Presets for Lightroom — FLTR

Review by eFreeware

Editing a photo to look like the ones you save on Instagram is usually the slow part. You open Lightroom, push sliders, compare, undo, and by the time the grade looks right you have lost interest in posting. A preset box solves that by handing you a finished look you can drop onto a shot in a few taps, and that is the space FLTR occupies.

FLTR is a mobile app from the developer Mobile Presets & Filters, listed under Photography. It is a free download with ads and in-app purchases, and it has been on Google Play since June 25, 2019, with a 4.6 average across more than 419,000 ratings and over 10 million installs. The catalog is large: more than 1500 Lightroom presets and 74 DNG packs, grouped into themes such as City Style, Fashion, Nature and Food.

The pitch is not that FLTR replaces Lightroom. It feeds it. The developer describes the collection as assembled with professional photographers, designers and bloggers, and the presets are meant to be applied inside Adobe Lightroom CC on your phone. If you already edit on mobile, this is a way to skip the slider work; if you have never opened Lightroom, FLTR is a reason to start.

Who tends to get the most from a preset box

The clearest fit is someone who shoots on a phone and posts to Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat, and who wants a consistent look across a feed rather than a one-off edit. The themed groups make that easier to manage: you pick the set that matches your subject and reuse it, so a week of food shots or city shots reads as one style instead of a pile of unrelated images.

The second group is people who already understand Lightroom but not color grading. Presets give them a starting point they can adjust, and the DNG packs give them something concrete to import. The developer also mentions use by professional photography on 500px, which suggests the app is not only for casual posting, though the everyday use case is clearly the phone-first one.

It helps to be comfortable with the idea of a preset as a beginning rather than a finished result. A filter that looks right on a bright landscape will often need trimming on a dim indoor shot, and the app's value comes from giving you a strong base and a large menu to choose from, not from making every photo look good untouched.

What the preset library actually contains

The core of FLTR is volume. The developer counts more than 1500 presets and 74 DNG packs, and the packs are organized by theme, with City Style, Fashion, Nature and Food named as examples. That spread matters because it means you are not choosing between five moods; you are choosing between families of looks that were built for different subjects.

The named styles lean toward current social media tastes. The developer lists teal and orange, moody, and light and airy among the options, along with effects it calls afterglow, vogue, aesthetic, afterlight, and dark and white. These are the looks you see across feeds, and having them in one place saves you from hunting through separate preset sellers for each one.

Because the presets are meant for Adobe Lightroom CC, the workflow runs through that editor on your phone. You apply a preset, then adjust exposure, color and crop as you normally would. FLTR's job is the look; Lightroom's job is the finishing. That division is worth understanding before you download, since the app is a companion to an editor rather than a complete replacement for one.

Instagram highlights, covers and sharing

Beyond straight photo grading, FLTR ships highlights and covers for Instagram. That is a different job from editing a photo: it is about the small round icons at the top of a profile and the way a grid reads as a whole. For anyone treating a profile as a portfolio, those pieces are part of the presentation, and having them in the same app as the presets keeps the look consistent.

The sharing angle runs through the whole app. The app is built around photos that go to Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, with the stated goal of helping you attract attention and stand out with your own editing style. That framing tells you what the app is optimizing for: social output, not print or client delivery.

I would treat the highlight and cover features as a bonus rather than the reason to install. The presets are the substance. But if you are already thinking about how a profile looks as a unit, the extra pieces save you from sourcing them separately, and they use the same visual language as the photo filters.

Editing on the move, and what that asks of you

The developer makes a point of editing anywhere, naming travel destinations as the setting. That is the honest advantage of a mobile preset app: you can grade a shot before you get home, when the light and the mood are still fresh in your mind. For anyone shooting on a phone and posting the same day, that timing is the whole point.

The trade-off is that a preset applied on a small screen can look different once you see it larger. Presets that push contrast or color hard are the ones most likely to need a second look, and you will get better results if you check the edit on something bigger before committing it to a feed. That is a habit worth building rather than a flaw in the app.

There is also a learning curve in the library itself. More than 1500 presets is a lot to browse, and the fastest way through it is to decide on two or three themes that match your usual subjects and ignore the rest. The developer's categories make that possible, but the app rewards a bit of discipline.

Price, ads and purchases

FLTR is free to download. It contains ads, and it offers in-app purchases. The collection includes both free and premium preset filters, so some of what you see sits behind a purchase while the rest is available without one. That is the whole of what is stated about money, and it is enough to set expectations: you can start without paying, and you may be offered more once you are inside.

Ads and in-app purchases are common for a free app of this size, and the install and rating figures suggest plenty of people accept the trade.

The in-app purchases are the part I would go in aware of rather than surprised by.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious comparison is a dedicated photo editor that bundles its own filters. FLTR goes the other way: a much larger library, but you need Lightroom to use it. Which is better depends on whether you already edit in Lightroom or are willing to.

Another alternative is buying presets individually from a photographer or a preset shop. FLTR's advantage is breadth in one place; the individual seller's advantage is focus.

Then there is the option of learning to grade by hand. That costs time rather than money and gives you full control, and no preset library can match it for originality. FLTR is for the people who want the look now, or who want a reference point to learn from. Both are reasonable, and the app does not pretend to be a course in color theory.

A preset library worth trying if you post from your phone

FLTR is a sensible install for mobile photographers who already edit in Adobe Lightroom CC and want a large, themed preset library without building looks from scratch.

If you are happy with the ads and in-app purchases and you post photos regularly to Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat, this is a straightforward way to give your feed a consistent look with far less slider work.

If you would rather have one app that does everything, or you prefer to develop your own grade, the appeal is smaller. For everyone else, the combination of a free download, a large library and a strong rating record makes FLTR an easy one to try before you decide how much of it you need.