Today’s Question: I have presets for Lightroom Classic in both the Camera Raw folder (Imported Settings) and Lightroom (Develop Presets). Can you explain for me why they are kept in two separate places in the file system?
Tim’s Quick Answer: This is an artifact of an older version of Lightroom Classic, as presets for both Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw are now stored in the same location, within the Camera Raw application support folder.
More Detail: When you save a preset in the Develop module in Lightroom Classic or in Camera Raw, a file containing the preset settings is saved in a Settings folder. The same folder is used for both Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw, and can be found here by default:
Windows: C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings
Macintosh: [Username] > Library > Application Support > Adobe > Camera Raw > Settings
Note, by the way, that presets you import rather than save are placed in the “Imported Settings” folder rather than the “Settings” folder.
In early versions of Lightroom Classic, saved presets were stored in a separate folder for Lightroom, not within the Camera Raw folder. However, this was changed some time ago so that presets for both applications are stored in the same folder. If you have presets in the “old” location, those would have been left behind from an earlier version of Lightroom Classic, before the location was updated. That original folder location was similar to the path above, but instead of being in the Camera Raw folder the presets were stored in a Lightroom > Develop Settings folder.
If the presets in the old location are not reflected in the new location, you can move them to the correct location, so they’ll be available in both applications.
