Free Lightroom Develop Presets – The Dirty Dozen (grading presets)

Lightroom Presets are ‘One-Click Wonders’ and enable a series of complex edits to be applied to an image with a single click of the mouse.

The first SIX Dramatic presets are variations of a stylised grading treatment I use often when I don’t want the SOOC* look. IMPORTANT – Click on the Zero preset at the bottom of the folder BEFORE you click a different preset.

The Freeze Preset is good for creating a ‘High Key’ or ‘Bleach Bypass’ look, but you may need to adjust the Exposure slider to perfect the look.

The POP Preset is good to combat the rather ‘flat’ look of images first imported into Lightroom. If you like the extra life that this Preset applies to unedited images you may like to consider selecting it in the Import dialog.

The Semi presets render images that are toned, but retain some of their original colour – I find this a more interesting look than a straight blue or sepia-toned image.

The first six Dramatic presets are not designed to be subtle edits. If you apply them to images with a raised ISO you will notice that noise may be problematic. The Presets utilise a small amount of ‘noise reduction’ in the Detail panel to keep noise in check on low ISO images.

IMPORTANT NOTE > Adobe Develop Presets changed file format from ‘.lrtemplate‘ to ‘.xmp‘ in mid 2018. If you import the older .lrtemplate presets (as directed by the movie below) they will now be converted to .xmp files and moved to the Settings folder in the Camera Raw folder. .xmp Develop Presets can now be used in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom CC as well as Lightroom Classic. It is easier, however, to load the older style .lrtemplate develop presets into Lightroom Classic as the folder structure is added to the Presets panel rather than just importing all new .xmp presets into one ‘User Presets‘ folder. The link below will follow this import workflow.

DOWNLOAD LINK FOR THE DIRTY DOZEN

DOWNLOAD LINK FOR THE DIRTY DOZEN

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Installing Lightroom Presets

• Click on the Download link above and Unzip the file (if it does not Unzip or ‘Extract’ automatically after downloading)
• Copy the folder of Presets into the ‘Develop Presets‘ folder in Lightroom (you can find this folder by opening Lightroom’s Preferences and then clicking on the ‘Show All Other Lightroom Presets Folder‘ button in the Presets Tab. NOTE > DO NOT click on the Show Lightroom Develop Presets folder – which is inside a folder called Lightroom)
• Wait for a minute or two for the presets to be converted and loaded (restart Lightroom if they do not load automatically). You will then find the Presets in the Presets Panel in the Develop Module.

NEW TO LIGHTROOM CLASSIC (Version 7.3 and later): Lightroom DEVELOP Presets are now converted to ‘.xmp‘ files and copied to the Settings folder in the Camera Raw directory. Folders of Develop Presets may take a minute or two for the conversion to take place and they may appear automatically in the Presets pane (you may not need to restart Lightroom). If you would prefer to download Develop Presets that have already been converted to .xmp files and then copy them to your Adobe > Camera Raw > Settings directory directory you can download them here: ACS-THE-DIRTY-DOZEN-Mark-Galer-XMP – these xmp Develop Presets will NOT be loaded if placed in the Lightroom  > Presets > Develop directory.

Testing a Preset

Select one of your images (it is better to start on an image that was correctly exposed so that you can clearly see the effect as the preset will not adjust a badly exposed image)

NOTE 1 > After clicking on the Preset you will probably need to fine-tune the effect by adjusting some of the sliders in the Basic panel.

NOTE 2 > Most of the presets make use of Graduated Filters (top and bottom), Post-Crop Vignetting (Effects panel) and Split Toning.

*Straight Out Of Camera