How to Install Lightroom Brushes

Using the Graduated Filter Tool and the Adjustment Brush Tool can dramatically help your process when editing in Adobe Lightroom. These brushes let you paint adjustments on to your photos in specific areas. You can dodge and burn skin tones, enhance exposure for skies, and make a bunch of other valuable adjustments to your images.

We’ve received a number of emails asking how to install these types of local adjustment presets within Adobe. It’s a little confusing, so we decided to put this step-by-step tutorial together to help you learn how to install Lightroom Brushes for your photography projects.

You can view all of our products with Lightroom Brushes here.

Step 1

Open Lightroom and click Lightroom > Preferences.

Step 2

Navigate to the ‘Presets‘ tab.

Step 3

Click the button ‘Show Lightroom Presets Folder…‘ to open your folders/files. Once there, you’ll see a folder titled ‘Lightroom‘. Click the folder ‘Local Adjustment Presets‘ to find the folder where your Lightroom Brushes are stored.

Step 4

Open a second window of your folders and navigate to the Lightroom Brushes you would like to add into your Local Adjustment Presets folder. For this tutorial, I am installing the bonus Lightroom Brushes from Monica Aguinaga’s Still Life Lightroom Presets Collection.

Step 5

Copy the .lrtemplate files from your downloads and paste them into the Local Adjustment Presets folder.

Step 6

IMPORTANT: To make sure your brushes install completely and correctly, restart Lightroom.

Step 7

Reopen Lightroom and navigate to the Adjustment Brush, Radial Filter, or Graduated Filter to start using your new Lightroom Brushes.

Click the dropdown next to ‘Effect:‘ and select the brush you would like to use.

In just a few short steps, you have successfully installed your Lightroom Brushes . If you have any questions about how to install or use the brushes feel free to leave a comment below. We’ll do our best to help you out.

See more presets and brushes for Lightroom in our shop. Share your edits on Instagram with #filtergrade.

Install Lightroom Presets on Your Phone

Find out how to sync Lightroom Presets with the Lightroom CC Mobile app, so you can use your presets on your phone too!