How to Create Your Own Brush Preset in 3 Easy Steps

Salad, no lettuce.

This used to be my go-to salad to make for lunch when I worked a corporate job.

Why no lettuce? Two reasons:

One, I wasn’t into lettuce at the time. I go through phases with food sometimes.

Two, lettuce gets soggy if it sits with chopped tomatoes and salad dressing. Gross!

I found salad was still salad without the lettuce. Just tomatoes, carrots, olives and some Italian cheese with some Italian dressing. *chef’s kiss*

And best of all, I could assemble multiple salads at once so they were grab-and-go for the week.

Oh yeah, I was super proud of myself for that lunch hack.

Wanna know what’s better than bulk prep salads that aren’t mushy?

Yup, creating your own brush presets in Lightroom.

It’s like prepping a salad once and copying it over and over with one button. (Man, wouldn’t that be cool!)

Let me show you how…

Creating a brush from an existing mask/brush is SO EASY—and it speeds up your editing too! I use this all the time when editing for my clients.

Creating your own brush preset is helpful when you have brushwork/masking that you will need to do on multiple images for the same thing.

For example, if you want to add a little bit of skin smoothing or to bring out the sparkle of an engagement ring diamond to a series of photos with the same lighting.

Step 1:

On the image that has the brush/mask settings you want to use, tap on the Masking button or hit shift W on your keyboard. Choose the mask you want by clicking on it in the mask list.

Be sure the mask is selected by seeing if you see the mask/brush name in the upper left corner. (If it says "no mask selected" then try selecting the mask again.)

Step 2:

In the mask panel on the right, look for the word “custom” at the top. Press on it with your cursor and a pull down menu appears.

Scroll all the way down to the bottom and choose “Save Current Settings as New Preset”.

Step 3:

Name your brush. You should see it in the list of brush presets close to the bottom of the list.

Go to the next image that you want to use the saved brush/mask settings on. Choose your brush from the list by tapping "custom" again and voila! 🙌🏻

When you have a series of photos that need the same brush/masking where you need to custom apply it (instead of using the AI masks), this is the trick that will make it so much easier and faster.

Happy editing,

Erika