Welcome back Lightroom fans! First of all, I want to make a quick announcement that I’m excited to share with my readers.
Listen Up!
Starting this week, I will be posting free and new presets every week for you to use! I’ve been carefully working on them in the last few months and I’m really excited to share them with my readers. Also, I’ll be holding a contest where you can enter your own presets! More info on that soon, and yes, there will be prizes. 😀
There’s already one preset on this site, and you can use this guide to download it and all future presets. Now, without further adieu, let’s get started installing presets.
Download & Install Lightroom Presets
When you download a preset from Lightroom Love it’s almost always going to come as a .zip file. If you aren’t familiar with this, this is a Zip file, and it’s just a way to compress and store files, combining a bunch of files into one!
1) Download
When you download the zip file, make sure you know where it’s going. You can right click the “Download” link and choose “Save As” or “Save Target as” if you would like. When you do that, a box will pop up that lets you choose where you’re saving the file to. The desktop is a good idea, but only as a temporary storage place. On my Mac, all of my downloads just go to my Downloads folder.
2) Extract
Okay, now that downloading the preset is taken care of, we need to extract the zip file. This just means that we are taking the Zip file and getting the preset file out that’s stored inside. On Mac, you just double click the Zip file and the preset is placed in the same folder. On Windows, you’re just going to right click the file and click Extract All. Choose where you want the zip to be extracted – to doesn’t matter which one – just remember where! The Desktop is a good place.
The preset comes as a Zip file, and then extracting it reveals the preset inside!
3) Import
The preset is now extracted! You’ll see a new file that ends in .lrpreset in the folder. Now, we’re ready to go to Lightroom and get the preset into the program. Go ahead and open Lightroom and enter the Develop module. We will now to import the preset into Lightroom.
Take a look on the right side in the Preset panel. You’ll see lots of presets built into Lightroom, and now you’ll want to add your own. Right click (command + click on the Mac) to the left of the preset names and choose Import.
Now, Lightroom is going to have us browse to where our preset is stored. Click it and choose “Import” to add it to Lightroom. If we have multiple presets, you can select all, or shift click to select a list.
After that, you’ll find the preset available for use in the Preset panel, probably in the “User Prests” folder.
Wrapping Up
Getting presets loaded into Lightroom takes just a few easy steps. Let me know if you need more help with a comment!
How many of you will be entering in the preset contest? How about some prizes to sweeten the deal?