.

Name it something you will recognise later — “Warm Summer Day” beats “Preset 4” — and pick a group, normally User Presets.

Then the important part: the long list of checkboxes deciding what the preset carries.

Tick only what you actually changed. Everything is selected by default, including Exposure, Contrast and White Balance. Leave them all ticked and your preset does not just add a look — it overwrites the tonal work already done on whatever photo you apply it to. Correct a dark image, apply your preset, and the exposure snaps back to whatever it was on the photo the preset was made from.

For this example that means ticking white balance, contrast, shadows, vibrance, colour grading and masking — and nothing else. Clicking Check None first and then selecting deliberately is the safest habit.

Applying It

Presets are reachable from both modules. In Develop they sit in the left panel; in Library there is a Preset dropdown in the Quick Develop panel, which is convenient for applying a look across a shoot without leaving the grid.

Hovering a preset previews it in the Navigator before you commit. Once applied, the Amount slider appears above the preset list, letting you scale the whole thing up or down. If a look is nearly right but too strong for a particular photo, that slider is the answer rather than editing individual settings.

Masks come with it, and stay editable

This is the part that surprises people. A preset containing a mask brings the mask across, and it remains a live mask — you can select it, move it, resize it.

Better still, masks built on selections rather than shapes re-target themselves. A preset containing a Select Subject mask will find the subject in each new photograph, which makes it possible to build a preset that brightens whoever happens to be in the frame.

Presets Are Just Files

Right-click any preset and choose Show in Finder (or Explorer) and you will find a small .xmp file. That is the whole preset.

Which means presets can be shared like any other file. Zip up ten of them and you have a pack — plenty of photographers sell these, and it is a genuine side income. Giving them away works just as well if that is more your style.

Importing is the reverse: the plus icon on the Presets panel has an Import Presets option, or you can drag XMP files straight onto the panel. If a preset is already installed, Lightroom will tell you rather than duplicating it.

Where This Usually Goes Wrong

Leaving every box ticked. The mistake that makes presets feel broken. If applying a preset ruins your exposure, this is why.

Building the preset too strong. It will look brilliant on the photo you made it from and wrong on everything else.

Expecting a preset to be a finished edit. It is a starting point. Different light needs different exposure, whatever look sits on top.

Vague names. Twenty presets in, “Warm Low Contrast” is findable and “Preset 7” is not.

Keep Exploring Lightroom

More free tutorials on presets and looks:

• How to Create Lightroom Presets
  A second walkthrough on a different image.
• Turn Your Favorite Looks Into Lightroom Presets
  Working backwards from an edit you already love.
• Free Lightroom Presets and Photoshop Actions
  A free pack to install and pull apart.
• How to Use the Color Grading Tool
  The panel most signature looks are built on.

Take It From Here

Presets are how a consistent style stops being something you rebuild by hand on every photograph. Build them subtle, include only what you meant to, and they will hold up across shoots that have nothing else in common.

Tomorrow we look at what you are actually editing: RAW versus JPEG in Lightroom Classic.