A Professional’s Guide to Lightroom Presets

As a professional photographer, your time is your most valuable asset. Between shooting, marketing, and managing clients, the hours spent editing can feel like a bottleneck. That’s where Lightroom presets come in. They are a foundational tool for photographers looking to create a consistent, signature style and dramatically speed up their post-production workflow. Think of them not as a magic button, but as a powerful starting point for creativity and efficiency. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to master them.

Key Takeaways

• What Presets Are: A preset is a saved group of settings in Lightroom that you can apply to any photo with a single click. They serve as an efficient starting point for your edit.
• Benefits vs. Limitations: Presets provide speed and a baseline for consistency, but they apply the same static settings to every photo, regardless of its unique lighting or composition. They often require significant tweaking.
• Free vs. Paid: Free presets are great for learning and experimentation. Paid, professional presets generally offer higher quality, more versatility, and better support.
• Custom Creation: Building your own presets gives you ultimate control over your unique artistic style and brand identity.
• The Next Evolution is AI: While presets are a great tool, AI-powered solutions like Imagen represent the future of photo editing. Instead of applying static settings, Imagen analyzes each photo individually to apply intelligent, personalized edits that learn and adapt to your unique style.

What Exactly Are Lightroom Presets and Why Should You Care?

Let’s clear something up right away. A preset is much more than just a filter you’d find on a social media app. It’s a professional tool that can fundamentally change the way you approach your post-production work.

More Than Just a Filter: Defining Presets

So, what are we really talking about? A Lightroom preset is a saved configuration of slider positions in the Develop module. This includes settings for exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, colors, tone curves, and more. When you apply a preset to a photo, all those saved settings are applied instantly.

Imagine you’ve just finished editing a photo from a golden hour portrait session to perfection. You love the warm tones, the soft contrast, and the rich colors. Instead of having to remember every single adjustment you made, you can save that combination of settings as a preset. Now, for the next photo in that series, you’re just one click away from that same beautiful starting point.

The Core Benefits: Speed, Consistency, and Style

For any working photographer, the advantages of using presets are too significant to ignore. They boil down to three key areas that directly impact your business and your art.

• Speeding Up Your Workflow: This is the most immediate and obvious benefit. Consider a wedding gallery with a thousand or more images. Editing each one from scratch is a monumental task. With presets, you can apply a base edit to hundreds of photos at once, cutting your editing time down dramatically. This allows you to get back to shooting or, dare I say, have a personal life. You’re no longer just editing; you’re managing your time effectively.
• Achieving a Consistent Look: Have you ever admired a photographer’s portfolio and noticed how cohesive it looks? That’s brand consistency, and presets are a cornerstone of achieving it. By using a defined set of presets, you ensure that your images have a similar aesthetic, whether they were shot yesterday or last year. This creates a recognizable style that clients will seek out and book you for. Your portfolio stops being a random collection of images and starts telling a consistent brand story.
• A Starting Point for Creativity: A common misconception is that presets stifle creativity. The opposite is true. A good preset is not a final edit. No two photos are identical; lighting, subjects, and locations change. A preset should be seen as a foundation. It gets you 80% of the way there, handling the foundational color grading and toning, which then frees you up to focus on the finer details of each specific image. You spend less time on repetitive basics and more time on the creative adjustments that make a photo truly special.

In short, presets are a vital part of a professional photographer’s toolkit. They streamline your workflow, solidify your brand, and give you a reliable foundation for every edit.

Navigating the World of Presets: Free vs. Paid

Once you decide to dive into presets, you’ll find a vast marketplace with endless options. The biggest decision you’ll face is whether to use free presets or invest in professional paid collections. Each has its place, but for a professional, the choice becomes clearer when you look at the details.

The Allure of Free Presets

Who doesn’t love free? There are thousands of free presets available online, from photography blogs to YouTube tutorials. They are incredibly appealing, especially when you’re just starting and want to experiment with different looks without a financial commitment.

However, it’s important to approach free presets with a healthy dose of realism. They often serve as a marketing tool for a larger, paid collection. This means they might be a “one-trick pony,” designed to work perfectly on one specific type of photo but falling apart in different lighting conditions. You might also find that the quality is inconsistent, and there’s usually no customer support if you run into trouble installing or using them.

