Building Custom Presets That Actually Stick: A Practical Guide

I’ve watched a lot of photographers and designers download preset packs, use them twice, then abandon them. The problem isn’t usually the presets themselves—it’s that they weren’t built for their specific workflow. That’s why I’m obsessed with custom presets.

When you create presets tailored to your actual work, something magical happens. You stop thinking about settings and start thinking about results. Your consistency improves. Your speed improves. Your sanity improves.

Let me walk you through how to build presets that’ll actually become part of your routine.

Understanding What Can Be Preset

Before you start, know the limits. In Photoshop, you can save presets for:

  • Camera Raw Filter settings (exposure, contrast, vibrance, etc.)
  • Curves and Levels adjustments
  • Brush properties (size, opacity, flow)
  • Workspace layouts
  • Tool presets (including stroke and fill settings)
  • Layer styles
  • Print settings

What you can’t preset is the actual pixel data or complex selection workflows. But honestly, that’s fine. The real time-savers are in the settings you apply repeatedly.

Start by Documenting Your Actual Process

This is crucial and I see people skip it. Before creating a single preset, spend a week noting down the repetitive adjustments you make. Are you always bumping vibrance by +15 and dropping blacks by -8? Do you have a standard sharpening routine? Does every portrait get the same skin tone adjustment?

Write it down. Be specific with numbers.

I keep a simple spreadsheet where I track what I’m doing. Last month I realized I was applying nearly identical Camera Raw adjustments to 60% of my client work. That’s when I knew I needed presets.

Creating Your First Camera Raw Preset

This is where I’d start because it has the biggest impact on speed.

  1. Open any image in Camera Raw Filter (Filter > Camera Raw Filter)
  2. Make your adjustments—be intentional, not random
  3. Click the three dots next to “Presets” and select “New Preset”
  4. Name it something specific like “Skin_Warm_Default” not just “Preset 1”
  5. In the dialog, uncheck any settings you want to remain flexible—exposure and highlights especially, since these vary per image
  6. Save it

Here’s the trick: uncheck the settings you want to adjust on a per-image basis. If you lock everything down, the preset becomes useless. I typically lock down saturation, vibrance, and tone curve, but leave exposure and blacks flexible.

Organizing Presets Into Groups

After you create five or six presets, organize them. I use a naming system like:

  • PORTRAIT_skin_warm
  • PORTRAIT_skin_cool
  • LANDSCAPE_autumn
  • LANDSCAPE_moody

This makes them instantly findable in the dropdown. I can’t stress this enough—bad naming creates preset chaos.

The Workflow Preset That Changed Everything

Beyond individual adjustments, consider building a workspace preset. Go to Window > Workspace > New Workspace and set up exactly how you like your panels arranged. I have three: one for heavy retouching (Layers panel huge, Properties small), one for color grading (all panels visible but compact), and one for batch processing (minimal distractions).

This alone cuts 30 seconds of hunting-and-clicking off every editing session.

The Real Win

Here’s what happened when I got serious about presets: my editing became more intentional. I wasn’t twiddling random sliders; I was starting from a foundation I knew worked, then making deliberate adjustments for each unique image.

Your presets should be boring. They should be consistent. They should feel invisible once you’re using them regularly.

Start small. Create presets for your three most common editing scenarios. Use them for a month. Refine them. Then add more.

The speed gain is real, but the consistency gain is what’ll actually transform your work.