Can Lightroom presets be accurately recreated in Luminar by matching slider values?
Asked 8/6/2017
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2 answers
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I have Lightroom presets that I’d like to reproduce in Luminar. I tried entering the same-looking adjustments in both programs—exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, saturation, vibrance, split toning, clarity, and vignette—but the results look very different.
Is there any reliable way to recreate the look of a preset from one editing application in another without manually matching it by eye?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
2 Answers
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This is something that I don't expect is possible. I worked 9 years writing image processing software and I can tell you there are so many ways to implement each algorithm that it would be difficult for any two to perfectly match.
The first problem you have is one of units. Most numbers in the user interface are meaningless. Other than exposure which can be measured in EV which is a unit, all other values you changed such as the contrast, highlights, shadows, etc are not in any specified units, so moving sliders to the same value is pointless.
Processing can be done in so many ways even when considering something that sounds simple like saturation or contrast. Most programs convert to some representation, apply the transform, and then convert back. The nature of that representation, being linear, gamma, log, etc can make the resulting change dramatically different.
This is so subtle that you may notice that even Lightroom does not always render like Lightroom! In the options for processing, you will be offered the choice of Lightroom engine because they do not always produce the same results.
Originally by user1620. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1620
8y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Usually, no—not accurately. Matching slider numbers between Lightroom and Luminar will not guarantee the same result.
The main reason is that most adjustment sliders are not standardized units. Aside from things like exposure in EV, values such as contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, vibrance, and saturation are defined differently by each program.
Even when two apps use the same adjustment name, the underlying algorithm may be very different: they may work in different color spaces, use different tone-mapping methods, apply local contrast differently, or process the image in a different order. Those differences can produce noticeably different output from the same source file.
So there is generally no automatic, exact translation from a Lightroom preset to a Luminar preset unless the software specifically provides a conversion tool.
In practice, the only dependable approach is to recreate the look manually and visually in the target software, using the original preset result as a reference. You may be able to get close, but a pixel-perfect match is unlikely.
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