# Organize adjustment brushes



## RSDS1227 (Jan 30, 2016)

Hi all, I just downloaded a ton of brushes from Sleeklens.com and I am wondering if there is a way to organize the brushes? Using the arrows to scroll through all the brushes takes forever and after making a selection if you change your mind you have to start the scroll process over from the top of the list. There has to be a better way...

Thanks for your help,
Rich


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 30, 2016)

You could rename them to group specific brushes together - and I'd only keep the ones active that you'd actually use.


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## clee01l (Jan 30, 2016)

RSDS1227 said:


> Hi all, I just downloaded a ton of brushes from Sleeklens.com and I am wondering if there is a way to organize the brushes? Using the arrows to scroll through all the brushes takes forever and after making a selection if you change your mind you have to start the scroll process over from the top of the list. There has to be a better way...
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> Rich


Your user brush presets are stored in a folder labeled "Local Adjustment Presets" inside your presets folder.   You can group your favorites in a folder inside this folder   In fact group all of your presets in sub folders.  The naming of these folders is critical as well as the naming of the presets.
Your Operating System sorts using an alpha numeric sort order with numbers sorting before alpha characters.   Lightroom reads these template files in the order that the OS presents them.  Those in the first folder presented are listed first in the drop down list.

So If you create a subfolder named "0.0.0 - Favorites" and include your favorite presets, these will be presented first.  Further if you rename (in LR) the preset that you want to appear at the top something like "01.01 - Burn -(Darken)", then it will appear first in the list of user presets. 

You will have to restart LR to see these changes and you need to rename the presets while you are in the dropdown list or they might disappear. Your user presets appear below the line after the intern al presets that ship with LR.


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## Rob_Cullen (Jan 31, 2016)

I am led to believe that (contrary to the post by Cletus , above) the brush presets in the folder "Local Adjustment Presets" cannot exit in sub-folders, or more correctly- are not seen by Lightroom in sub-folders.
This is different to "Develop Presets" where sub-folders are allowed.
ie. all the brush presets must be as a singular list within "Local Adjustment Presets".
This would preclude the use of sub-folders and the only method of sorting brushes is then to name Brush presets in an alpha-numeric fashion (using numbers or alphabetic ) as suggested by Victoria and Cletus-  01darken-1, 01darken-2, 01darken-3,  02lighten+1, 02lighten+2,   etc.


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## RSDS1227 (Jan 31, 2016)

Thank you, Lightroom Queen, Lightroom Guru and I-see-light. I agree with see light, I can't create folders inside the local-adj-presets folder that LR will see or recognize so I just have to place the brushes in order I like. This is going to be a long process.

Thanks again,
Rich


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## clee01l (Jan 31, 2016)

I-See-Light said:


> I am led to believe that (contrary to the post by Cletus , above) the brush presets in the folder "Local Adjustment Presets" cannot exit in sub-folders, or more correctly- are not seen by Lightroom in sub-folders.
> This is different to "Develop Presets" where sub-folders are allowed.
> ie. all the brush presets must be as a singular list within "Local Adjustment Presets".
> This would preclude the use of sub-folders and the only method of sorting brushes is then to name Brush presets in an alpha-numeric fashion (using numbers or alphabetic ) as suggested by Victoria and Cletus-  01darken-1, 01darken-2, 01darken-3,  02lighten+1, 02lighten+2,   etc.


I was not certain either. So, I tested this out extensively while I wrote my reply.  LR reads the contents of folders inside the Local Adjustment Presets folder Unlike Develop, it does not separate the presets by folder although it does prepared the dropDownList item sequence by the order it receives them from the API. 

This is not a very pretty example but it does show that list items groups by the folders where they were encountered:


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## clee01l (Jan 31, 2016)

RSDS1227 said:


> Thank you, Lightroom Queen, Lightroom Guru and I-see-light. I agree with see light, I can't create folders inside the local-adj-presets folder that LR will see or recognize so I just have to place the brushes in order I like. This is going to be a long process.
> 
> Thanks again,
> Rich


You can group them by folder and sort them as I suggested.  See the screen shot from my previous post showing the presets collected from three separate folders and as individual files with in the Local Adjustment Presets folder.


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## Rob_Cullen (Jan 31, 2016)

Cletus- Now I am totally confused!
I also did some testing and cannot get brushes to show presets that are in sub-folders (Windows-10) Maybe the Mac OS changes the results that show.

One weird effect of my testing is that I now have two sets of the same presets appearing!!! (looks like I need a Preferences reset!)





Here are screen-clips of the Local adjustment Presets in Windows explorer- Note that any preset named 01.... in the "o1" folder does not appear in the LR brush panel (as above).







Sub-Folder:


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## clee01l (Jan 31, 2016)

I-See-Light said:


> Cletus- Now I am totally confused!
> I also did some testing and cannot get brushes to show presets that are in sub-folders (Windows-10) Maybe the Mac OS changes the results that show.


 You have to name the presets INSIDE the dropDownListBox. You can't rename the files using the OS Explorer/Finder functions.  The template file contains an XML field called "title" and this is the value that shows in the dropDownList.  When you create a Local adjustment Presets and save it the title is assigned as the name of the template too. 

If you notice from my Local adjustment Presets listing there is no item titled "1. Burn (Darken) by Seim". This is because I edited the file with an editor and renamed outside of LR.  It is still in the folder but LR no longer recognizes it. 











It is also possible that the Windows API and the OS X API that LR uses to extract the list behaves differently.


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## Rob_Cullen (Feb 2, 2016)

Cletus, 
Thanks. I did get it to work exactly as you describe. (in Windows-10)
The crucial factor is the naming of the Sub-folders with the 0.1.0 type numerical prefix (the '.' essential). Just using alphabet names for the sub-folders does not work.
Learn something new every day. :hail:


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