Lessons

Lesson Info

Understanding Presets in Lightroom CC

We want to talk to you about designing good pre cess, but before we do that I want to show you where presets exist. So inside of light room there are pre sets all over the place for instance, when we're in import, you saw that their presets there was an import preset that we talked about at the very beginning of our class that sets all you're setting so that you don't have to set them constantly there's also presets for our our meta data. So inside the import dialog box there's a preset that tells you you know I want to add this copyright data information to my my images those were pre sets we just recently talked about today we talked about the idea of making a camera default that's a preset but that's like the mack daddy of presets because it just happens automatically based on what camera using so you don't have not toggle it's that's a great pre sent um there are presets everywhere you look in light room export presets, import presets there are presets for print templates and there...

are presets in the slide show and they're presets in the web module and in the book module everywhere you looked there presets the purpose of these presets is to make things fast for you, so you should never if you do something more than once you need to make a preset for it and then just choose the preset and most of the time, once you set that preset, it'll just always be there when you get there. Okay? So if you understand that and you gonna follow that rule, then we need to show you where to put presets so everybody paid close attention, especially those out on the web pay very close attention. I'm going to show you where these presets go and you have to want you to write these rules down because invariably people will actually email me and tell me they can't figure out why they're presets aren't showing up in light room, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and invariably, without exception one hundred percent of the time, it's because they're putting the presets in the wrong place. All right, so first, if you go up to the pre the light room preferences area, when you click on that and you go there's an entire panel for presets, remember, this is where we talked about the camera default specific to serial number and also camera iso settings. Um, but right below that area is an right in the middle it says where do you want to store the presets? You want a story in the catalog or do you want to store them in the system? We want to store them in the system because if you storm in the catalog they will move with the catalog but every time you make a new catalogue you will be missing your presents. So where are the presets? If you're using a pc, they're depending on what a version of windows you're using, it will be in a different place every single time which is maddening but if you're using windows eight, it'll be in a different place than if you're using vista and it'll be in a different place if using seven and will be a different place of yours and it doesn't every single time they move the place that it's going to be. That is why you need this button right here if you click on this button says show light room preset folder that is so it's really for the windows people but also a little bit for the mac people mac is buried a little bit but it's always in the same place windows is buried like twenty folders deep and it's always in a different place so this will find it for you if you click on this show light room presets folder it will open up the preset folder and there it is now on a mac I'm going to show you on a mac I am not on a pc so I don't know where it is in the pc nor do I ever want to know where it is I just push that little button and it shows it to me but I will not go digging for it because it's in these weird folders that make no sense at least in the mac there's a pathway and the pathway is that you first have to be in your personal library. So there's two libraries on the mac there's the stand the library that controls the whole computer and then there's the library for your specific user that's where it stores it is in the user library folder if you can't find the user library folder because I have mine here because I don't like looking for it, you can drag any folder into the side bar and they'll stay there. But if you can't find the user library folder because it's not over here because you're not using my computer, you can go up to the up here to go to that menu and if you hold the option key down the library appears. So let me zoom into that a little bit so it's not there right now and when I hold the option key down it appears the library appears so that you can find it the reason they don't have it there without hitting the option kids, they don't want you to screw things up so that being said, if you don't want to screw things up, don't best with anything except for the things you know what to do with. So you go to the library, fill the library menu and inside a library there is a folder called application support for all your applications, and inside there is adobe because leiterman's an adobe product inside lighter madobe you look for light room that is the particular program that you want to use an inside of light room here's, all of your pre sets just sitting there. So this light room folder is what controls all of light room preset stuff with a couple exceptions and I'll show you the exceptions. One of them is the developed presets. If you look at developed presets inside developed pre sets, you will see a whole bunch of different preset folders. So if I had a folder full of pre sets, I could drag them in here. When I restart light room, they will be there. Now you can also go in tow light room. I mean close this down, you can go in the light room into the develop module and you, khun, go and right click any folder of pre sets and you can import presense so if you know where your pre sets are there on your desk top, you purchase some presets if if you have presets inside of, uh like on your desk top, you can't take those presets and you can move them or import them from light room in tow light room so if I hit import, I could select a siri's of presets and pull them in, but if you're trying to import thirty or fifty or different folders of pre sets it's easier to know where the folder is because you could just drag all the folders into the folder and you're good so it's it how you import your presets is based on how many you're importing if you're only importing five presets and they're all by themselves, they're just five of them you download him somewhere, highlight all those go to the import button here, click on import, it'll open up here and then you say where you're presets? Oh, I wantto you know I want to bring in let me go down to some pre sets here, so I'm going to go to let's say, uh, the outsource pack I'm gonna import this one preset if I hit imports going to bring it in or if I shift click I can import all of those at the same time, but I'm not importing