How to Install and Use Luminar Presets
Macphun recently launched Luminar. A new photo editing software platform for Mac. It is quite unique compared to some of the other photo editing programs on the market and simplifies a lot of the editing process.
Over the past few weeks we’ve had the opportunity to test the new Luminar Presets feature and build a few premium sets of our own. Find all Luminar Presets here.
We also teamed up with Macphun to release a fun set of free Luminar Presets! Get the free presets here.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install Luminar Presets in just a few steps. We’ll also share some tips to help you use Luminar Presets in your editing workflow and customize them to your liking.
Step 1
Launch Luminar and open an image to edit. For this tutorial I’ll be using a photograph I took while visiting St. John in the US Virgin Islands.
Step 2
Click File > Add Custom Presets Pack.
Once you click this you will be directed to your folders. Navigate to the file with the presets that you downloaded and find the .mplumpack file to install. This file will add the entire set of presets to Luminar. Click ‘Open’ to finish installing.
Step 3
Once installed, you can click the circular icon in the bottom right of Luminar to access all the presets, including any additional sets of presets you add.
Step 4
Select the presets you’d like to use. For this tutorial I’ll be using the free Luminar Presets Pack. Macphun has some great free and premium Luminar Presets on their website too. Learn more about the Macphun Luminar Presets here.
How to Use Luminar Presets
After you install Luminar Presets, they are pretty easy to work with. A thumbnail will appear on the bottom of your screen for each preset. You can scroll left and right to view all the presets for large sets.
Start by clicking on a preset to apply it. I will be applying the Faded Matte Cool preset for this effect.
Once you apply a preset, all you have to do is adjust the amount slider to fade the effect. Much easier than fading Lightroom Presets. :)
You can also adjust the effect to suit your needs. For this edit, I moved the curves around and added a little more color.
Once you install multiple sets of presets it can be useful to save a few that you use frequently. Macphun built a useful feature into Luminar that lets you star your favorite presets and access all your favorites at once.
When using a set of presets simply click the star on your favorite presets. Then navigate to the circular icon to access your presets and click ‘Favorite’ or the star icon in the top right.
Finally, if you’d like to adjust any of your presets and add your own effect to them, you can easily do this by clicking ‘Update with current settings’.
Hope these tips on installing and using Luminar Presets were helpful to you. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions, we’re happy to help.
Also, if you don’t already have Luminar, you can get it here.
Do you know how to delete Luminar presets on windows, on Luminar 2018?
Hi Kyle, if you look in the last picture above when I click the name of the Luminar Preset, you’ll see an option to click ‘Delete’ and this will remove your Luminar Preset individually. I am not sure of the exact file path on Windows, but you should also be able to delete all of the .mplumpack files from your Luminar Presets folder if you want to remove a bunch of presets at once. Hope this helps.
My luminar doesn’t have a header bar with file, edit, image etc etc. I can’t find where to open it either!
Hi,
I’m trying to create a presets lack in Luminar. I know how to create presets but not the pack. Is .mplumpack just a zip file with a different extension?
Thank you.
David Sornberger
Hi David,
Nope, you’re correct. The presets are indeed .mplumpack files. When you export them, you have to export them individually as far as I know. We simply package our freebies/products in a zip so we can include help files and also to reduce file sizes so downloading is easier. Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Mike