How to install Lightroom presets on mobile, including the free app

Most people who buy a preset pack and cannot install it are hitting the same wall, and it is not their fault. The free tier of Lightroom Mobile does not support importing .xmp preset files. Not badly, not partially. It simply has no import-preset function at all.

Every guide that tells you to tap Presets, three dots, Import Presets is describing the paid Lightroom Mobile subscription. If you do not have that, the menu item is not there.

Why DNG files exist

A DNG preset is a workaround that has become the standard. It is a real photograph, deliberately small and dull, that carries a full set of develop settings inside its metadata. You import it like any other photo, open it, copy its settings, and paste those settings onto your own frame.

It works on every version of Lightroom Mobile, free included, because importing a photo is something the free app has always been able to do.

This is why any pack worth buying ships both formats. If a shop sells you .xmp only and you are on a phone, you have bought something you cannot open.

The six steps

1. Unzip the download on your phone. On iPhone, open Files, tap the zip, and it unzips in place. On Android, Files or any unzip app will do. Look for the folder marked for mobile.

2. Save the DNG files to your camera roll. Select them all and share them to Photos or your gallery. They will look like flat, dark, uninteresting photographs. That is correct. You are not looking at the preset, you are looking at the carrier.

3. Import them into Lightroom. Open Lightroom Mobile, add photos, pick the DNG files. Put them in an album called Presets so they do not clutter your library.

4. Copy the settings. Open one DNG inside Lightroom, tap the three dots top right, choose Copy Settings. Tick everything except Tools, Optics, Geometry and Crop. Those four describe the carrier photograph’s shape, not its colour, and copying them will crop your photo unexpectedly.

5. Paste onto your photograph. Open your own frame, three dots, Paste Settings. The grade lands.

6. Save it as a real preset. With the grade applied, three dots, Create Preset. Name it, group it. From now on it is one tap on any photo, and you never touch the DNG files again.

The step everyone skips

Step six is the one people miss, and it is the one that matters. Without it you are copy-pasting from a DNG forever. With it, the look becomes a real preset inside your app, available in one tap, grouped with the rest.

Do it once per look you actually use. You do not need to do it for all eighteen in a pack on day one.

After it is applied

A preset is not a filter. It is a set of curve and colour adjustments applied to whatever your photograph already contains. Two frames shot minutes apart under different light will not respond identically.

The fix is boring and reliable: correct exposure and white balance first, then apply the grade, then adjust exposure once more. Three small moves, and the result is consistent across a set.

If a grade looks far off, it is almost always because the frame underneath it was a stop darker or several hundred kelvin cooler than the one the grade was built on.

If something still will not work

The most common failures, in order:

• “Unsupported file”, you are importing the .xmp into mobile. Use the DNG folder.
• Nothing happened, your Copy Settings selection excluded the colour panels. Copy again with the colour and tone groups ticked.
• Your photo got cropped, you copied Crop or Geometry. Undo, copy again without them.
• It looks nothing like the sample, check exposure and white balance first, as above.

You can test any of our grades on your own photograph before buying, in the browser, at the test bench. Nothing uploads.

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Written by the Graded By colour lab. Every pack ships both the desktop and the mobile preset file, plus this guide in print.