Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom



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Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

This article is a part of our series Photo Editing in Lightroom 101. Throughout the series we’ll cover the details of Lightroom’s library and develop modules and how you can use Lightroom to improve your own photos. As new articles are published they will be added to this page. If you don’t want to miss future articles in the series, please subscribe to our RSS feed or our email newsletter.

In the previous article we looked at the adjustment brush tool and the basics of how to use it. Lightroom develop presets are very popular and useful because they can help to speed up your process, and likewise, you can also use local adjustment presets to speed up your work with the adjustment brush (they can also be used with the graduated filter and radial filter tools).

When you are using the adjustment brush tool you can click on the little arrows to select a local adjustment preset.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Next, you’ll select from the brushes that you have installed.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Lightroom comes with some local adjustment presets installed by default, you can create and save your own (we’ll go over that in a minute), or you can install local adjustment presets that you have downloaded or purchased. Some of our Lightroom Preset products include brushes or local adjustment presets. Those products include Master Workflow Presets and Portrait Power Presets.

How to Create Your Own Local Adjustment Presets

If you are using the adjustment brush and you have settings that you want to save for use later on another photo, you can easily do so. Once you have the settings how you want them, click on the arrows.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Then scroll down until you see “save current settings as new preset”.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Next, you’ll give your preset a name and click “create”.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

In the future when you want to use the preset you can click on the arrows to select your preset, and then choose the one you want.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

How to Install Local Adjustment Presets

If you are downloading or purchasing local adjustment presets you will need to install them before they can be used. The process is basically the same as installing develop presets, but you’ll place them in a different folder. To start, go to Edit > Preferences (on a PC) or Lightroom > Preferences (on a Mac). Then click on “show Lightroom presets folder”.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Next, open the “Lightroom” folder.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Then open the “Local Adjustment Presets” folder.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Next, paste the preset files that you’ve download or purchased into the “Local Adjustment Presets” folder.

Creating and Using Adjusment Brushes in Lightroom

Then you will need to close Lightroom and re-start it, and the presets will be installed.

If you don’t want to miss the other articles in this Photo Editing in Lightroom 101 series, please subscribe to our RSS feed or our email newsletter. As new articles are published they will be added to the series page, which will serve as an index for the entire series.