I made $400 from my first preset pack. Not life-changing money, but $400 from work I did once and sold repeatedly. Two years later, preset sales contribute a consistent $1,500-2,000/month to my income.

Selling presets isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. But if you have a distinctive editing style that people admire, it’s a legitimate business.

Creating Presets That People Want to Buy

Develop Your Signature Look First

Nobody buys generic presets. “Clean and bright” presets exist by the thousands. What people pay for is a specific aesthetic they can’t easily replicate on their own.

Before creating presets to sell, you need a consistent editing style that’s recognizably yours. Look at your best work from the last six months. What do the edits have in common? That’s your starting point.

Build the Base Preset

Open a well-exposed image that represents your ideal starting point. Edit it to perfection using:

  • Basic panel adjustments (exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows)
  • Tone curve modifications
  • HSL tuning
  • Color grading
  • Sharpening and noise reduction
  • Lens corrections
  • Calibration panel

Once you’re happy, create a preset from this edit. In Lightroom, click the “+” icon in the Presets panel and select “Create Preset.”

What to include in the preset: Tone curve, HSL, color grading, sharpening, grain, calibration, and effects. These are the “look” settings.

What to exclude: Exposure, white balance, and transform. These are image-specific and should be adjusted per photo. Including them makes the preset fail on any image that doesn’t match your source exposure.

Create Variations

One preset isn’t a product. A pack of 8-15 presets is a product.

Create variations around your base look:

  • Warmer and cooler versions
  • Higher and lower contrast versions
  • Moody/dark and clean/bright versions
  • Muted and vivid color variations
  • Portrait-optimized and landscape-optimized versions

Each variation should feel like it belongs to the same family while offering a meaningfully different look.

Test on Diverse Images

This step separates amateur presets from professional ones. Apply each preset to at least 20 different images covering various lighting conditions, skin tones, and environments.

Your presets should look good on:

  • Golden hour and overcast light
  • Indoor and outdoor settings
  • Various skin tones (this is non-negotiable)
  • Under and overexposed images (with minor exposure correction)

Fix any preset that consistently produces bad results on certain image types. Adjust HSL values, tone curves, and saturation until the preset is reliable across conditions.

Packaging and Selling

Presentation Matters

Create compelling before-and-after examples. Show the preset applied to 5-10 different images to demonstrate versatility. Include a variety of subjects and lighting.

Write clear descriptions for each preset in the pack — what it does, what it’s best for, and when to use it.

Where to Sell

Your own website (highest margin, most control):

  • Shopify, Gumroad, or Lemon Squeezy for payment processing
  • Deliver preset files (.xmp or .lrtemplate) via download link
  • You keep 90-97% of the sale price

Preset marketplaces (built-in traffic, lower margin):

  • FilterGrade: established marketplace with photography audience
  • Creative Market: broader creative audience
  • Etsy: surprising amount of preset traffic, lower fees than you’d expect

Pricing

Research competitors at your quality level:

  • Budget presets: $9-19 for a pack of 10
  • Mid-range: $25-49 for a curated pack
  • Premium: $50-99 for comprehensive packs with guides

Start mid-range. Underpricing signals low quality. Overpricing requires an established reputation.

Marketing Your Presets

Social media before/after content is your best marketing tool. Show the transformation — RAW to edited — using your presets. Reels and TikTok videos of the editing process perform extremely well.

Free sample presets as a lead magnet. Give away 2-3 presets in exchange for email addresses. Market the full pack to your email list.

Collaborate with photographers who have audiences in your niche. Offer them free copies or affiliate commissions in exchange for honest reviews.

SEO content — write blog posts and YouTube tutorials about the editing techniques your presets automate. Link to the preset pack in every piece of content.

The Income Reality

Month 1: $50-200 (unless you already have an audience) Month 6: $300-800 with consistent marketing Year 1: $500-2,000/month if you’ve built a following and expanded your product line

Presets aren’t passive income in the “do nothing” sense. They’re leveraged income — you create once and sell repeatedly, but you still need to market consistently.

The photographers making serious preset income treat it as a real product business, not a side hustle afterthought.