Lightroom Camera Develop Settings

DavidTO

A while ago I saw in a tutorial how you could profile each of your cameras for noise reduction and sharpening by taking a bunch of test pictures, optimizing those settings and then saving them specific to the camera serial number and ISO.

I did that on my desktop.

I would like to move all those develop settings to my laptop, but I'm not finding how to do that. I've googled, and I can find two develop settings, but they are not related to the ones I'm looking for.

It's been long enough since I did that that I'm now vague on it and having trouble finding an answer.

Anyone have any idea? :ear

arodney

I cover it in this Webinar from Retouch Pro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyJrMSNcd4k

In a nutshell, you bracket a controlled capture using differing ISO settings. You use the lowest as your ‘base’ to match. Apply different settings of NR (use PV 2010), and create a preset for each. The trick is then setting the presets preferences for ISO specific settings. Alt/Option click Reset at bottom of Develop pane, select “Set Default....” the dialog below will appear. Notice it is camera and ISO specific. Only these NR rendering settings will be used!

The best way to keep presets in sync across multiple machines is to set your preferences to Store presets with Catalog. Then as you update and then clone that catalog (and images) from drive to drive, you update the presets as well.

DavidTO

arodney wrote: »

I cover it in this Webinar from Retouch Pro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyJrMSNcd4k

In a nutshell, you bracket a controlled capture using differing ISO settings. You use the lowest as your ‘base’ to match. Apply different settings of NR (use PV 2010), and create a preset for each. The trick is then setting the presets preferences for ISO specific settings. Alt/Option click Reset at bottom of Develop pane, select “Set Default....” the dialog below will appear. Notice it is camera and ISO specific. Only these NR rendering settings will be used!

The best way to keep presets in sync across multiple machines is to set your preferences to Store presets with Catalog. Then as you update and then clone that catalog (and images) from drive to drive, you update the presets as well.

Thanks!

So if I don't really want to move a catalog in the same direction I want to move the settings (from my desktop to my laptop), then I can export a single image in a catalog, and then use that catalog as my field catalog? I pretty much want to be able to work on images in LR on my laptop and then dump them after I've moved them to their permanent location.

arodney

DavidTO wrote: »

So if I don't really want to move a catalog in the same direction I want to move the settings (from my desktop to my laptop), then I can export a single image in a catalog, and then use that catalog as my field catalog?

That’s one really good way to duplicate ALL the specific items stored in the catalog such as keywords and so forth. But with presets, they are stored locally by default on the boot drive. And you update that all the time so the issue is keeping newer files in sync across multiple systems.

On the Mac, they are in HFS Path: Mac HD:Users~:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Lightroom Settings. If you instead update the Catalog Preferences to store with the catalog, well that’s where they now live. If you backup the catalog, images and so forth (I clone them with a utility), then you backup and clone those settings as well.

One other solution that works quite well is to setup DropBox for these folders as well (again, depending on where you want them to live, you have to setup a symbolic link which is like an alias, at least on Mac). Then when you update or create a new preset, all other systems update via Dropbox.

This technique is useful because unlike Presets, lens profiles and DNG profiles live in that Application Support folder mentioned above, there is no provisions for ‘store with catalog’. Those files need to sync up with multiple machines as well. So in the end, using a Drobox or similar cloud syncing mechanism is ideal.

I hope in the future, Adobe assists us here by providing their own method of backing up and as importantly, syncing these important documents across multiple machines.

basflt

as far as i know ( i may be wrong ) they are stored in
C:\Users\username \AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Import Presets\User Presets
and the name is name.Irtemplate

copy to laptop & find out

DavidTO

Thanks, guys!

Rodney, I went to ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets/User Presets and I found only two presets in there that I made, but not the rest that I expect. Looks like I may need to start from scratch. I like the Dropbox option, and I'm familiar with using symbolic links for that. When I get a chance I'll go through the process again and set it up on Dropbox.

Thanks again for all the help!

arodney

DavidTO wrote: »

I went to ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets/User Presets and I found only two presets in there that I made, but not the rest that I expect.

That folder has all the necessary user and installed goodies you should need but perhaps you did have the Store Presets with Catalog option on (in which case you’ll find them there). You can also have LR show you where the presets are (Preferences>Presets tab, Show Lightroom Presets Folder).

What’s annoying is that as you toggle this option on and off for storing presets, you’ll actually see them show up or not if you in a location where they are visible. And the trick you mentioned above (export as Catalog, only 1 photo), ONLY saves off presets that were in the Application Support folder. IOW, if you have Store Presets with Catalog set, the presets ARE stored there and use this trick, LR doesn’t honor them, it saves out presets in the Application Support area (bug or just bad design).

As for Symbolic Links, they are absolutely necessary to work with DropBox correct. There is a free and easy to use utility for making them here:

http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/symboliclinker.html

Once installed, its a contextual menu. You simply place the folder of items you want for DropBox in the Drobox folder** then build a Symbolic Link and place it back into the correct location.

**One issue with Dropbox is all the stuff it syncs has to be in a special Dropbox folder. But the items it stores may have to be in other locations. For example, LR expects to find the settings discussed in your Application Support folder. You can’t move them into Drobox folder for backup and syncing, LR expects to find them elsewhere. This is where the links come into play. You can either make a link from the original location and place link in Drobox or vise versa. The beauty of the links is they are much like aliases but don’t suffer issues when they are used across differing machines. So you can build a dropbox folder of all the Lightroom files (DNG profiles, presets, etc) and using a link and Dropbox, sync among all your machines that Dropbox keeps track of.

arodney

One other point. The idea that you have two locations for storing all this stuff (especially presets) is annoying. To fix this, you can build a symbolic link in both the catalog AND the Application Support>Lightroom folder area. Then it doesn’t matter if you have the Preset check box on or off, both locations always update themselves. This only helps you with Presets and the above mentioned check box. Why Adobe allows us to store Presets in two possible locations, but none of the other important settings is a problem. If your goal is to have multiple machines all having the same access to these settings, the only solution I know of today is to use these links and something to sync them up. Since Dropbox is free for the first 2 gigs (and these are all small files), that’s the best solution so far I’ve found.