Lightroom Presets are hands down one of the most convenient tools for editing beautiful photos, and now you can use them on mobile! I recently converted all of my presets to files that are compatible with mobile, and installation is super easy.
There are two methods for installing presets on Lightroom Mobile.
- Method one involves using your Creative Cloud membership to sync the files over.
- Method two involves transferring the presets to Lightroom Mobile using .dng files. This method does not require a creative cloud membership.
How to Add Presets to Lightroom Mobile
Method One: Sync Presets with Creative Cloud Membership
The first method is certainly the easier method, as it requires much fewer steps. If you want to use the first method but do not have a Creative Cloud Subscription, sign up for a 7 day free trial here: Adobe Creative Cloud 7 Day Free Trial.
Step One: Download Presets to Desktop
Open up the purchase confirmation on your computer. Click the “Download Now” button on your Order Thank you Page and then click “Download Now” in top right hand corner of the screen. If you have a Dropbox account, you can save the file directly to Dropbox.
Step Two: Open Lightroom CC Desktop App
Open up Lightroom CC (not Lightroom Classic CC). If you need to download Lightroom CC, you can do so from your Creative Cloud application.
Lightroom CC automatically syncs your presets, profiles, and images with Lightroom Mobile CC. Just make sure both applications are synced with your Creative Cloud account. You must also ensure that “syncing” is enabled on both.
Lightroom CC will also sync with Lightroom Classic CC, and will automatically import your presets to Lightroom Mobile (once again, only if you are signed in and all applications are synced with Creative Cloud)
Step Three: Import Lightroom Presets to Lightroom CC
Click File > Import Profiles & Presets…
This will pull up a finder window. Navigate to your downloads folder, open the .zip file and find the folder containing the .xmp Lightroom Presets.
Simply click the folder and click “Import” and your presets will be automatically imported into Lightroom CC. You might need to wait a few minutes for the sync to complete, but once it does your presets will be ready to use!
Step Four: Open Lightroom Mobile CC
Time to check if they work! Open Lightroom Mobile CC on your phone and open any photo.
Scroll to the far right of the editing bar and tap “Presets”. Here you will find your imported Preset! Happy editing 🙂
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Method Two: Transferring Presets with .dng image files
We will be focusing on method two in the article. Installing presets on Lightroom Mobile without a creative cloud subscription requires a little creativity. It all starts with the .dng image file.
A .dng image file saves all of your editing information in the metadata of the photo, data which you can copy and replicate once the .dng photo is in an editing software. There are a few steps you must follow to do this, but it is not too difficult.
Note that installing presets on Lightroom Mobile is much easier to do with a creative cloud subscription, but it is not required as this article shows.
Step One: Download Dropbox and iZip Application on iOS/Android
Step Two: Download Presets on Mobile
Navigate to the purchase thank you page and tap “Download Your Presets!”. This should automatically open up the Dropbox Application.
After you click your download link, you will see a page that says “.zip files can’t be previewed. To open this file, open it on your computer”. No worries, you have an app that can unzip it!
Tap on the three dots on the top right hand corner of the screen and select “Export”
Step Three: Open file in iZip Application
After you click “export,” you will need to open the file in the iZip application you downloaded earlier.
Tap “Open In…”
Next, select “Copy to iZip”
This will open the file in the iZip application. You will then be asked “Would you like to extract all files?” Select “OK”
Step Four: Save Unzipped Presets to Phone
Now that we have unzipped our presets, it’s time to save them to our phone!
Navigate to the preset folder that has the .dng files (there are three folders within the zipped file, a folder that contains presets for the newest versions of Lightroom, older versions of Lightroom, and .dng files for uploading to mobile without a creative cloud subscription).
Next, select all of the photos. You can do this by tapping the “All” button in the bottom left corner of the app.
Now, we need to save these unzipped .dng photos to your phone.
Tap “Share” on the bottom of the screen, and then select “No” (IMPORTANT). This will keep the photos unzipped.
You should then see this page. (Note the amount of photos you will be saving depends on the preset package you purchased, the example in this post is the Classic Portrait Preset Pack).
Now we need to save these files to our phone. I recommend choosing “Save to Files”. You can do this on both iOS and Android, and the presets will be very easy to access.
Step Five: Open LR Mobile, Create New Album, and Import .dng Image Files
Nice! The .dng files are now on our phone! Now, it’s time for us to open Lightroom.
Open Lightroom, navigate to the library panel, and tap the plus sign next to “Albums”.
Create a new album and title it: “Sean Dalton Presets” or something similar.
Open the new album (it will be empty), and tap the three dots in the top right corner. Select “Add Photos”
Next, select “From Files” (or wherever you saved the .dng photos)
This will open up the location where you saved the .dng photos. In this example, it opens up the “files” app in iOs.
Select all of the .dng files you would like to import and tap “open”
Sweet! The .dng files should be imported now! You will see something similar to this.
Keep this album open, as we need to stay here for the next step.
Step Six: Create Presets
Now you need to create a preset from each photo manually. This is because the preset information is stored inside of the .dng photo metadata, so we must dig it out! Don’t worry. It’s easy to do!
First, tap on the .dng photo you’d like to create a preset for. In this example, I will choose “Soft Modern”
Next, tap the three dots in the top right corner and select “Create Preset”
Tap “Select” and then tap “All”
Next, title the preset the same title that is in the image. In this case, it is “Soft Modern”.
After that, tap “Preset Group” and create a new group titled “Sean Dalton Presets” or something similar. You can create a new group for every package you have. In this example we are using my Classic Portrait Preset Pack, so I will title it that.
Next, click the check mark in the corner of your screen and boom, you’re done!
You must repeat this last step for every preset.
Step Seven: Edit Away!
Now that you’ve added all of the presets, you can easily access them when editing your photos. Just tap “Presets” on the bottom toolbar of a photo you’re editing, and pull them up.
Questions? Leave a comment down below!
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