Lightroom Tutorial

Video Tutorials

How to Install and Organize Lightroom Presets Without Losing Your Mind

If there is one thing that kills editing momentum faster than a slow hard drive, it is a preset panel that looks like a junk drawer. I have been on both sides of this. Early in my commercial work, I let presets pile up in the default “User Presets” folder until scrolling through them felt like digging through a bin at a thrift store. Now, after fifteen years of processing everything from e-commerce product shots to full ad campaign retouches, I treat preset organization the same way I treat my backup drives: with obsessive structure and zero tolerance for chaos.

July 3, 2026

Video Tutorials

Three Rules for Building Lightroom Presets That Actually Work Across Every Shot

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from applying a preset to a batch of client images and watching half of them go sideways. Skin turns swamp green. Shadows collapse. The look that seemed locked in during testing falls apart the moment the subject changes. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, and for a while I chalked it up to presets just being unreliable. Turns out, the presets weren’t the problem.

July 3, 2026