Today’s Question: Is there a way to have the Develop presets in Lightroom Classic that I’ve created on my desktop computer available on my laptop when I’m traveling?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can simply export the applicable presets from Lightroom Classic on your desktop computer and then import those presets into Lightroom Classic on your laptop computer.
More Detail: When you’ve created a set of presets in the Develop module in Lightroom Classic you may want to make those available on another computer, such as to have on your laptop or to share with a friend.
First, I recommend making sure that the presets you want to copy to another computer are organized into meaningful groups. If you have a relatively small number of presets you could simply use the “User Presets” group, but you may want to organize the presets into specific groups if you have a relatively large number of them.
When you’re ready to export the presets from your desktop computer you can right-click on a preset group in the Presets list on the left panel in the Develop module and choose “Export Group” from the popup menu. Navigate to a convenient location (such as the Desktop), update the name for the export if you want to, and click the Save button. Repeat this process for all the groups of presets you want to export.
The exported files will be ZIP files, which will contain individual files for each of the presets for the group that was exported to create the ZIP file. Copy all of the applicable ZIP files to your laptop computer, saving them in a convenient location.
On your laptop you can then go into Lightroom Classic and click the plus (+) button to the right of the Presets heading on the left panel in the Develop module. Choose “Import Presets” from that popup and navigate to the location where you saved the ZIP files. Select all the ZIP files for the presets you want to import and click the Import button. The presets will appear in their respective groups on the Presets list on the left panel.
I shared a variety of tips related to managing presets in Lightroom Classic in my recent webinar presentation on “Mastering Develop Presets in Lightroom Classic”. You can view a recording of the full presentation on my “Tim Grey TV” channel on YouTube here:
