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sideliner
sideliner
Known Participant
June 1, 2023
Answered

Undeletable old user presets

  • June 1, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1451 views

I have a number of old User Presets cluttering up my workspace that I'd love to get rid of. 

They are missing the 'Delete' option that comes up for more recent presets. Attached is a screenshot that shows the options offered: 'Add to Favorites', 'Apply on Import' and 'Export...'. 

 

They don't appear in the location for Camera Raw presets which is where presets are stored these days. 

Also no sign of them elsewhere on the machine. 

 

Already reset the preferences file, it changed nothing (apart from having to set up my LR preferences again). Years ago I tried to chase down this same problem, spent a day chasing down invisible files, reinstalling LR etc. and couldn't locate/delete the files then either. 

 

If anybody could point me to where these old preset files are, it would truly, really, make my day. 

 

---

- Macbook Pro 15" 2019 / 32Gb, Ventura 13.2.1

- Lightroom Classic 12.3

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer johnrellis

Thanks John. Had a look in both locations but there's only the kind of presets that come with Lightroom as a standard install (at least, that's how it looks, definitely no user generated/named presets).


I've attached a script that dumps out all the presets and their file paths that are currently visible in the Develop Preset panel.  Download the attached file and rename it to "dump-preset-paths.lua".  Instructions for installing and running the script are at the top of the file.

 

The output file should contain the problem presets and their file paths.

1 reply

Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 1, 2023

Yes, Your [Right-Click] Context menu looks different to mine.

Open the 'Presets' Tab in Preferences and you have two button links to Presets-

The first button [Show Lightroom Develop Presets] will show you to the Folder where LrC is currently finding the Develop Presets it is using. (.XMP File-type)

The second button [Show All Other Lightroom Presets] will let you navigate to a location like- ....\Adobe\Lightroom\Develop Presets\..., where you might find any 'Old' Presets of the .LRTEMPLATE file-type. Old Develop Presets that have been converted to .XMP will show the double-tilde as a filename prefix-

Be also aware of the option to [Store Presets with the Catalog] !

 

 

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .
sideliner
sidelinerAuthor
Known Participant
June 1, 2023

Thanks Rob, I appreciate your taking the time. To be honest I've read your posts addressing similar issues for others and already tried these locations: as you'd expect, [Show Lightroom Develop Presets] shows the more recent presets; they're all fine. I had hoped to find the old presets (dating back to late 2012 & a few following years, for what it's worth) in the 'Show All Other Lightroom Presets' linked folder, but that folder is empty save two empty folders marked 'Lightroom Presets' and 'User Presets'. Those folders both come in at 0 bytes so I'm assuming they're genuinely empty, not just filled with invisible files. 

 

A search of the entire drive for any files containing '~~' in their name finds nothing; a search for '.LRTEMPLATE' brings up a small set of unrelated Lightroom files to do with actions like export functions and generic editing actions. I can't see anything in there that's reasonably expected to be connected to the old developing User Presets. 

 

Also searched the drive for any files containing the names of some of the old presets, hoping that might unearth one and lead me to their container but nope. 

 

So, I'm out of ideas on where to look.

sideliner
sidelinerAuthor
Known Participant
June 1, 2023

And P.S. the button to 'Store Presets with Catalog' was not & is not ticked in my preferences/settings - for what it's worth. 

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