What is a Lightroom Preset?

A Lightroom preset is a configuration of settings, designed to achieve a certain look or style of your photo. You install the presets into your lightroom and then when you click on a particular preset while in the develop module, the pre-determined (pre-set) settings will apply to that photo. With just one click on a preset, your photo can be altered in hundreds of different pre-set alterations to colors, hues, shadows, contrast, grain and more. The beauty of using presets is the consistency of style, time-management, and simplicity they bring to your editing sessions. If you find presets that work for your style, you can speed up your workflow dramatically and you can achieve the colors and look you want without needing to edit each photo individually. Once you click on the preset and it applies to your photo, you can then make manual adjustments because it is likely the preset won’t be perfect on every photo. Lightroom presets are a good foundation but often you can still need to make several adjustments to each photo to make sure they are perfect.