Install and apply the Photomator presets

A Photomator preset moves the sliders of the Color Adjustments pane to give a photo its look, and a whole group of presets can be imported from an .adjustments file [1]. The Grain Archive presets come as one collection, “The Grain Archive”: the 87 film looks of the Photomator pack, or four of them in the free Photomator pack. This guide follows the Photomator user guide [1] [2].

What is in the zip

• The Grain Archive.adjustments: the collection of presets, the only file Photomator needs.
• README.txt: these steps in short, and the limits of the presets.
• LICENSE.txt: what you may do with the presets.
• CHANGELOG.txt and VERSION: the version of the pack and what changed.

How to import the presets into Photomator

1. Unzip the file you downloaded.
2. On a Mac: in the presets panel, Control-click any preset group tag and choose Import [1], then select The Grain Archive.adjustments.
3. On iPhone and iPad: in the presets bar, tap More and choose Import, then tap the .adjustments file in Recents, or tap Browse to find it [1].

The presets appear as a new collection, “The Grain Archive”, with one preset per film look.

Not sure yet? The free Photomator pack installs the same way: try four of the looks on your own photos first.

How to apply a preset

1. Open a photo and click or tap a preset’s thumbnail [1]. Tap a selected preset again to turn it off; once you have edited the colors after applying it, reset the color adjustments instead [1].
2. Apply the preset first: it replaces the color adjustments already set on the photo, Basic included. To keep one of your adjustments, lock it before applying the preset [1] [2].
3. Then adjust the exposure and the white balance to your photo.
4. To dose the look, use the Intensity slider at the bottom of the Color Adjustments pane on a Mac, or More › Adjust Intensity on iPhone and iPad. It changes the strength of all the color adjustments of the photo, not of the preset alone [2].

What the presets do, and what they leave out

Each preset is a darktable style baked into a 3D lookup table, with Photomator’s own Grain adjustment [3]. Effects that depend on neighboring pixels cannot be held by a lookup table and are left out: halation, blur, bloom, local contrast and sharpening, on the few looks that use them. The limits of each preset are listed on the Photomator presets page.

How to update the pack, or go from the free pack to the paid one

The free pack and the paid pack use the same collection name, “The Grain Archive”. Importing the file again adds a second collection with the same name, so delete the previous one first:

• on a Mac, Control-click the collection tag and choose Remove [1];
• on iPhone and iPad, touch and hold the collection tag and tap Delete [1].

Then import the new file. The download link of a purchase gives the version available when you use it. Lost it? Get your download link again.

How to remove the presets

Delete the “The Grain Archive” collection as above [1]. To delete a single preset: on a Mac, Control-click its thumbnail and choose Remove; on iPhone and iPad, touch and hold it and choose Delete Preset [1].