Modular Lightroom presets: looks, add-ons and layers that do not overwrite each other

What modular means for presets

The usual preset is a single click that sets everything at once: tone, color, curve, sharpening, sometimes a vignette and grain. It is quick on the photo it was made for. On the next photo, where the light is harder or a guest is standing on a green lawn, you are left adjusting the same sliders the preset just set, and after a few moves the look you paid for has turned into something else.

A modular system divides the work. One part gives the photo its character and stays the same from frame to frame. Other parts each solve one problem and are added only where the problem appears. Weddings suit this well, because the look should be constant across eight hundred frames while the problems change from one frame to the next.

The idea is simple. Whether it works depends on how Lightroom applies presets, and on how each part was built.

How Lightroom presets overwrite each other

A preset stores the settings that were ticked in the dialog when it was saved, and nothing else. When you click it, Lightroom sets those sliders and leaves every other slider where it was. Two presets that set different things therefore stack without trouble: one for the tone curve and one for sharpening will both hold.

Trouble starts when both set the same slider. Lightroom does not add the two values. The preset clicked last replaces the earlier value outright.

So a pack of tools that work by moving the Basic sliders is modular in name only. Each tool takes back part of the look, and two tools that touch the same slider cannot both be on. The last row of the table is the way out.

The layers of a modular system

A system that stacks cleanly gives each layer controls the other layers do not use.

The camera profile sits at the bottom, below every slider. A preset cannot make two cameras agree, because it does not control where each one starts, which is the subject of camera profiles, presets and LUTs. NIPIK puts its own profile there, NIPIK Base, one for each of 741 camera models, so the look above it starts from the same color on every body.

White balance and exposure are left out of a well-made look on purpose. They describe the light in front of the camera, which no preset can know.

Why masks make the cleanest add-ons

Lightroom’s masks were made for local corrections, and they have a property that suits add-ons exactly. Every mask carries its own set of sliders, with Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Temperature, Tint, Texture, Clarity and more, and those are separate from the sliders in the Basic panel. What a mask does is laid over the global edit. The global values do not change.

A preset can carry masks. When it does, clicking it adds the mask to the photo and leaves the Basic panel as it was. Three more things follow.

• Each mask appears by name in the Masks panel, so you can see which add-ons are on a photo.
• Each mask has its own Amount slider, so an add-on can be turned down to half without touching anything else.
• Each mask can be hidden or deleted alone, which removes that add-on and nothing more.

Masks made by Lightroom’s AI go further. A mask defined as the subject, the sky, the background, or a part of a person such as face skin or clothes is worked out again for every photo the preset is applied to. An add-on built on one finds the dress in this frame and the dress in the next.

Masks also get along with each other. Two masks that cover the same area both act, so an add-on that opens the shadows and one that warms the people do not compete for a slider. To put an add-on on several frames at once, select them in the Library grid and choose it from Saved Preset in Quick Develop.

Riviera’s add-ons are built this way. Thirty-four of the 36 arrive as their own mask in the Masking panel. The other two, Tool - Auto Upright and Light - Airy Frame, each use a single Lightroom control. None of the 36 moves the look’s tone or color sliders.

The order to apply the layers

The layers go on from the bottom up. On a scene of twenty frames from one camera in one light, the order is this.

1. Set white balance on one frame, from something neutral such as a shirt or the dress.
2. Set exposure so the faces are where you want them.
3. Apply the look, in the preset made for that light. A look that sets its own camera profile, as a NIPIK look does, puts the profile in place at this step.
4. Compare the frame with an earlier scene in Reference View, and adjust white balance if skin has drifted.
5. Bring the rest of the scene to the same white balance and exposure, and apply the look to all of it.
6. Go through the scene once. Add an add-on only where a frame has a problem the others do not.
7. Where an add-on is too strong, open the Masks panel and lower its Amount.

Steps one to five are the same for every scene, and most frames stop there. Because the add-ons leave the look’s sliders alone, you can still change the look’s own Contrast or Shadows on a frame afterwards, and the add-on stays as it was. The whole method is laid out in how to edit wedding photos in Lightroom Classic.

A preset for the light, an add-on for the problem

It helps to be clear about which part answers which question. If the light of the whole scene has changed, the answer is the look’s preset for that light. If one frame has a fault the scene does not share, the answer is an add-on. Here is how that divides across a wedding day, with Riviera’s own names.

A system with a single preset and thirty tools asks the tools to do the preset’s work at dinner. A look that comes in a preset for each light keeps the add-ons for what they are good at.

How to test whether a system really stacks

You can check any preset pack in five minutes, on one RAW photo.

• Apply the main look and write down the Basic panel values: Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks.
• Apply one tool and read the Basic panel again. If a value has changed, the tool overwrites the look.
• Open the Masks panel. A tool built as a layer is listed there under its own name.
• Apply a second tool. Check that the first one is still present and unchanged.
• Remove the first tool and check that the second and the look are untouched.

A pack that passes all five can be used freely. One that fails the second is still usable, with care about the order of clicks and with the knowledge that every fix shifts the look a little.

What belongs in the look, and what stays optional

Some settings are taste on top of taste: grain, a fade in the blacks, a vignette, a warm or cool wash. Built into a look, they come along on every frame, and removing them means editing the look. A modular system keeps them as separate clicks.

NIPIK’s looks are clean digital files with no grain, halation or light leaks. Their film character is in how color and tone answer the light, described in the film look, taken apart. The optional finishes are add-ons: Light - Airy Frame for lighter corners and edges, Light - Darken Edges, Colour - Warm Filter and Colour - Cool Filter, and Colour - Film Filter and Colour - Cine Filter, which are grades in color curves.

What to ask of a modular preset system

• Do the tools move the same sliders as the look, or are they separate layers?
• Can two tools be on at once, and can one be removed without disturbing the other?
• Can each tool be turned down by itself?
• Does the look come in a preset for each kind of light, or as one preset with many corrections?
• What sits under the look: the camera’s default profile, or the maker’s own profile for your camera?

Our answers to these and to the other questions buyers ask are on how NIPIK compares.

How Riviera is put together

Riviera, by Danilo & Sharon, is built in the three layers described above. At the bottom is NIPIK Base, a dual-illuminant camera profile for each of 741 camera models, calibrated to match each other. On it sits the look, in a preset for each kind of light: Riviera for daylight, Riviera - Flash, Riviera - Reception and Riviera - B&W for RAW photos, and Riviera - JPEG and Riviera - B&W JPEG for JPEG files.

Then come 36 add-ons, one click each on top of the look, in five groups: Tools, Light, Fix, Colour and AI. Thirty-four arrive as their own mask, so they stack, and each can be turned down or removed by itself. The nine AI add-ons use Lightroom’s own masks to find faces, the dress, the sky and the background, and AI - Clear sets every AI add-on back to zero in one click.

After all of that, every slider in Lightroom still works as usual. Riviera runs in Lightroom Classic version 14.4 or newer and in Camera Raw in Photoshop, on Mac and Windows. The free NIPIK Installer puts the layers in place and keeps them up to date. More on the construction is in how a NIPIK look is built.