Editing a photo is singlehandedly one of the most crucial aspects of photography. No matter if you are a professional photographer or an amateur one, post-processing can be quite tricky. From adjusting highlights and contrast to changing the split tones and adjusting the curve, you cannot simply put all that much work again and again in every photo from your trip or tour. So, most people get quite fed up after doing too much hassle.
The best way Adobe fixes and makes it easier for photographers is by offering Lightroom presets. With just single click Lightroom CC applies all the settings of a preset to a photo. It has saved photographers a lot of time. Nowadays, as smartphone photography is evolving, Adobe has made an incredible free Lightroom mobile app for your iPhone. In our article, we provide you with step by step tutorial on how to install presets in Lightroom CC on your iPhone so you can apply them to your photos. So, grab your iPhone, install Adobe Lightroom CC, and get ready to give your photos a perfect look with Lightroom mobile presets from your favourite photographers that you look up to. We will discuss two methods:
- With desktop/Mac
- With only an iPhone (without the need of desktop/Mac)
Installing Lightroom presets on iPhone with desktop:
To install the Lightroom mobile presets of your choice, first, you need to install Adobe Lightroom on your windows pc or mac and then the Lightroom app on your iPhone. Adobe Lightroom Mobile CC is available for free to download on the app store. After installing Lightroom CC on both devices start following the steps:
- Download the file
- Extract/Unzip the file
- Save the presets
- Add the DNG/PRESET files to the mobile app
- Create Lightroom presets from the DNG files
- Use your new presets
Download the file
Find a Lightroom mobile presets of your favorite photographer that you look up to. Download the preset on your desktop.
Extract/Unzip the file:
The first thing you need to do after downloading the Lightroom mobile presets on your desktop is unzipping the folder of presets. On a pc, this process is pretty simple as you just have to right-click on the unzipped folder and extract it to another folder by clicking “Extract all” and select a folder. However, if you are on a mac, just double click on the file and leave it to mac’s automatic unzipping quality to do the work. One thing to be noted here is that if you are on Windows 10, you can do the same by just double-clicking the folder and allowing windows 10 to unzip it.
You can do this step on your iPhone too by downloading the WinZip app to your phone. Just open the zipped file on your device and it will unzip them.
Save the presets
After saving the unzipped presets on your desktop, you will need to transfer those presets into your phone. You can also save the preset files to the cloud storage of your choice, so you can simply access them through your phone.
Lightroom Mobile CC app
This is by far the easiest step. Just open the free Lightroom app. Once it is open, add the files.
Add the DNG/PRESET files
Press the (…) Settings option in the top-right corner of the Lightroom mobile cc application and choose the “Add Photos” option. Then on the next screen, choose where you will be getting your Preset/DNG files from. Choose “Camera Roll” if you saved them to your phone and “From Files” if you saved them to a cloud storage option. After that, select the DNG files from your favorite photographers that you like to import. You can select multiple files on your iPhone. Keep in mind that you might get an error that says ”Cannot load File” which is normal assuming the presets are DNG files. Tap on the checkmark button in the corner anyway.
Create Lightroom presets from the DNG files
Click on any of the imported files, after that click on the 3 dots inside the circle in the upper right-hand corner of the mobile screen. Then choose “Create Preset” from the menu. Then you can give your preset any name. You can name the preset, the same name that it was given by default. Then you also need to be putting the preset in a preset group. It will be in the User Preset group by default. Name the collection of your new group so you can keep the presets from every collection.
Apply the same steps for all preset files on your iPhone.
Use your new presets
This is the part where you are finally able to apply these presets to your photos. Just select an image in the free Lightroom mobile app that you want to apply presets to. Swipe from left on the bottom options until you see “Presets” and tap on it. This will open with your preset collection that has been recently used. You can then choose the new collection that you installed on your iPhone by tapping on the collection name. Scroll your way to the preset you want and click on it. Once you are done with it, click the checkmark button in the lower right corner.
Now, we will further take you through a step-by-step process on how to install presets in Lightroom on your iPhone without the desktop.
Installing Lightroom Presets on iPhone without Desktop
These steps will guide you to install presets in Lightroom from your favorite photographers without the need to sync across multiple apps or desktop. The steps are pretty much the same but this time everything, from downloading and unzipping to applying the presets to your photos is done on your iPhone:
- Download and unzip the presets
- Save the presets
- Load the preset into Lightroom mobile
- Create the preset
- Use the Lightroom presets on your iPhone
Download and unzip the presets
Firstly, download the Lightroom presets of your choice from the website.
Then you need to unzip the files directly on your iPhone. To do this you can simply download iZip. After installing iZip, open the folder in iZip and choose to unzip all files and click OK.
Save the presets
The third step is about saving presets. If you used a desktop or Mac, you could have used airdrop to transfer these files into your iPhone. However, if you used iZip to unzip the files, then you simply have to make sure that you have access to all of the DNG files within the app.
Load the preset into Lightroom mobile
After that, it is about importing the preset files into Lightroom mobile app. The DNG files have these presets in them. They have all the settings already done on them. Now that you have access to all the DNG files on your phone, the next thing you need to be doing is load them into Lightroom Mobile and create save the settings as presets.
Create the preset
Once you have loaded the DNG files into the Lightroom Mobile app, just locate a DNG file in the library and open it. To create the preset, click the three dots button at the top right side and tap the “Create Preset” button.
Name the preset
Name your preset after making sure that all of the boxes have been checked, except “Geometry” and “Optics”. Type any name you want for the presets. Although, it is preferred that you name them the same as their default names on their website.
Finally, tap on the checkmark button at the top right corner of the iPhone screen and voila! You have created the preset. Repeat these same steps for using all presets on the iPhone.
Use the Lightroom presets on your iPhone
To use the presets that you created, simply open any photo that you want to edit. From the presets icon, scroll in the menu and select whichever preset you want to apply to your photo.
So this is how you use Lightroom presets on your iPhone. Although keep in mind that whenever you apply any kind of presets on your photos, try to do slight adjustments to the photos. It will make your photo look much better.
Conclusion
Adobe Lightroom Mobile CC application has evolved the world of post-processing on your iPhone. What was once limited to a desktop is now available in the palm of your hands. If you don’t know how to edit properly and don’t want to go into the details of post-processing, just simply download the presets on your iPhone and use them on your photos. With all that said, we recommend you still try to make some adjustments after applying the preset on your photos on iPhone. As there will be some instances where you might think that a certain preset looks terrible on your photos. However, after making a single adjustment such as a slight hue change or maybe decreasing or increasing the clarity or perhaps playing with the curves, can make your photo look like a masterpiece. So, the key here is that keep on experimenting with different presets on your photos and make slight adjustments until they look good enough to be worthy of your Instagram feed.
