Building your own real estate Lightroom presets gives you a unique editing style and the ability to sell them as digital products. Here is the step-by-step process used by professional preset creators.

Editing software disclosure: This guide includes affiliate links to Skylum (Luminar Neo, Aperty, Luminar Mobile). If you buy through these links, ShutYourAperture may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we use ourselves.

Step 1: Choose Your Base Image

Start with a well-exposed interior shot that represents your most common shooting scenario — typically a living room or kitchen with windows. The image should have:

– Mixed lighting (window + artificial light)
– Both bright and shadow areas
– Neutral-colored walls (for accurate white balance testing)
– Some warm and cool tones

Avoid starting with a perfectly lit image. Your preset needs to work on challenging photos, not just easy ones.

Step 2: Develop Your Base Look

In Lightroom’s Develop module, work through each panel:

Basic Panel: Set exposure (+0.3 to +0.5), pull highlights (-50 to -70), lift shadows (+30 to +50), whites (+10), blacks (-5). This creates the bright, open look that real estate demands.

Tone Curve: Add a subtle S-curve for contrast. Lift the black point slightly (to +5) to prevent crushed shadows.

HSL/Color: Shift orange and yellow hues slightly toward neutral to counteract tungsten casts. Reduce blue saturation to avoid oversaturated skies in window views.

Detail: Set sharpening to 40-50 with radius 1.0 and masking at 60 (to avoid sharpening smooth walls).

Lens Corrections: Enable profile corrections and remove chromatic aberration. These should be on for every real estate image.

Step 3: Test Across 20+ Images

This is the step most preset creators skip, and it is why most presets disappoint buyers. Export your settings as a preset, then apply it to at least 20 different real estate images covering:

– Interior daylight (windows as main light)
– Interior flash (artificial light dominant)
– Interior mixed light (the hardest scenario)
– Kitchen (reflective surfaces, warm light)
– Bathroom (cool light, small space)
– Exterior midday (harsh shadows)
– Exterior golden hour (warm light)
– Exterior twilight (blue + warm interior)

Adjust your preset settings until it provides a solid starting point for ALL these scenarios, not just the one you developed it on.

Step 4: Create Variations

A single preset rarely covers every scenario. Create 5-8 variations:

– Base: Your core look for standard interiors
– Bright & Airy: Extra lift for dark or small spaces
– Window Recovery: Aggressive highlight recovery for backlit rooms
– Twilight: Enhanced blues and warm interior glow
– Flash: Calibrated for flash-lit interiors
– Exterior: Sky enhancement and landscape vibrance
– HDR: Tone-mapping look for bracketed exposures
– Drone: Haze removal and aerial-specific adjustments

Step 5: Package and Sell

Once your presets are tested and refined:

File format: Export as .xmp files for Lightroom Classic and .dng files for Lightroom Mobile compatibility.

Include documentation: A PDF installation guide and a before/after gallery showing each preset on different scenarios.

Pricing: Real estate preset packs typically sell for $29-$69. Bundle all variations at $49-$99.

Sell on your own site: Use WooCommerce, SendOwl, or Gumroad. You keep 95%+ of revenue vs. 60-70% on marketplaces.

Marketing: Before/after images on Pinterest and Instagram Reels are the most effective marketing channel for preset sales. Show the transformation — that is what sells.

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Skylum’s Luminar Neo runs as a Lightroom plugin and adds AI-powered sky replacement, portrait retouching and noise reduction to your existing workflow. Tagged as affiliate per FTC.