There’s a specific kind of frustration that hits when you’ve just bought a preset pack, you’re excited to try it, and you cannot for the life of you figure out why nothing is showing up in Lightroom. I’ve watched junior retouchers in my studio spend 20 minutes trying to drag a zip file directly into the presets panel before giving up and asking for help. It’s one of those deceptively small friction points that, left unsolved, quietly discourages people from building the preset libraries that could save them hours every week.
In this Matt Kloskowski tutorial, the process gets laid out clearly and in a logical order, covering develop module presets, folder organization inside Lightroom, and the slightly different workflow required for brush, radial, and graduated filter presets. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube if you want to follow along with the video, but everything below is written so you can work through it step by step on your own.
I organize my own preset library the same way I organize my drives: folders, subfolders, color logic, nothing left loose. If that sounds excessive, consider that a well-organized preset panel means the difference between spending 30 seconds on a look and spending 3 minutes hunting for it across 200 unlabeled entries. Over a full project run, that adds up fast.
Step 1: Unzip Your Preset File Before You Do Anything Else
Zip file and extracted LR template files shown side by side
This is where most people get stuck the first time. When you download a preset pack, it almost always arrives as a zip file. You have to extract that zip before touching Lightroom. Inside, you’ll find files with the .lrtemplate or .xmp extension, depending on how the presets were packaged. Lightroom cannot read a zip file directly, full stop. Extract everything to your desktop or a dedicated presets folder on your drive, confirm the individual preset files are visible, and only then move forward.
Step 2: Navigate to the Develop Module and Open the Presets Panel
Lightroom Develop module with Presets panel open on the left
Switch over to the Develop module in Lightroom. The presets panel lives on the left side of the screen, and this is your home base for the next few steps. You’ll notice some folders are prefixed with “Lightroom” in the label. Those are the default presets that shipped with the application, and Lightroom treats them as protected. Don’t expect to add anything into those folders or reorganize their contents. Any folder you create yourself will behave differently and give you full control.
Step 3: Right-Click a Folder and Import Your Presets
Right-click context menu showing Import option on a preset folder
Find an existing user-created folder in the presets panel, or skip ahead to Step 4 to create a new one first. Right-click on the folder name and select “Import” from the context menu. A file browser will open. Navigate to wherever you extracted your preset files, select one or use Shift-click to select the entire batch at once, then click Import. The presets will appear inside that folder immediately. No restart required, no additional steps. The whole import takes about ten seconds once you know where your files are.
Step 4: Create New Folders to Keep Your Presets Organized
New folder dialog box with name being typed in
A flat list of 200 presets is nearly useless in production. Right-click anywhere in the presets panel and choose “New Folder.” Name it something specific: a style category, a client name, a lighting condition. I keep separate folders for product work, portrait retouching, and cinematic grades because those are the three buckets my client work falls into. Once the folder exists, you can import directly into it or drag existing presets from other folders into it. The drag-and-drop reorganization works smoothly inside the panel, so you can shuffle things around without any exporting or file management on the system level.
Step 5: Drag and Drop to Reorganize Presets Between Folders
Preset being dragged from one folder to another in the panel
If you already have presets scattered across your panel and want to consolidate them, you don’t need to export and re-import anything. Simply click and drag a preset from its current folder and drop it onto the destination folder. Lightroom moves it over. This is the kind of small feature that makes a real difference when you’re inheriting a disorganized library from a previous version of the software or from a colleague who treated the presets panel like a junk drawer.
Step 6: Install Brush, Radial, and Graduated Filter Presets Separately
Effect settings panel open showing brush preset options
This is where the workflow splits. Brush presets, radial filter presets, and graduated filter presets are a different file type and live in a completely different location in Lightroom’s file structure. They don’t show up in the main presets panel, and the import menu you used above won’t help you here. To access these, you need to activate the relevant tool (the Adjustment Brush, the Radial Filter, or the Graduated Filter), open the effect settings panel, and look for the preset dropdown at the top of that panel. From there, you can load presets specific to that tool. The good news is that the file format is consistent across all three of these tools, so the same installation logic applies whether you’re working with brush presets or gradient presets.
How I Extended This Workflow for Studio Volume
The tutorial covers everything you need to get presets installed and organized. Where I’ve pushed this further in my own work is in building a naming convention before importing anything. Every preset I add to Lightroom gets a prefix: “PRT-” for portrait, “PRD-” for product, “ENV-” for environmental. That prefix means the folders stay clean even when a client sends over a new pack and I need to slot it into the right place quickly.
I also keep a single “Inbox” folder in the presets panel that acts as a staging area. New presets go there first. After I’ve tested them on a real job and decided they’re worth keeping, they get renamed and moved to the appropriate category folder. It’s the same logic I use for managing actions in Photoshop, and it has kept my panel from becoming a graveyard of presets I downloaded once and forgot about.
One more thing worth flagging: if you’re on a newer version of Lightroom, you may see .xmp files instead of .lrtemplate files in your downloaded packs. The import process is identical. Lightroom handles both formats through the same right-click import menu described in Step 3.
A disorganized preset library is a time tax you pay every single editing session. Getting the installation right once, and building a folder structure you’ll actually maintain, is one of the highest-return organizational tasks you can do in Lightroom. Matt’s tutorial cuts straight to the practical steps without unnecessary padding, and it’s the clearest version of this walkthrough I’ve seen.
Watch the full tutorial on YouTube to see the process in motion alongside this written guide.
Comments (2)
I keep coming back to this article. It's that useful.
This is the kind of content that keeps me coming back.
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