Use free presets for:

• Learning: They are a great way to deconstruct how an edit is made. You can apply one and see which sliders were moved to achieve a certain look.
• Experimentation: They allow you to try on different styles to see what resonates with your artistic vision without any cost.

Investing in Professional Paid Presets

This is where most serious photographers land. Paid preset collections are typically created by established, professional photographers who have spent years honing their style. When you buy a professional pack, you’re investing in that expertise.

The advantages are clear. Paid presets are almost always of a higher quality and are built to be more versatile. They often come in a collection with variations designed for different lighting scenarios, such as “golden hour,” “overcast,” “indoor reception,” and so on. This makes them far more practical for a real-world shoot where conditions are constantly changing.

Furthermore, paid presets usually come with installation guides and customer support. If you have a problem, there’s someone to help. You’re not just buying a file; you’re buying a professional product.

What to look for when buying presets:

• Before-and-after examples: Make sure the creator shows plenty of examples on different types of photos and skin tones.
• Cohesive style: The presets in a pack should work together to create a consistent look.
• Positive reviews: See what other photographers are saying about the quality and usability.
• Compatibility: Ensure they work with your version of Lightroom (Classic or Mobile).

While free presets are a fun starting point, investing in a high-quality paid collection is a smart business decision for any professional photographer looking to build a reliable and efficient workflow.

A Practical Guide: Installing and Using Presets in Lightroom

You’ve found a preset pack you love. Now what? Getting them into Lightroom is a straightforward process. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you up and running on both desktop and mobile.

Step-by-Step Installation for Lightroom Classic (Desktop)

This is the most common method for professional photographers. Modern presets use the .XMP file format, which is easy to install.

1. Download and Unzip: After purchasing or downloading your presets, they will likely come in a .zip file. Double-click the file to unzip it and reveal the folder containing the .XMP files.
2. Open Lightroom Classic: Launch the application.
3. Navigate to the Develop Module: Click on “Develop” at the top of the screen.
4. Open the Presets Panel: On the left side of the screen, you’ll see the “Presets” panel. Click the small triangle to expand it.
5. Import Your Presets: Click the “+” icon at the top right of the Presets panel and select “Import Presets…” from the dropdown menu.
6. Locate Your Files: A file browser window will open. Navigate to the folder where you saved your unzipped .XMP files. Select them all and click “Import.”
7. Find Your New Presets: Your newly imported presets will now appear in a new group within the Presets panel, ready to use.

Step-by-Step Installation for Lightroom (Mobile/Cloud)

If you edit on the go, you can install presets directly into the Lightroom mobile app. This process syncs them across all your devices using the Adobe Cloud.

1. Download and Unzip: Just like on desktop, download and unzip the preset files on your computer.
2. Open Lightroom Desktop (Cloud Version): It’s easiest to install them on the desktop version of the cloud-based Lightroom app first.
3. Go to the Presets Panel: With a photo open, click the “Edit” icon, then click the “Presets” button at the bottom of the panel.
4. Import the Presets: Click the three dots (…) at the top of the Presets panel and choose “Import Presets.” Navigate to your .XMP files and import them.
5. Sync to Mobile: As long as you are logged into the same Adobe account on your mobile device, the newly installed presets will automatically sync and appear in your Lightroom mobile app’s Presets panel.

Best Practices for Applying Presets

Remember, a preset is a starting point. To get the best results, follow this simple workflow for every image:

1. Make Basic Corrections First: Before you even touch a preset, adjust the white balance and exposure. These two settings are unique to every single photo and are the foundation of a good edit. A preset can’t guess the correct white balance for you.
2. Apply the Preset: Hover over your presets to see a live preview on your photo. Click on the one that best fits the mood and lighting.
3. Tweak and Refine: After applying the preset, you will almost always need to make minor adjustments. You might need to adjust the exposure again, pull back the contrast, or tweak the saturation. This is the part of the process where you make the photo truly yours.

By following these steps, you’ll move from simply “using” presets to mastering them as an integral part of your creative process.