the entire folder see how the import button is no longer available there I have to import individual ones at the same time which means that I can't import six folders of presets aiken on ly import presets and then it will put them into the folder that I just write clicked okay that's the first way you can import presets but the more efficient way to do it if you have a siri's of say ten pretty set feliz so for instance if you went and purchased my comprehensive preset collection which is available on my website you would then get some ten folders full of presets and there's four hundred presets you don't want to be going and doing individual imports on four hundred presets and different folders and all that so what you do is you take the presets highlight all the folders and you put them right in here and so you would end up with all of these folders right all of those folders come inside of that set of pre set so you would take those folders and dragged them in here but what you have to be aware of is that if you put a folder within a folder so you see how inside of our developed presets we have a folder and right inside that folder there are presets if I were to put a folder inside of this folder is like I was trying to make a bigger folder tree so that they were more organized the ones inside the extra folder will not be seen inside of light room liron cannot see two folders deep it sees one folder deep so you have the developed preset folder which is where all presets in the developed module go for the left hand side developed presets. All of those go in there and they go in folders and that's what? Ifyou're looking at light room you can see that I've got a bunch of priests at folders so if I look at right up here I've got an outsource pack. I've got an outsource packed too, which is I'm in the process of building I've got a little, many one I've got a video one I've got the live presets that we're gonna build here so I've got a lot of different presets but if I go to this folder here you can see that all of those presets air here there's all but there's zero there's the life processes outsource all of those air in there they just the same folders any folder that's here is gonna be shown here and that's the way it works, but notice that inside of a folder immediately there are presets and that's how you have to mimic it here inside of the developed presets folder there's a folder and inside that folder immediately are presense I cannot emphasize that enough because otherwise you will email me and I will email you the same answer, which is you probably have a folder with in a folder with in a folder and you're getting too crazy with your folder trees okay now that's in the developed presets developed presets or everything that's here inside of the preset area on the left hand side but there are other presets in the developed modules. Well remember when we were working on grady ints? We had presets over here under the effects area these air called local adjustment presets they're different than regular process they if you put the local adjustment presets into a preset folder over here into your develop presets they won't show up in either place because they're not developed presets they're local adjustment presets so if we make a local adjustment preset and I put it inside of a local adjustment preset folder for you to download off of creative live, you need to know where to put it and you don't put it in the developed preset you put it in the local adjustment presets because that's what it is so this precept set here is different and I will show you where those go now so if you go back here in that same remember we're in the light room folder and then here's all your presets and templates and all that kind of stuff develop presets air here, and if you scan down a little bit into the els, you will find local adjustment presets right there now noticed something different about local adjustment presets there are no folders inside this folder. It can't even see one folder d it sees zero folders deep it's one big list you cannot put a folder inside of here, so if I send you if I post a folder with a couple local adjustment pre sets that we build and you take those luckily adjustment presets and you take the folder and dragon into here won't show up because it's a folder with an folder you need to put the physical presets themselves into this area. All right, okay, I feel like I'm scolding children, but generally speaking, I get the same question over and over and over again and always has to do with the fact that someone is putting a folder with in a folder in a preset area and they can't find their presets. Okay, so if we want to install a preset, all we need to do is take a preset or a folder of presets and get those pre sets into the correct area if they're local adjustments, they go here if there developed presets, they go here, and also we're going to talk a little bit about export actions those air photo shop actions so I ca n't tell light room to command photo shop if I want light room to do something to something in photo shop. So if I have an action that I cannot replicate inside of light room, but I want to run it automated through light room I can put inside of this folder here. It's called export actions I can put any kind of a droplet from photo shop, which is basically a self contained action I can put it right here, and that will be available for me in the export dialog box. I could send it out so I could basically say once you're done light room once you're done exporting this file, I want youto open photo shop and I want you to run this action and then save it and put it back here so I can light room comptel photoshopped what to do so that while I'm sleeping light room is busy telling photoshopped to do this that the other thing? All right? Um also export presets are right here, but notice export presets can actually have folders within folders again so they don't have a consistent teo they're not consistent export actions can on ly have one, and not you can multiple folders export presets can have folders because they have a folder structure you can always tell which ones you can have folder structures within which ones you can't based on the fact that they have these little triangles that open up folders. If they if they have this kind of an interface, they can do one folder deep, if that this kind of an interface where it's just a dropdown list, no folders, all has to be in one place. So if you go to the, uh, let's, say to the export dialog box inside of the export dialog box, if we go to a hard drive export, see how these have the little triangles. That means that I can actually put a folder our presets within a folder, and I can organize them that way. Same is true inside of my print module, so I'm in the print module. See all how I have these controls here. I can close and open up these folders that means that I can have control enoughto. Organize these print templates by folders, but again, I can only go one folder deep, all right.