Sharing Your Lightroom Presets

The other day when I posted the 5 shot pano story, I received a comment about the origin of the printing preset that I was using.  I had mentioned that I got it from Scott Kelby but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember when and where I got it.  I didn’t want to bug Scott with it so I thought I would just export my adaptation of his preset so it could be downloaded.  That’s where I ran into a little problem, I didn’t know how to export my own presets.  I searched the menus from top to bottom but just couldn’t find the right item to export my printing preset.  Of course I couldn’t let it go at that so I called my personal Lightroom Help-Line (it never hurts to be buddies with the guy that wrote the definite book on Lightroom).  What I learned was both surprising and a little embarrassing.  So here’s how it works.

Open up Lightroom and then set up your special print layout.  Then, click the plus sign at the top of the Template Browser.  This brings up the New Template dialog box.  Name your template and choose the location to save it (usually in the User Templates collection).

Now that you have the preset saved, here is all that is required to export it.

Simply right-click or ctrl-click on the preset that you would like to export.  A pop-up menu will appear with several options.  At the bottom, you will see Export and Import.  Yes, it really is that simple.

Just click on Export, choose a name and location, and click Save.  That’s all there is to it.

To load one, simply do the same ctrl-click and then choose Import.  Then find the location where you have saved the imported preset (if it came in a zip file it must be unpacked first), click on the file name, and then click on Import and it will be loaded into your template collection.

So there you have it.  I was surprised that it wasn’t actually in a menu drop-down and a little embarrassed that it was as easy as right-clicking a mouse.  I guess you learn something new every day, especially if you hang around Scott.

Here is a zip file containing the three presets I used in these posts, two panos and the 3-across print you see above (click here to download).

Related posts:

1. Quick Image Prep in Lightroom
2. Moving your Lightroom Web Templates
3. My Lightroom Holga Preset
4. Inserting a Link-Back in your Lightroom Galleries
5. A Follow-Up to Friday’s Lightroom Sorting/Exporting Video