Emulsion Presets is a free, open-source library of 451 Lightroom presets for film emulation and colour grading: Kodak Portra, Gold, Ektar, Tri-X and Kodachrome; Fujifilm Superia, Pro 400H, Velvia, Provia, Acros and Classic Chrome; Ilford HP5, Delta and Pan F; CineStill 800T; plus cinematic looks, historic processes and genre-specific grades.
It is a free alternative to paid packs such as VSCO Film, Mastin Labs and RNI Films. Every preset is a plain .xmp file under the MIT licence — no paywall, no account, nothing to install beyond copying a folder. They work in Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC and Adobe Camera Raw.
Download all 451 presets → — one flat ZIP, ready to import.
| # | Category | Presets |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Color Negative Film | 83 |
| 2 | Black & White Film | 58 |
| 3 | Slide / E-6 Film | 20 |
| 4 | Creative / Cinematic | 52 |
| 5 | Alternative Processes | 25 |
| 6 | Utility & Tools | 40 |
| 7 | Genre-Specific | 33 |
| 8 | Seasonal & Holiday | 20 |
| 9 | Historical Decade | 25 |
| 10 | Geographic & Cultural | 32 |
| 11 | Mobile & Social Media | 23 |
| 12 | Photographer Styles | 20 |
| 13 | Video LUT Reference | 20 |
| Total | 451 |
Featured film stocks. Kodak: Portra 160/400/800 (plus NC, VC, UC), Gold 200, Ektar 100, Ultramax 400, ColorPlus 200, Pro Image 100, Tri-X 400, T-Max 100/400/3200, Plus-X 125, Panatomic-X, Technical Pan, Ektachrome E100/64/200/400X, Kodachrome 25/64/200, Vision3 50D/250D/500T. Fuji: Superia 100/200/400/800/1600, Pro 400H/160NS/160C/800Z, NPS 160, Reala 100, Natura 1600, Velvia 50/100, Provia 100F/400F/400X, Sensia 100, Astia 100F, Fortia SP 50, Acros, Neopan 400/1600, Eterna, Nostalgic Negative. Ilford: HP5 Plus, Delta 100/400/3200, Pan F Plus 50, FP4 Plus 125, XP2 Super, Ortho Plus 80, SFX 200. CineStill: 800T, 50D, 400D. Also Agfa, Adox, Rollei, Foma, ORWO, Ferrania and Lomography stocks.
Because they omit the camera-profile Look block or declare an old ProcessVersion. Without crs:Look, Lightroom skips the non-linear input colour matrix entirely; with a legacy process version it uses different tone mapping. Either way the image renders flat and desaturated, and no amount of slider tweaking fixes it.
Every preset here declares ProcessVersion="15.4", a valid <crs:Look> block (Adobe Color, Adobe Monochrome, or Adobe Vivid for slide film), and neutral ToneCurvePV2012 baselines across all four curves. Structural checks run on every file before commit.
- Download the latest release ZIP — flat, all
.xmpfiles at the root. - Copy them into your Develop Presets folder:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets/ - Windows:
%APPDATA%\Adobe\Lightroom\Develop Presets\
- macOS:
- Restart Lightroom. Presets appear grouped by category.
Prefer one category? Copy just that folder from Presets/.
| Emulsion Presets | VSCO Film | Mastin Labs | RNI Films | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (MIT) | Discontinued | ~$99–150/pack | ~$125–175 |
| Presets | 451 | — | ~40 per pack | 180+ profiles |
| Format | .xmp |
.xmp/.lrtemplate |
.xmp + DCP |
DCP profiles |
| Research published | Per preset | No | No | No |
| Modifiable | Yes | Yes | Partly | No |
Paid packs sometimes include camera-specific DCP profiles, which apply colour rendering at the sensor level and are more accurate on a given camera than slider presets. That trade-off is documented per preset rather than hidden.
Every preset has a dossier in research/: film characteristics (spectral response, grain, tonal register), community recipes (Fuji X Weekly, Reddit, forums, YouTube), datasheet analysis where available, and a ## Validation Sweep section recording what was checked and corrected.
The engineering rules live in STYLEGUIDE.md — including the Lightroom-specific traps: the hue-axis direction (negative green hue moves foliage toward olive, not cyan), the Vibrance/Saturation gap that produces selective-colour artefacts, and the grain-versus-sharpening conflict that turns organic grain into digital noise.
- White balance first. Many presets assume a temperature; if colour feels off, adjust WB before anything else.
- Exposure is yours. These are calibrated starting points for well-exposed RAW files — expect to move Exposure ±0.3 EV.
- Grain scales with resolution. Grain was tuned around 24MP; reduce Amount on lower-resolution files.
- Stack them. A film preset for colour, then a creative preset (Matte Fade, Cinematic Dream) as a second pass.
presets.json lists all 451 presets with category, treatment, file path, download URL and a one-line description. llms.txt is a short index; llms-full.txt is the whole catalog as prose. Both are generated from Presets/ by test/build_catalog.py, so they cannot drift.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Research first, keep presets simple, validate XML before committing.
If you use these in teaching or writing, see CITATION.cff.
MIT — LICENSE. Free for personal and commercial use.