The Next Level of Control: Creating Your Own Custom Presets

Using presets made by other photographers is a great way to learn and speed up your workflow. But the ultimate goal for many of us is to develop a style that is truly our own. The best way to do that? By creating your own custom presets. This process is surprisingly simple and gives you complete control over your artistic signature.

Why Build Your Own?

When you create your own presets, you are distilling your unique creative vision into a reusable tool. You are no longer borrowing someone else’s style; you are defining your own. This is crucial for building a recognizable brand. Your custom presets are tailored to your camera, your lenses, and your shooting style. They become a natural extension of your creative process, leading to edits that feel more authentic and personal.

A Simple Tutorial for Creating a Preset

Ready to create your own? It’s easier than you think. Follow these steps.

1. Start with a Good Photo: Open a well-exposed RAW image in the Develop module of Lightroom Classic. It’s best to use a photo that is representative of your typical work and lighting conditions.
2. Edit the Photo to Perfection: This is the creative part. Adjust all the settings until you are completely happy with the look. Pay close attention to the Tone Curve, HSL/Color panel, and Color Grading panel, as these are the heart of a preset’s style.
3. Open the “Create Preset” Dialog: Go to the Presets panel on the left. Click the “+” icon and select “Create Preset…”
4. Choose Which Settings to Include: This is the most important step. A dialog box will appear with a long list of checkboxes. You need to decide which settings to save in your preset.
   • What to Include: Generally, you want to include all the creative adjustments like Treatment & Profile, Tone Curve, HSL, Color Grading, Detail, and Effects.
   • What to Exclude (Usually): It’s almost always a good idea to uncheck the boxes for White Balance, Exposure, Transform, and Lens Corrections. Why? Because these settings are specific to each individual photo and should be adjusted manually before applying the preset. If you include them, your preset will force the same exposure and white balance on every photo, which you don’t want.
5. Name and Organize Your Preset: Give your preset a descriptive name. For example, “Golden Hour – Portrait.” You can also save it into a new group to keep your presets organized, such as “My Wedding Presets.”
6. Click “Create”: That’s it! Your new custom preset is now saved in the Presets panel, ready to be used and refined over time.

By creating a library of your own presets for different scenarios, you take full control of your editing workflow. You ensure that every image reflects your unique vision, building a powerful and consistent brand from the ground up.

Beyond Presets: The Dawn of AI-Powered Editing with Imagen

For years, presets have been the go-to solution for efficient and consistent editing. They’ve served us well. But what if there was a tool that could go a step further? A tool that didn’t just apply the same set of rules to every photo, but instead analyzed each image individually and made intelligent adjustments based on your personal style? That tool is here, and its name is Imagen.

This isn’t about replacing the artist. It’s about giving the artist a smarter brush. Imagen represents the natural evolution of photo editing, moving from static presets to dynamic, AI-powered workflows.

How Imagen Redefines Personalized Editing

The fundamental limitation of a traditional preset is that it’s static. It applies the exact same settings to a bright, sunny outdoor photo as it does to a dark, moody indoor shot. You, the photographer, then have to manually correct for those differences.

Imagen works differently. It uses artificial intelligence to learn your unique editing style and then applies that knowledge intelligently to each new photo. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution; it’s a personalized editing assistant.

At the core of this technology is the Personal AI Profile. This is what truly sets Imagen apart. To create your profile, you submit a collection of your previously edited photos from your Lightroom Classic catalogs—at least 3,000 images are recommended for the best results. Imagen’s AI analyzes these photos and learns everything about your style. It learns how you handle exposure in tricky lighting, how you adjust skin tones, how you grade your colors in shadows and highlights, and how you crop your images. It builds a neural network model of your brain as an editor.

The process is seamless. Imagen is a desktop app that integrates directly with Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Photoshop, and Bridge. You simply upload your unedited photos through the Imagen app. The AI then edits them in the cloud at an incredible speed—often less than half a second per photo. When it’s done, the edits are downloaded directly back into your Lightroom catalog, with all the adjustments applied as if you had moved the sliders yourself. You retain full creative control to make final tweaks.

Don’t Have a Style Yet? Talent AI Profiles

What if you’re a newer photographer and haven’t edited thousands of photos yet? Or maybe you just admire the style of an industry leader and want a professional look right out of the box. For this, Imagen offers Talent AI Profiles.

