Woo-hoo! You’ve decided to make your editing a little faster and easier with AG Desktop Presets—or maybe you just wanted to achieve that signature AG look for the photos you take for your blog and social strategy. Amazing! Here’s how to install and make the most of your presets.

Below you have access to two different guides.

I recommend starting with the first guide, as it not only includes installation steps for your AG Desktop Presets, but also offers some ideas about which presets pair well together and can offer a consistent aesthetic if you’re going for a “bright and airy” look, a more natural and earthy look, etcetera.

The second guide is an older guide that I created for my first three presets ever shared with the public, and while the steps you can use to install your presets (and/or convert .ltr files to .xml if needed), the literature refers to presets you won’t actually have in your collection. I’m including it below because if you struggle with installation after following the steps in the first guide, the second may be of help. (Of course, Google and YouTube are also good options!)

First time using desktop presets? Read this!

Although a lot of Lightroom presets are advertised on Instagram as “one-click edits,” in reality, the number of times you’ll simply click on a preset and magically have the image edited perfectly the way you want is maybe—maybe—one in ten. In other words, some assembly is still required.

For AG presets, the most common edit you’ll want to make before applying a preset is:

White Balance

The only preset in your collection that includes white balance edits is Los Angeles Summer. If you apply Los Angeles Summer and the white balance is “off,” you’ll want to adjust this manually after the preset is applied.

The most common edits you’ll want to make after applying a preset are:

Exposure
Red, Yellow, & Blue Saturation/Luminance
Shadows

Exposure: Once I’m in Lightroom, I usually add exposure to my images, because I shoot them on the lowest ISO I can manage when I’m out in the field. This means a lot of my presets boost the exposure of an image, and you may need to increase or decrease the number I’ve chosen based on the settings you use when you’re in the field.

Saturation/Luminance: The colors I adjust most extremely in the HSL area of Lightroom are the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. This is because: (1) as a primarily natural-light photographer, I often have my in-camera white balance set to “shade” or “cloudy,” which tends to draw out blues, (2) I’m often shooting in situations where there’s a lot of white—white backdrop, white-painted walls, etcetera—and my camera sometimes interprets the white as yellow, and (3) when I’m shooting nature scenes and people, I like a red flower or set of red lips to really pop in the final shot. If your image feels a little out of balance after applying a preset, you may need to adjust one or more of these color settings in Lightroom.

Shadows: I often pull my shadows up or give them a tint when editing in Lightroom. I do this to make my images feel less harsh when the light source I’m using is bright. However, sometimes this means that on a platform like Instagram, the final, edited images actually look a little dull and flat. If you experience this issue, I recommend deepening your shadows from the default preset settings, and/or removing the tint!

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