The Lightroom preset is a simple text file with a list of editing instructions. The Develop Presets functionality takes full advantage of nondestructive editing in Lightroom. The original RAW file stays untouched all you see is the JPEG preview. When you select an image in Lightroom by clicking on it, Lightroom reads the instructions in the XMP file line by line and creates a JPEG preview with all the edits applied. If I boost the Saturation to +33 in the Basic Panel of Lightroom, it creates an entry in the Sidecar file: The XMP is also known as a Sidecar file, a simple text file you can open with any text editor like Notepad.įor example, if I drag the Sharpening slider to a value of +25, Lightroom creates an entry in the Sidecar file: When you edit the RAW file in Lightroom, it stores all the editing steps as simple text entries in the XMP file. It not only stores EXIF metadata like the date, time, exposure info, and so on, but it also stores Lightroom editing information. The XMP files are Adobe metadata files where additional information about the image is stored. The ARW files are Sony RAW images in their proprietary format. It made professional photography tools more accessible to the general public. The Lightroom Develop Preset functionality helped bridge the gap between professional and hobby photographers.

I attribute such broad adoption of Lightroom to the explosion of the Lightroom preset market. At this point, Lightroom’s user base ranges from professional photographers to beginners and even casual shooters. Nevertheless, the mass adoption of Lightroom has skyrocketed in recent years. In some areas, it even rivals Photoshop in complexity. Over the years, a myriad of new features and editing capabilities have been added to Lightroom, making it more capable and, at the same time, much more complicated. Did you know that the first version of Lightroom did not even have a Crop Tool? The editing capabilities of Lightroom were exceptionally limited. The program’s sole purpose was to address the primary challenge of modern digital photography: to manage a high volume of RAW files, otherwise known as digital negatives. Lightroom was originally named Photoshop Lightroom. Originally, Lightroom was created for professional photographers as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) program to complete Photoshop’s editing capabilities. Because of its modular structure with hundreds of different tools and thousands of options and settings can be adapted for any type of photography workflow.Īlthough the concept of the Develop Presets is only a small part of the Lightroom presets workflow, I consider it to be one of the most important. The beta version of Lightroom was released over 12 years ago, and today, it is a mature and flexible program.

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