How to Make a Digital Polaroid in Lightroom

give your digital images that nostalgic Polaroid feel.

Abode Photoshop Lightroom helps users organize, manage and edit digital images. One of the ways Lightroom benefits photographers is with develop presets, such as the Polaroid effect. In Lightroom, a user can make adjustments to the color, tone and other values, and then save the adjustments as a template or preset and share it with the community. Adobe has hundreds of presets available online including a Polaroid preset.

Things You'll Need

• Lightroom
• Polaroid preset

Instructions

1. Open Lightroom from the desktop icon or from the program list on the computer.

2. Open or select the photograph you wish to add the Polaroid preset. Select the “Develop” option on the top right of the Lightroom window. The “Presets” panel will appear on the left side of the window. Right click on the “User Preset” subsection.

3. Select “Import” in the pop-up window that appears. Use the options in the pop-up window to browse for the Polaroid preset file. The file extension for a Lightroom preset is .lrtemplate. If the preset you downloaded is in a zip file, Rar or other archived format, minimize the Lightroom window by clicking on the “_” at the top right of the Lightroom program. Locate the archived file and extract it to the desktop or documents folder. Open the Lightroom window again and browse for the preset file.

4. Highlight the presets you wish to import and click the “Import Button. Lightroom allows you to import multiple presets at the same time. To do this, hold down the “Ctrl” key and click on all the preset files you wish to import.

5. Preview the effects of the Polaroid preset. Move the mouse over the Polaroid preset in the “Presets” panel. Lightroom will give you a previewed version of the preset’s effects on the photo you selected.

6. Click on the name of the Polaroid preset in the panel. Lightroom will add the preset to the picture you selected earlier.

7. Make adjustments and edits to the photograph to fine tune the effect.

8. Click on “Save As” from the file menu. Select a location and name for the file and click on the “Save” button. Keep the original without the presets or edits in case you wish to add different presets to the same photo.

Tips & Warnings

• There are many different Lightroom develop presets for Polaroid available for download. Download a few different presets to get the exact look you what to achieve.

References

• Beyond Shapshots; Tip for Using Presets in Lightroom
• YouTube; Adobe Lightroom Presets How To

Resources

• Adobe: Lightroom Presets; KIKI Polaroid Presets
• Presets Heaven; Two Polaroid Presets for Lightroom