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kimaldis
Inspiring
December 17, 2022
Question

Seeing which dev parameters a dev preset modifies

  • December 17, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 762 views

I've a bunch of dev presets but I'm struggling to figure out how to see which parameters the preset will set on a photo when it's applied and what parameters I need to set in the update dialog when I'm updating using current settings. Any thoughts, anyone?

1 reply

R
Community Expert
richardplondonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 17, 2022

A preset is just a text file, basically. It mentions some adjustments to be applied, and those are in effect the parameters that were checked. Anything not mentioned, was an un-checked parameter for this preset.

 

BTW it escapes me why LrC cannot autoset these checkmarks when updating a preset, the same as they would have been set when creating that, rather than making the user do that research.

 

But by reading the preset you can see what it does and how. You can edit that yourself if you want a different parameter value. Also you can remove unwanted lines, copy-paste between presets, etc. I believe LrC needs to be restarted in order to read in and then use manual updates of that sort.

 

LrC Preferences, Presets tab, has a button "Show Lightroom Develop Presets" which opens an OS file browser showing their location on disk - which is standard, unless the option Store Presets with Catalog is checked. User Presets are in their own subfolder.

 

As an example, here's an extract from my preset for B&W conversion the way I prefer to do it.

Since only adjustments of this nature are present, it can be easily worked out that only the HSL adjustments checkbox was involved.

K
kimaldisAuthor
Inspiring
December 17, 2022

Sure, I get all that. Maybe I should have been clearer in my post. Digging around in the xmp isn't ideal; it's obtuse and the thought of dipping backwards and forwards between the file and a dialog, checking boxes doesn't exactly fill me with joy.

 

Your point about only populating the dialog with params in the preset is a good one; I'd always assumed it was what happened anyway, before I looked more closely. I think in general the whole preset management & workflow thing is over-ripe for a rerthink. And it doesn't help that much of this stuff seems to appear in the SDK.


I may take a look at parsing xmp files into something more visually useful. If I can pull that out out I might be able to write a better updater.

    R
    Community Expert
    richardplondonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 17, 2022

    This business of finding out what a preset is doing, is quite a widespread difficulty so I thought I should lay that out for purposes of the wider forum. Also sometimes editing the XMP is more of a 'scalpel', than the rather blunter dialog checkboxes can be.

     

    If when you went to update a preset you did see just the relevant checkmarks offered, this would AFAICT give us enough of a clue about the action of the preset - besides making the management of well targeted presets much easier.

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