Are LUTs and Lightroom presets the same thing? Not quite, but they do speak the same language.

For photo editors on the run, Lightroom presets are often lifesavers when push comes to shove. You can use them for your video projects, too, if you know who to ask. Read on for our recommended way to convert XMP to LUT.

How to Find Lightroom Presets

Adobe has plenty of Lightroom presets available to download from its site. You can also find them through Lightroom itself while editing a photo.

At the top of the Edit sidebar, you should see a Presets button. Clicking it pulls out the Presets directory. You have three categories to tab through—Recommended presets, Premium presets, and Yours, which consists of all of your own custom presets and anything else that you have installed in Lightroom.

The Recommended presets in Adobe Lightroom.

Some of these are really heinous. Others make a great starter base for your own custom LUTs.

Beyond these, nearly every personality in the world of media production offers downloads for their favorite looks, usually only asking for an email subscription to their newsletters in exchange. All you need to do is throw down a quick Google search—"vintage Lightroom presets", "Lightroom presets for portraits", anything in that vicinity should yield what you seek.

Find something that you like and download it. We're going to add a new one to Lightroom so we can use them for our own photos.

How to Install Lightroom Presets

After downloading a preset (we chose Adobe's Back to Life preset), fire up Lightroom and call up a photo. Pull out the Presets sidebar and hit the ellipses in the upper right-hand corner. Choose Import Presets to proceed.

Importing presets in Lightroom.

Navigate into the folder where you've stored the preset that you would like to use. Select either Choose Folder or Import to bring it into Lightroom.

You'll see a small blue confirmation message at the bottom—1 Preset Imported. You'll find it under the Yours tab under the Saved Presets dropdown. Select it to the photo that you currently have up in the viewport.

How to Create a Lightroom Preset

Exporting a preset from the Lightroom work area is even easier than pulling one in.

To do so, simply make your desired adjustments and hit the ellipses at the top of the Presets panel once again. Instead of selecting Import Presets, choose Create Preset instead.

In the menu that follows, you can name your preset, add it to a group, and specify which parameters the exported preset should bring with it out of Lightroom.

Exporting a preset in Lightroom.

After you've made any necessary changes, hit Save, and it's yours.

Related: How to Export a LUT From Premiere Pro

How to Convert XMP to LUT: Lightroom Presets in Premiere Pro

Can you use Lightroom presets in Premiere? That'll be an "affirmative", although there is a little bit of legwork that you'll need to put in first.

The crux of the matter: in order to use these presets in Premiere, we need to convert these XMP files to the CUBE files that Premiere is equipped to reckon with.

Can we do it in Media Encoder? We cannot. In order to see this process through, we'll need to download a third-party app capable of converting XMP to LUT. Anything that can do this will work—we went with the IWLTBAP LUT Generator.

The start menu  for the IWLTBAP LUT Generator.

We're going to convert the Adobe preset that we've imported into a CUBE file using this app. First, we need to generate a hald—a 2D representation of our 3D LUT. Simply click the Generate a Hald button at the IWLTBAP start menu, and select a destination folder for the hald.

You should see your hald file in the destination folder that you chose.

Our hald file in the destination folder.

Next, we need to import this file into Lightroom as a photo. With the hald open in Lightroom, find the LUT that you would like to export and apply it. Once you've done so, Export the file from the File dropdown.

Now, we're finally ready to convert this hald into a CUBE LUT. Hop back over to the IWLTBAP LUT Generator. This time, choose Convert to CUBE.

A successfully-converted CUBE file.

You should now have a CUBE file of your Lightroom preset ready and waiting in your destination folder. Let's put it to the ultimate test: using it on a clip in Premiere. Open up the app and import a clip. Switch over to the Color workspace and turn your attention to the Lumetri panel.

You'll see a dropdown labeled Input LUT at the top. Click into it and choose Browse.

Importing a Lightroom preset into Premiere.

Find your exported CUBE file and import it into Premiere, and voilà. The Lightroom preset is now completely compatible with Premiere.

A Lightroom preset in Premiere.

Terrible. We did it, though, and nobody can take that away from us.

Related: How to Create a LUT for Your Video Footage

Why Use LUTs in Adobe Premiere?

Look, all of us are sensitive artists. If you're in the business of media creation, however, you already know that time is money.

Creating a new LUT from scratch every single time may be creatively rewarding, but there are so many reasons to consider automating some or all of the editorial process:

  • LUTs help you maintain consistency from shot to shot, scene to scene, and even production to production. Those in narrative work or creating media for a professional brand always need to think about how what they put out there relates to everything that the audience has seen before.
  • LUTs can be used to address a myriad of technical problems and conversions, such as when converting from one color space to another.
  • When the look is packaged neatly in this way, it can be shared easily between creative apps and collaborators, ensuring that everybody and everything remains on the same page aesthetically.
  • They can even help you develop your voice as an artist—as you advance, you'll get a taste of what you like and what you don't. You can always turn back to your favorite presets and LUTs, modifying them to meet the needs of the present, all while remaining in line with who you are as a professional.

After you've gotten used to using LUTs, the benefits of doing so will become more than obvious. And, with conversion apps like the one that we used here, there are few places where these incredibly useful files will be unwelcome.

Related: What Is a LUT? How Are They Used?

Lightroom Preset to LUT Conversion: LUTs Be Friends

Sharing looks between creative apps (even within the Adobe suite) isn't always a straightforward matter. It is, however, always possible to make things work.

This was a journey, and we're glad that we took part in it. It's a solution that works well—you'll never be without your favorite photo filters, no matter where your project needs to go.