Create your own custom presets

Save image adjustments to create presets for specific editing tasks or to apply a stylized treatment to a photo.

Published December 18, 2025

00:01

Introduction

Have you ever wondered if there's a way to speed up your workflow in Lightroom?

Presets may be the answer to do just that.

I'm ZEISS Ambassador Kenneth Hines Jr., and in this tutorial, I'll show you how you can create your own custom presets that can be used to quickly apply a favorite look or style for a faster processing experience.

00:22

Understanding what presets are and why they speed up editing

What are presets?

Presets are simply the saved edit adjustments that have been applied to an image, you can select from pre-installed presets by Adobe or create your own custom presets.

These can save anything from brush adjustments to color grading to tone curve adjustments, and more.

One great benefit presets have is that they allow you to shorten the time spent on editing images.

If you have a set of images from a particular event or setting, and there are minimal changes in the various frames, then editing one of the images with an adjustment you want saving as a preset and applying it to the other images in a set will save you a lot of time.

Another method is having categorized presets that include only specific functions needed to create a certain look.

You may have presets solely for masking of the sky, tonal adjustments, or color adjustments, which we'll explore later in this tutorial.

Locate the overlapping circle icon

01:24

Exploring the presets panel and preset categories

on the top right of the right-hand panel.

Here you'll find tabs for Recommended, Premium, which are the pre-installed presets, and Yours, which are custom presets you created after making your adjustments on an image and saving them, which we'll be exploring.

There are a lot of great presets to discover in the Recommended and Premium sections, but for this tutorial, I want to concentrate on creating your own.

This image of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., I've already applied my adjustments to.

Here's a look at the before image without any adjustments.

I really like this look and I want to save this as a new preset.

In Presets, let's locate the + icon in the panel,

02:09

Creating and saving a custom preset

select it, and then next we're prompted with naming our preset.

Next, we can choose the Group on where we would like to save it and what selections we want to save, and then click Save.

Now we have our newly created preset.

Let's apply our preset to another image.

This is also from D.C., but of the Washington Monument, and I think it would be a great look with our preset.

Let's locate our preset in the Preset panel.

Now let's apply it.

Our preset worked very well for this image.

Presets can be saved with any combination of adjustments you'd like to save.

There will be situations where the look you're going for wouldn't work for every adjustment.

Therefore, saving only certain settings makes sense.

Or you may want a preset for a specific function, such as creating your own adaptive preset.

03:14

Building selective and adaptive presets with masking

Let's look at this beach sunrise image that has a sky mask adjustment.

I only want to save the sky mask, so we'll go back through the steps for saving a preset and locate my Adaptive Preset group to save to.

This time, I'll choose the Select dropdown menu and choose None.

With no selections, I can now locate Masking.

Make sure that my Sky mask is selected and then click Save.

Now I have a new preset just for a sky mask adjustment.

Let's look at some other image examples

03:53

Applying custom presets across different images

and see how my created presets work on these images.

For this image from Scotland, let's look at some of my presets created for skylines and sunsets.

Hovering over any selections gives you a preview to what it will look like before you select it.

This Skyline Sunset preset I think looks the best, and I'll select this one for this image.

Now let's look at this image from New York City.

For this, I only want to adjust the sky as I like this subtle look on the buildings and water, but want my sky to have more detail.

Let's go into my Adaptive Sky presets and let's see what works best for this image.

I think this London Sunset Sky works best here, so I'll select that.

And there we go.

Should a preset not work entirely with an image you're working on, you can always adjust as needed with the Edit sliders, but this gives you a quick and easy way to go about your workflow.

Explore presets on your own and see what you can create.

I'm Kenneth Hines Jr., and I look forward to exploring more of Lightroom with you soon.

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.

What you'll learn

Streamline your editing with custom presets

Presets allow you to save select Edit panel settings so that you can apply the edits to other photos with a single click. Presets can be used for simple improvements or creative transformations. You can even create presets that use adaptive AI masks to apply adjustments to specific areas of an image, like the subject, the background, or the sky. The saved settings in a preset can always be adjusted with the controls in the Edit panel.

Instruction and photography by: Kenneth Hines Jr.

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