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The View

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All user presets gone
« on: September 28, 2007, 03:10:51 am »
Today I started up Lightroom, and all user presets (in develop) were gone. Not a single user preset left.

As I back up regularly, they might be somewhere in the back-up files of the LR database.

I just wonder where...

And if I can load that file back into the database without copying the whole lr database from the external hard drive onto my computer hard drive.

Has anybody experienced such a disappearance of presets yet?


I am not leaning heavily on user presets. I usually set up key photos of a new shoot from scratch.

But I keep a series of presets of key photos.

It's a kind of collection of solved cases, like a detective's book.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2007, 03:11:10 am by The View »
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DavidB

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« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2007, 10:28:43 am »
Presets aren't stored as part of the LR database, they're stored on your main hard drive.

On OS X, it's under <home>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/, whereas on Windows it's under <My Documents?>/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/.
In there you'll find a bunch of folders (such as "Develop Presets") containing .lrtemplate files.  Each one is a text XML file that contains the preset.

Somehow this has been lost.  Have you reinstalled your computer?  Signed in as a different user?  Deleted those files?
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Nat Coalson

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« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2007, 06:59:43 pm »
Under the Help menu, select "Go to Lightroom Presets Folder".

If they're in there, they should be loading in Lightroom. If they are not there - anything else changed on your system? One more reason to make regular backups...

As DavidB pointed out, different user accounts have their own Lightroom preset folders. Make sure you're logged in under the same account as before.
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Nathaniel Coalson
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The View

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All user presets gone
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2007, 02:26:00 am »
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Presets aren't stored as part of the LR database, they're stored on your main hard drive.

On OS X, it's under <home>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/, whereas on Windows it's under <My Documents?>/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/.
In there you'll find a bunch of folders (such as "Develop Presets") containing .lrtemplate files.  Each one is a text XML file that contains the preset.

Somehow this has been lost.  Have you reinstalled your computer?  Signed in as a different user?  Deleted those files?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142430\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


No reinstall. And I am the only user.

And for deleting the files I would have needed to know where they were.

It's actually the first time I lost data on this mac.
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The View

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All user presets gone
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2007, 02:29:05 am »
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Under the Help menu, select "Go to Lightroom Presets Folder".

If they're in there, they should be loading in Lightroom. If they are not there - anything else changed on your system? One more reason to make regular backups...

As DavidB pointed out, different user accounts have their own Lightroom preset folders. Make sure you're logged in under the same account as before.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142509\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I do regular back-ups. Of the catalogue and the images.

How can I back up presets?


PS: I just went to the presets folder. My user presets are all there.

They are just not loading.

Now I'm wondering: how can I instigate Lightroom to load my user presets?
« Last Edit: September 29, 2007, 02:46:39 am by The View »
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Nat Coalson

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« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2007, 10:21:36 am »
Are you certain they're not loading? In version 1.2 they are listed separately; there are different sections for Lightroom Presets and User Presets in the panel. Try scrolling to the bottom of the Lightroom presets and look for the User presets list.

If they're truly not loading that is definitely a problem. Anything Lightroom finds in that Presets folder should load at startup. I suppose it might be possible that one corrupt/malformed preset might cause the rest not to load.

If they're not loading (I haven't seen this before) it might be worth a call to Adobe Support. Also check the Adobe Forums.
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Nathaniel Coalson
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seanmcfoto

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« Reply #6 on: September 29, 2007, 11:51:14 pm »
I'm stabbing in the dark trying to remember this, but could this be something to do with the Preference 'Store Presets With Catalog" in the Preferences? I vaguely recall someone losing presets when they exported a catalog, but like I said, I'm a bit hazy on this one.

