Do Lightroom presets work the same on Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm?

What a preset carries from camera to camera

Search for Lightroom presets for Sony, for Canon, for Nikon or for Fujifilm and you will find preset packs offered under each name, and often they are the same files. A preset is a small file of slider positions: this tone curve, these Color Mixer values, this much contrast. Nothing in it knows which camera took the photo.

So the preset itself travels perfectly, and it lands on something different each time. Before any slider acts, Lightroom has turned the RAW data into color with a camera profile, and the profile belongs to the camera model. The preset then moves, say, Orange hue by 5 points from wherever that profile put skin. If two profiles put skin in two slightly different places, the same 5 points give two slightly different faces.

This is why presets look different on different cameras, and why a preset that suited your old body can feel slightly off on the new one, even from the same maker.

Why every camera starts from different color

A sensor records light through red, green and blue filters. Each maker chooses its own filters and changes them between sensor generations, so the same scene produces different RAW numbers in different cameras. A camera profile is the translation from those numbers to color, and it has to be made separately for every model.

Open the profile browser at the top of the Basic panel and you see what Lightroom offers for your camera. Adobe Color is the default. Adobe Standard is the older baseline. The Camera Matching group holds profiles that imitate the maker’s own picture styles. Each of these exists in a separate version for every camera model. Adobe Color on a Sony and Adobe Color on a Canon share a name and a purpose, and they are two different profiles that do not match each other exactly.

The differences are small in absolute terms and large where it counts. They show most in skin and in greens, because those are the colors a viewer knows by heart. A few points of hue in a blue chair pass unnoticed. The same few points on a face are seen at once. The layers involved are set out in camera profiles, presets and LUTs.

Lightroom presets on Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm: what is certain

The mechanism is the same for all four makers. What differs is the naming, and the history of each system.

Photographers on every brand describe a habitual correction for their camera: a few points of Tint, a small pull on one Color Mixer hue, a move in the Calibration panel. These get passed around as the character of a brand. It is more exact to say that each one belongs to a profile on a model. Two bodies from one maker, released a few years apart, can ask for different corrections, and the same body asks for a different one under Adobe Color than under a camera matching profile.

So we will not tell you that one brand runs green and another runs magenta. What can be said for certain is narrower and more useful. Each camera’s profile lands skin and foliage in a slightly different place. The direction of the difference depends on the model, the profile and the light. A preset inherits it unchanged. If there is a correction you always make after applying your preset, you have already measured the distance between your camera and the one the preset was tuned on.

One more thing is common to all four. The picture on the camera’s screen is a JPEG rendered with the maker’s picture style, and by default Lightroom does not apply that style to the RAW file. It shows the embedded preview first, then replaces it with its own rendering, which is why photos seem to change color a moment after import. The white balance set in the camera does carry over, as the As Shot value.

Fujifilm film simulations and presets

Fujifilm gets its own section because its photographers choose color in the camera more deliberately than most, through the film simulations. In Lightroom these appear in the Camera Matching group of the profile browser for Fujifilm RAW files, under the simulations’ names. They are Lightroom’s versions of the simulations, made to resemble the camera’s rendering, and which ones you see depends on the body.

For presets the consequence is direct. A preset that does not set a profile sits on whichever one the photo has, and on a Fujifilm file that may be Adobe Color or any of the film simulations, each with its own contrast and palette. The same preset over two different simulations is two different looks. A preset that does set a profile replaces your simulation with its own choice.

Most Fujifilm X-series cameras also use the X-Trans color filter layout, where most other cameras use a Bayer layout. That concerns how fine detail is rebuilt from the sensor data. The color still comes from the profile, as on any other camera.

Fujifilm is among the makers NIPIK Base covers. A supported Fujifilm body gets its own NIPIK Base profile, calibrated to match the profiles for every other camera, so a look built on it starts from the same color on a RAF file as on any other RAW file.

RAW and JPEG are different cases

Everything above concerns RAW files, because camera profiles apply to RAW files only. A JPEG arrives with the camera’s color already made: the maker’s picture style, the white balance and the contrast are part of the pixels. A preset on a JPEG is working on a finished picture, with less highlight and shadow detail to draw on, and a white balance control that can only shift the color that is there.

A preset built for RAW therefore tends to look heavier on a JPEG from the same camera, on any brand, and a preset meant for JPEG has to be made for it. Riviera includes Riviera - JPEG and Riviera - B&W JPEG for that reason, beside its presets for RAW.

