How To Install Presets In Lightroom

I’ve had many people ask me how to install presets in Lightroom. The process can be surprisingly simple if you are careful and attentive.

To make things easier, I’ve put together some basic instructions that will help you install presets in Lightroom much easier and take the guessing out of it.

Your presets will be available in a zip file and before installing them into Lightroom you will need to uncompress them.

The first step is to open Lightroom and open Preferences.

This part will be different on PC’s and Mac. On a PC, you will find Preferences on the Edit tab. For a Mac, you will find it on the tab labeled Lightroom. When you click on Preferences, you will have a pop-up box open. The pop-up should have six tabs on the top. You will choose the Presets tab.

Before moving on to installing the presets, you will need to make sure that “Store presets with this catalog is unchecked.

After, you will click on the box titled “Show Lightroom Presets”. This will open your Finder or Folder window. The Lightroom should automatically be highlighted, but if it’s not, just make sure this is the folder you double click on.

Inside the Lightroom folder, there will be another folder labeled “Develop Presets”. Once this folder is open you will copy and paste the unzipped file that you downloaded into the Develop Presets folder.

Once your presets are pasted into the folder, the last step would be to close and restart Lightroom.

When you open Lightroom again, your presets should be available in the Presets Panel. To access the individual presets, you will need to choose the collection and click on the triangle to display them.

If you’re still having trouble installing, there are two things to consider. How you downloaded the presets or how they were installed into Lightroom.

When you’re downloading the presets, make sure not to open the file after it has finished download. If you’re having trouble unzipping the file on a PC, try using WinRar. It’s a completely free unzipping program.

If your presets are not showing up in Lightroom, double check that you copied the presets into the Develop Presets folder.

Still have some questions? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you!

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COMMENTS Expand -

Melanie says:

February 9, 2022 at 7:27 pm
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Hey! I recently purchased the golden collection. When i add the file to my presets there are 16 starting with blue sky and ending with warmup. how ever wehn i am in develop mode they are not applying to the photo. Can you asssit where i went wrong please. all my other presets are working currently.