#Adobe lightroom free full
#Adobe lightroom free professional
#Adobe lightroom free free

If you are a beginner, the best way to take advantage of Lightroom’s preset is to use it as a tool to learn Lightroom.

Here are a few ways Lightroom’s preset functionality can help photographers of different levels and experiences. If you are a photographer who produces a large number of digital images, Lightroom’s preset functionality not only helps you speed up the editing process, it also makes your photography more consistent in producing predictable results.

#Adobe lightroom free professional

But, every professional photographer whose workflow includes Lightroom uses presets daily. The truth is, that not every beginner uses presets when they edit their photos. The biggest misconception about Lightroom presets is that they are only used by beginners and are considered an unfair shortcut or cheating. When you open a preset folder, you will see the individual presets inside.īiggest Misconception About Lightroom Presets Inside, you will find multiple preset folders (collections). In the Develop Module on the left panel under the Navigator window, locate the Presets Panel. This is why they are called Lightroom Develop Presets. The most common way to use Lightroom presets is in the Develop Module. Since Lightroom has a modular structure, there are ways to use presets in various modules. There are several techniques to use Lightroom presets, all of which are intuitive and straightforward. What are Lightroom presets? They are simple recorded instructions for Lightroom. When you apply the Lightroom preset to an image, it copies the editing instructions from the preset file to the Sidecar XMP file so that Lightroom can read the instructions and generate an editing preview version with all the editing values listed in the preset.

#Adobe lightroom free free

If you open the Natural preset from my Free Travel Collection in the text editor, you will see exactly how I created the preset. The Lightroom preset is a simple text file with a list of editing instructions.

#Adobe lightroom free full

The Develop Presets functionality takes full advantage of nondestructive editing in Lightroom. The original RAW file stays untouched all you see is the JPEG preview. When you select an image in Lightroom by clicking on it, Lightroom reads the instructions in the XMP file line by line and creates a JPEG preview with all the edits applied. If I boost the Saturation to +33 in the Basic Panel of Lightroom, it creates an entry in the Sidecar file: The XMP is also known as a Sidecar file, a simple text file you can open with any text editor like Notepad.įor example, if I drag the Sharpening slider to a value of +25, Lightroom creates an entry in the Sidecar file: When you edit the RAW file in Lightroom, it stores all the editing steps as simple text entries in the XMP file.

It not only stores EXIF metadata like the date, time, exposure info, and so on, but it also stores Lightroom editing information. The XMP files are Adobe metadata files where additional information about the image is stored. The ARW files are Sony RAW images in their proprietary format. It made professional photography tools more accessible to the general public. The Lightroom Develop Preset functionality helped bridge the gap between professional and hobby photographers. I attribute such broad adoption of Lightroom to the explosion of the Lightroom preset market. At this point, Lightroom’s user base ranges from professional photographers to beginners and even casual shooters. Nevertheless, the mass adoption of Lightroom has skyrocketed in recent years. In some areas, it even rivals Photoshop in complexity. Over the years, a myriad of new features and editing capabilities have been added to Lightroom, making it more capable and, at the same time, much more complicated. Did you know that the first version of Lightroom did not even have a Crop Tool? The editing capabilities of Lightroom were exceptionally limited. The program’s sole purpose was to address the primary challenge of modern digital photography: to manage a high volume of RAW files, otherwise known as digital negatives. Lightroom was originally named Photoshop Lightroom. Originally, Lightroom was created for professional photographers as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) program to complete Photoshop’s editing capabilities. Because of its modular structure with hundreds of different tools and thousands of options and settings can be adapted for any type of photography workflow.Īlthough the concept of the Develop Presets is only a small part of the Lightroom presets workflow, I consider it to be one of the most important. The beta version of Lightroom was released over 12 years ago, and today, it is a mature and flexible program.