One practical note on RAW formats: Lightroom has to support a camera model before it can open that model’s RAW files, so a newly released body can require a newer version of Lightroom.

How to see the difference on your own files

You can see the gap between two cameras in fifteen minutes, with any preset, and it is worth doing once before a season with a second shooter.

1. Photograph the same subject with both cameras, in the same light, within a minute. A person in open shade, with something white and some foliage in the frame, is ideal. Shoot RAW on both.
2. Import both frames and leave each on the profile you normally use.
3. Set white balance on each with the White Balance Selector, clicking the same white object in both. The kelvin values will differ between the cameras, which is normal.
4. Match exposure so the faces are equally bright. A darker frame looks richer in color and would spoil the comparison.
5. Apply the same preset to both.
6. Open one in Reference View beside the other. Compare the skin, then the greens, then the white.
7. Hover over the same spot on a cheek in each frame and note the RGB values under the histogram. The gap between the two sets of numbers is the difference between the two profiles, carried through the preset.

What you see in step six is the part no preset can correct from above. You can build a correction for it, and it will hold for that pair of cameras in that light. Move from shade to tungsten and the correction changes, because two profiles differ by a different amount in each light.

For a wider test, with ten frames across the light of a whole wedding day, see what the best wedding presets have in common. Where the profile step sits in a full edit is covered in how to edit wedding photos in Lightroom Classic.

What a preset controls, and what it inherits

Read the right-hand column as a list of the things that vary between a Sony, a Canon, a Nikon and a Fujifilm. A preset maker who works on one body sees one version of that column and tunes the left column to suit it. An honest label on such a preset would name the camera it was built on.

There are two ways out. One is a separate version of the preset for each camera, tuned by eye, which multiplies the work for every new body. The other is to fix the right-hand column, by giving every camera a profile that lands color in the same place, so that one preset is enough. NIPIK takes the second way, with NIPIK Base.

Mixed-brand weddings with a second shooter

The difference becomes visible when two brands cover one day. Your frame of the first kiss and your second shooter’s frame of the same kiss sit next to each other in the gallery, one from each camera, and the couple sees both within a second. A few habits keep the two close.

• Before the wedding, agree on RAW, and set both cameras’ clocks to the same time so the frames sort into one timeline.
• Ask for a fixed white balance setting in each kind of light, such as the daylight setting outdoors. Auto white balance moves from frame to frame and from camera to camera, and a fixed setting leaves one value to correct per scene.
• In Lightroom, filter each scene by camera model, and set white balance and exposure for each camera separately.
• Put the same look on both, compare a pair of frames in Reference View, and adjust white balance until the faces agree.

How close the two then sit depends on the profiles underneath. On each camera’s default profile, a difference remains after white balance, and only color corrections made per camera can reduce it. On NIPIK Base profiles, which are calibrated to match each other, white balance and exposure are what remains. The full workflow is in consistent color across cameras.

NIPIK Base: one calibrated profile for each camera model

NIPIK was started around this problem. NIPIK Base is our own set of camera profiles, one for each of 741 camera models: Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Olympus and OM System, Leica, Pentax, Hasselblad, Phase One and more. They are calibrated to match each other, so the look on top starts from the same color whichever body took the frame.

Between two cameras the typical difference in daylight is under 1 ΔE, which is about the smallest step the eye can separate side by side. Measured across all 741 cameras, skin lands about 31% and foliage about 38% closer to the true chart colors than with Adobe Standard. Each profile is built for two lights, daylight and tungsten, and blends between them as white balance moves, so one profile serves both the ceremony and the dinner. The testing is described in how we measure color.

The presets of Riviera, by Danilo & Sharon, are built on those profiles: Riviera for daylight, Riviera - Flash, Riviera - Reception and Riviera - B&W. One look therefore serves a gallery shot on two brands, with no version per camera to keep. You set white balance and exposure for each photo, as always.

To check a particular body, ask Piko, the helper in the corner of every page of nipik.com. Give it the exact model name and it will tell you whether that camera is among the 741. Riviera works in Lightroom Classic version 14.4 or newer and in Camera Raw in Photoshop, on Mac and Windows, and the free NIPIK Installer puts the profiles and presets in place and keeps them up to date.