The fact that Lightroom 2 uses the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) engine means that many tips work equally well for Lightroom 2 and for ACR 5. That's true here.

You can create camera-specific presets for Lightroom (and for ACR). This is very handy if you take the time to profile your camera with the Camera Calibration settings and develop sharpening and noise reduction settings for your digital camera(s). The presets can become the new default settings anytime you load a RAW file with the same combination of camera model and ISO. You can even limit your new defaults further to a specific camera body.

I suggest you make a preset folder for each of your digital cameras. This will keep your presets organized. Then start with one camera. Take the time to carefully process photographs from different ISOs for that camera. Focus just on the settings you will want to use with every RAW photo as a starting point. I suggest you focus on Camera Calibration, Sharpening, and Noise Reduction.

You can see in this example that I left Sharpening, Noise reduction, and Calibration checked. Everything else is left unchecked. This can avoid unwanted side effects with other presets.

Go to Edit | Preferences and select the Presets tab. Here is where you checkmark options to make defaults specific to camera ISO settings and (optionally) even to a specific camera body.

Now go back to the photos that you used to generate the settings for your camera-specific presets. You'll need to do this for each photo in turn. Click on one of the photos. The select the Develop | Set Default Settings menu item. Click the "Update to Current Settings" button.

Once you do this, Lightroom will the settings as the default when loading any files from the same combination of camera model and ISO (and, optionally, camera body serial number). You can adjust the settings from there.

What About Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)?

The steps are pretty much the same. What changes is where you find the options.

You'll want to start by making camera-specific presets, just as described above for Lightroom 2. Again, just save the relevant settings.

To choose whether the presets should apply to camera model and ISO combination (and maybe camera body serial number), click on the icon to open ACR Preferences and then checkmark the appropriate "Default Image Settings" options.

To apply the preset settings as a default, open the fly-out menu from the Presets panel and click on the "Save New Camera Raw Defaults" menu item.

That's all there is to it. You can develop camera-specific settings and then apply them automatically as defaults with your Raw files.

You can download a .PDF version of this tip from the following URL:

http://www.thelightsright.com/files/tips/SavingCameraSpecificPresets/SavingCameraSpecificPresets.pdf

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