These aren’t just preset packs. They are AI profiles built by analyzing the complete editing styles of world-renowned photographers. When you apply a Talent AI Profile, you’re not just getting a static look; you’re getting that photographer’s AI-powered editing brain working on your photos. It’s a fantastic way to achieve a polished, professional, and consistent look while you continue to develop your own unique style.

A Deeper Look: Imagen’s All-in-One Workflow

While the personalized editing of the Personal AI Profile is the star of the show, Imagen is built to be a comprehensive post-production platform. It aims to streamline your entire workflow, not just one part of it. This integrated approach is where you can find massive gains in efficiency, freeing you up to focus on the parts of your business that truly matter.

More Than Just Editing: AI-Powered Tools

Imagen recognizes that editing is just one piece of the post-production puzzle. That’s why it has built-in AI tools to handle other tedious and time-consuming tasks.

• AI Culling: For many photographers, culling—the process of selecting the best images from a shoot—is the most dreaded part of the job. It can take hours of painstaking work to sort through thousands of photos, looking for blinks, blurry shots, and duplicates. Imagen’s AI Culling automates this process. It analyzes your entire shoot, groups similar photos together, and flags blurry images or those with closed eyes. It then presents you with a curated selection of the best shots, dramatically cutting down your review time.
• Additional AI Tools: Beyond culling, Imagen offers a suite of intelligent tools to handle common adjustments. These include:
  • Straighten: Automatically corrects tilted horizons.
  • Crop: Intelligently crops photos to improve composition.
  • Subject Mask: Automatically creates a precise mask of the main subject for targeted adjustments.
  • Smooth Skin: Applies natural-looking skin smoothing.

The Standalone vs. Integrated Approach

One of the great things about the Imagen platform is its flexibility. You are not forced into a single, rigid workflow. You can use the different components as standalone solutions or combine them for a fully integrated, end-to-end process.

Perhaps you love your current culling method but want to automate your editing. No problem, you can use the AI editing feature on its own. Or maybe you want to streamline your entire process. In that case, you can use Imagen to cull your photos, send the selected images for AI editing, and then download the final, polished gallery back to Lightroom Classic.

By offering this all-in-one ecosystem, Imagen moves beyond being just an “editing tool” and becomes a true workflow partner. It’s designed to handle the heavy lifting of post-production, giving you back your most valuable resource: time.

Presets vs. Imagen: A Factual Look at Modern Workflows

To make the distinction clear, let’s break down the differences between traditional Lightroom presets and Imagen’s AI editing in a direct, factual comparison. This isn’t about which one is “good” or “bad,” but rather about understanding how each tool functions within a professional workflow.

Feature	Lightroom Presets	Imagen Editing
Application Method	Applies the same saved group of static settings to every photo.	Analyzes each photo individually and applies unique, intelligent adjustments based on the image’s specific content.
Consistency	Provides a good baseline for a consistent look, but requires manual adjustments to achieve true consistency across different lighting conditions.	Delivers excellent consistency in style and results across a wide variety of lighting, scenes, and subjects by adapting the edit to each photo.
Personalization	Highly personal if you create your own from scratch. When using presets from others, you are adopting their style.	Creates a Personal AI Profile that learns from your own past edits. The AI evolves with you as you “fine-tune” it with new work, making it deeply personalized.
Workflow Role	Serves as a single, valuable step in the manual editing process.	Can be a comprehensive workflow solution, with options for AI-powered culling, editing, cloud backup, and delivery all in one platform.
Learning Curve	Easy to apply. Creating a truly versatile and professional preset requires significant skill and practice.	Requires an initial setup to train your Personal AI Profile (by providing your edited photos). After that, the editing process is almost fully automated.
Adaptability	Not adaptable. A preset for a sunny day will perform poorly on an indoor photo without significant manual correction.	Highly adaptable. The AI understands context and adjusts parameters like exposure and white balance to fit each photo’s unique needs while maintaining your core style.

This comparison highlights a key shift. Presets are a tool you use. Imagen is a system that works for you.

