How To Install Lightroom Mobile Presets

If you’ve made it this far, you either purchased one of my new Lightroom Mobile presets, or you got lost a bit trying to install whichever preset you might’ve gotten. Either way, I got you. This tutorial will teach you to install Lightroom Mobile presets into the app directly from your smartphone, without using the desktop version at all. You will be able to save them as presets and apply them with one click.

Step 1: Download the DNG files to your phone

Presets for Lightroom Mobile come in a DNG file format. Most people, like me, put them in a .zip file for easy download and compressed files.

If you see a DNG file when you click on your download link, skip directly to Step 2.

If you see a ZIP file, then you need to unzip the presets first.

Unzip your DNG files directly on your phone

If you don’t want to transfer your files to your PC to unzip and then transfer then back, you can directly unzip your files on your phone by using Unzip (iOS) or iZip (iOS and android). Go to your download file and choose „Open in..“ then choose Unzip / iZip.

If you click on the.zip file, it will be automatically unzipped. Now you have all of your DNG files inside your Unzip or iZip app! Easy as pie. Let’s import them into Lightroom!

Step 2: Import preset files into Lightroom Mobile 

At this point you should have all of your DNG files saved to your smartphone – either in your unzipping app or directly in your camera roll. The files serve as “preset carriers” and now you just need to add them to Lightroom mobile and save them as presets.

Psst, dont be alarmed if you go into your photo stream and see them as blank picture files – that’s how they’re supposed to look.

Open Lightroom Mobile and tap on the Add Photos button in the lower right corner:

Step 3: Save Settings as Presets

Now you should have all of your DNG files imported into Lightroom Mobile. Locate the files and open one of them inside the app.

All you need to do now is to tap on the three dots icon at the top right of the screen and then tap „Create Preset“:

Name your presets (I like to name similar ones the same and number them for easier access) and you’re done! You just successfully installed your first presets 🙂

How to make the most out of your new presets

Depending on your camera setting, photography style and personal taste, it is possible that the presets will not look as desired on your unprocessed pictures.

If the overall result is too dark, I recommend to adjust the exposure and contrast a bit before adding the preset (adjust exposure -> save picture, then reload into Lightroom and use preset).

You can of course also change every setting once you applied the preset. If you feel like you always have to change the exposure with a specific preset, I recommend to save it seperately with the adjusted settings.

If your pictures turn out to be too warm or too cool toned, make sure to tweak the color settings.

You can also adjust single colors with the „color mix“ tool in Adobe Lightroom. For example, my presets often take out a lot of the yellow and green tones. To change that, you go to „color“ and then on the upper right corner to „mix“ and there you can adjust every single color to your preference 🙂

If you have any questions about your new presets, feel free to shoot me a comment here or a DM on insta. It would mean a lot to me if you could give me feedback on how you like these presets so I can keep it in mind when working on new ones! <3

Lots of love,

Sam