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PixelSugar doesn't appear in Lightroom editing options

  • Updated

If PixelSugar doesn't appear in your Lightroom Edit In... options, here are a few things to check.

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Did you actually install the preset?

Lightroom learns what programs it can send images to with External Editor Presets. PixelSugar can install an External Editor Preset for Lightroom Classic with a simple menu command, so make sure you've done this first (it won't hurt to do it again)

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Are you using Lightroom Classic or Lightroom CC?

Lightroom CC doesn't support external editors, only Lightroom CC (sorry!)

Do you have "Store Presets With Catalog" checked?

In Lightroom's preferences, under the Presets section, look at the "Store presets with this catalog" setting. Is it checked? If so, you might have to do some manual work

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First of all, do you really need that setting? If you're an advanced user with a specialized workflow, and you know for sure the answer is yes, then continue. Otherwise, uncheck it :)

... Still here? Ok then, with that out of the way, here's a little background (we'll need it). Lightroom's "global" location for External Editor Presets is at /Users/<your username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/External Editor Presets, and that's where it normally looks. However, with "Store presets with this catalog" checked, it looks in a subfolder of your active Lightroom catalog. Where is that? I dunno - it's your catalog, I assume you know where it is! Inside of your catalog there should be a Lightroom Settings folder, and inside of that is a folder called External Editor Presets, and that's where our little preset needs to go.

So basically, we're going to make a copy of a file called PixelSugar.lrtemplate, and place it in your specific catalog's folder.

This is complicated (a bit) by the fact that the "global" location, where we're copying FROM, is hidden by default on MacOS. So, with all that in mind, here's what we're doing:

  1. Open up a Finder window with the Lightroom catalog we're copying TO (your active catalog). Navigate to the External Editor Presets folder.
  2. Open up Terminal. Then copy the command below, paste it into the Terminal window, and hit return:
  3. open ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Lightroom/External\ Editor\ Presets
  4. This should open up a second finder window with the global presets location.
  5. Hold down the option key, then drag a copy of the PixelSugar.lrtemplate file into your catalog-specific location.
  6. Restart Lightroom.

This should do the trick.

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