The Future is Smart: Why AI is the Professional’s Choice

The photography industry is in a constant state of evolution. Cameras get better, client expectations get higher, and the demand for faster turnaround times becomes more intense. To thrive in this environment, professionals need to work smarter, not just harder. While the craft and artistry of photography will always be human-driven, the tools we use must evolve to support our creativity and our businesses.

This is why AI-powered tools like Imagen are not just a trend; they are the future of professional post-production. They address the core challenges that working photographers face every day: the lack of time, the need for consistency, and the desire to spend more time creating and less time on repetitive tasks.

By embracing AI, you are not giving up creative control. You are delegating the tedious, mechanical parts of the editing process to an intelligent assistant that you have personally trained. This frees up your mental energy to focus on what really matters: capturing beautiful images, telling compelling stories, and building strong relationships with your clients. The future of photo editing is one where technology empowers creativity, and for the modern professional, that future is already here.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What’s the main difference between a Lightroom preset and an Imagen AI Profile? A Lightroom preset is a static set of saved settings that is applied identically to every photo. An Imagen AI Profile is a dynamic, intelligent tool that analyzes each photo individually and applies a unique edit based on the photo’s specific needs, all while perfectly matching your personal editing style.

2. Can I use Lightroom presets on my phone? Yes. Modern Lightroom presets (.XMP files) can be installed into the Lightroom desktop app and will sync via the cloud to your Lightroom mobile app, allowing you to use them on the go.

3. Will buying professional presets make my photos look professional? Not automatically. Professional presets provide a high-quality starting point, but they are not a one-click solution. You still need to start with a well-exposed and well-composed photograph and make manual adjustments after applying the preset to tailor it to each specific image.

4. How many photos do I need to create an Imagen Personal AI Profile? Imagen recommends a minimum of 3,000 of your previously edited photos from a Lightroom Classic catalog to build a robust and accurate Personal AI Profile. The more photos you provide from varied lighting conditions, the better the AI will learn your style.

5. Is Imagen a subscription service? Yes, Imagen operates on a subscription model. You pay a monthly or annual fee for access to the platform, and then pay a per-photo rate for editing and culling. This pay-as-you-go model is often more cost-effective than hiring a human editor.

6. Can Imagen edit in Black & White? Absolutely. You can create a separate Personal AI Profile specifically for your black and white editing style. You would train it just like a color profile, but by providing your edited black and white images.

7. What happens if I don’t like an edit from Imagen? You are always in complete control. After Imagen delivers the edits back to your Lightroom catalog, you can tweak any slider or setting just as you would with a manual edit. You can then submit these final edits back to Imagen to “fine-tune” your profile, making it even more accurate over time.

8. What are Imagen’s Talent AI Profiles? Talent AI Profiles are editing profiles created by world-renowned photographers. They allow you to apply the intelligent, AI-powered style of an industry leader to your own photos. They are a great option if you don’t have enough photos to build your own profile yet or if you want to use a proven, professional look.

9. Does Imagen replace Lightroom? No. Imagen is not an editor itself; it is a workflow accelerator that is designed to work seamlessly with Adobe Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Photoshop, and Bridge. It handles the heavy lifting of culling and editing, and then delivers the results back to your catalog for final review and export.

10. How long does it take for Imagen to edit my photos? It’s incredibly fast. Imagen typically edits photos in under 0.5 seconds per image. A gallery of 1,000 photos can often be edited and ready for download in under 10 minutes.

11. Can I still be creative if I use Imagen? Yes, more so than ever. By automating the 80-90% of editing that is repetitive and technical, Imagen frees you up to spend your time and creative energy on the final 10-20% of the edit that truly makes a photo special. You can also focus more on your shooting, composition, and client interaction.

12. What is AI Culling? AI Culling is an Imagen feature that automatically sorts through your entire photoshoot to help you find the best images. It groups duplicates, identifies photos that are out of focus or where subjects have their eyes closed, and gives each photo a star rating, saving you hours of manual review.

13. Is my data safe with Imagen? Yes. Imagen takes data security very seriously. Your photos are uploaded directly to secure AWS (Amazon Web Services) servers for processing. The system uses robust encryption and access controls, and you retain complete ownership of all your images and data.