Nat,
Originally if there was a malformed Preset, Lightroom would give an error about switching modules. This was related to presets that had been hand edited with typing errors. I think the team did change the handling on this, but I've not tested with by making a deliberate error (but I may just do this anyway!)
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Sean McCormack
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seanmcfoto

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« Reply #7 on: September 29, 2007, 11:59:15 pm »
I've just tested this with a small export catalog with 'Store Presets with Catalog' checked. Guess what? All my user presets are gone. They're still there in the Develop Presets folder, but not visible in Lightroom. As soon as I unticked 'Store Presets with Catalog' they reappeared.
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Sean McCormack
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seanmcfoto

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« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2007, 12:13:36 am »
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(but I may just do this anyway!)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142820\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Nat, I edited a file to introduce an error. I then restarted Lightroom to force a refresh of the presets. Lightroom simply ignored the broken preset and loaded all the others, as it should.
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Sean McCormack
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The View

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All user presets gone
« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2007, 02:16:58 am »
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Are you certain they're not loading? In version 1.2 they are listed separately; there are different sections for Lightroom Presets and User Presets in the panel. Try scrolling to the bottom of the Lightroom presets and look for the User presets list.

If they're truly not loading that is definitely a problem. Anything Lightroom finds in that Presets folder should load at startup. I suppose it might be possible that one corrupt/malformed preset might cause the rest not to load.

If they're not loading (I haven't seen this before) it might be worth a call to Adobe Support. Also check the Adobe Forums.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142647\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I always have the Adobe presets off. I just don't use them.

So I see right away the presets are not there. The arrow shows downwards, but downwards, there's nothing.

Adobe support  - I hope that's not the same as customer service?

I had to do with customer service once, and after 15min of wait I got someone from an Indian call center, who thought that migrating to an Intel iMac meant switching to Windows - and actually  just hung up when he didn't have an answer.
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The View

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All user presets gone
« Reply #10 on: September 30, 2007, 02:22:25 am »
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I've just tested this with a small export catalog with 'Store Presets with Catalog' checked. Guess what? All my user presets are gone. They're still there in the Develop Presets folder, but not visible in Lightroom. As soon as I unticked 'Store Presets with Catalog' they reappeared.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=142822\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This is incredible.

I unchecked the "store presets with catalogue", and my presets are back.

I never even touched that tick box.

Well, presets back. Thanks!
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Ian Lyons

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All user presets gone
« Reply #11 on: September 30, 2007, 04:54:04 am »
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This is incredible.

I unchecked the "store presets with catalogue", and my presets are back.

I never even touched that tick box.

Well, presets back. Thanks!


The Presets preference is simply a switch that determines "where" they're stored and "which" catalogs can actually use them  (i.e. all catalogs or catalog specific).

When the preference is set to On only those presets that were saved "after" the the pref was turned On will be available, but only within that catalog and presets or templates saved in other catalogs will not be available. In terms of "where", you'll also find that Lightroom will have created a subfolder named "Lightroom Settings" alongside the preview subfolder and catalog file, all of which are contained within the actual catalog folder. So, any presets or templates created will be stored independently of the global Lightroom presets/template folder. It's actually a very useful feature when storing catalogs on portable drives and moving these between computers. It's especially useful method of storing presets/templates if you find yourself working on computers that don't have any of your presets stored. For example, I could plug my portable drive containing my catalog and photos into Sean's computer and all my presets, metadata templates, keyword and label sets, etc etc will be available to me.
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Nat Coalson

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« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2007, 11:40:09 am »
Sean - thanks for confirming that "good" presets will still load even if there's a bad one in the bunch.
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Nathaniel Coalson
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seanmcfoto

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« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2007, 08:32:31 pm »
It wasn't always that way. Bad presets would force a hang in a module way back..
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Sean McCormack
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Ian Lyons

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« Reply #14 on: October 02, 2007, 03:16:55 pm »
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It wasn't always that way. Bad presets would force a hang in a module way back..
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143267\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Still do in some circumstances. For example, a bad metadata preset can cause Lightroom to hang on launch if it was exited in Library module but might OK if exited in Develop module.
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donbga

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Re: All user presets gone
« Reply #15 on: September 18, 2010, 12:59:49 am »
I'm coming into this discussion very late but my user presets vanished and after repeating Ian's action, unchecking Save Presets in Catalog, the presets reappeared.

Don Bryant
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