AI-Powered Lightroom Preset Generator

The Problem

Photographers still buy static preset packs on FilterGrade and Creative Market, slam them onto a wedding set, and then spend forty minutes undoing the orange. Adobe already ships Adaptive Presets inside Lightroom Classic / CC and owns 80%+ of the pro share. Evoto sells AI retouching as a subscription or pay-as-you-go. A "Lightroom Preset Builder" plugin exists as freemium / one-time. None of them take this shoot — this skin, this gym, this cloudy 4pm — and emit an XMP that matches a reference the shooter actually likes.

r/photography (5.5 million) and r/Lightroom (370k) are the complaint department. Facebook's Photoshop and Lightroom group (390k) and Beginners Photography (917k) are the volume. The beginner buys a $29 pack and thinks they did something. The shooter who invoices $3,000 wants a recipe they can reuse next Saturday.

The hidden cost is inconsistency across a gallery. One preset that looked right on the ceremony aisle wrecks the reception tungsten. Adaptive Presets help. They still do not start from this couple's skin and this venue's gel. That is the support ticket you will get, and the reason the product has to emit sliders — not a baked JPEG they cannot undo.

The Solution

Upload 3–8 selects plus a reference image (or a named look: "editorial indoor, 5200K, low sat skin"). Get a Lightroom XMP / DNG profile, a before/after, and a one-line "what this preset actually does" so they can tweak. $15 Starter / $30 Pro in the Ideabrowser ladder. Marketplace add-on at $10 if you later let shooters sell their generated packs — that is year two.

How it works:

1. Shoot lock — Upload selects. The app reads EXIF (WB, camera, lens) and refuses to pretend a phone JPEG is a raw wedding file.
2. Look lock — Reference photo or a constrained look picker. No "make it cinematic" text box.
3. Emit XMP — Predicted slider recipe (WB, tone curve, HSL, color grading, grain). User downloads XMP, applies, and can nudge. Pro unlocks batch across a folder.

Market Research

Photo editing " $5 billion by 2027" shows up in the idea summary — treat it as a wide umbrella, not your SAM. AI image generation: $349.6 million (2023) at 17.7% CAGR (Grand View / GM Insights). Broader AI image + video: $8.7 billion in 2024 to $60.8 billion by 2030 (38.2%, MarketsandMarkets) — that is a wider TAM than presets; cite it as gravity, not as your revenue.

The Aesthetic of Photography / AI-photography stats cluster is the cultural timing: shooters already accept AI assistance and still reject AI replacement of the file. A preset is assistance. A generative reshoot is a fight you do not want.

Adobe can clone this inside CC tomorrow. Your distribution is the $15 impulse and the YouTube "I generated a preset from my mood board" video, not a Creative Cloud RFP.

Privacy is a ship-blocker. These are client faces. 24-hour TTL on uploads, no training, no "community lookbook" of weddings. If you skip that, you do not have a photography product. You have a leak.

Competitive Landscape

• Adobe Lightroom Adaptive Presets — inside the CC subscription. 80%+ pro share. Good, generic, not "from my reference photo."
• Evoto AI — subscription / PAYG. Retouching, not XMP recipes.
• Lightroom Preset Builder plugins — freemium or one-time. Manual slider work with a nicer UI.
• FilterGrade / Creative Market — static packs. The incumbent the buyer already regrets.
• Luminar Neo, ON1, VSCO, Prisma — indirect. Different catalogs, same "buy a look" motion.

Your Opportunity

Free preview (3 sliders, no XMP) → $15 Starter (one XMP) → $30 Pro (batch + DNG profile) → $10 marketplace take-rate later → $10k+/year if a school or a brand studio wants seats. Do not fight Adobe on catalog. Fight FilterGrade on "this was built from my files."

YouTube is the channel: one preset-from-reference tutorial a week, XMP attached for Pro buyers. Reddit will call it a gimmick until a shooter posts a slider map that matches what they would have dialed. That post is the launch.

Business Model

*Ship Pro as $30 one-time first. Convert to monthly only if they batch weekly.

Unit economics:

• Vision + recipe call under $0.10 per generate
• $15 is impulse; support is "it didn't match" — show the slider map so they can fix it
• Never auto-install into Lightroom; sideload XMP keeps you out of Adobe's ToS meat grinder in v1

Recommended Tech Stack

• App: Next.js 15 on Vercel
• Auth / billing: Clerk + Stripe
• Storage: R2 for selects (short TTL — these are client photos)
• DB: Supabase — looks, generations, xmps
• Models: vision model to estimate WB/tone/HSL deltas vs reference; emit numeric sliders, not a baked JPEG
• XMP: a tested template per Lightroom version (Classic vs CC)

AI Prompts to Build This

Copy and paste these into Claude, Cursor, or your favorite AI tool.

1. Project Setup

Create a Next.js 15 Lightroom preset generator.
 
Set up:
- Clerk + Stripe ($15 / $30)
- Supabase + R2 with 24h TTL on uploads (client photos)
- EXIF reader; reject files with no camera make as "phone JPEG warning"
- XMP writer from a versioned slider schema (WB, tone curve, HSL, color grading, grain)
 
No social feed. Generate and download.

2. Core Feature

Build Shoot Lock → Look Lock → Emit XMP.
 
Requirements:
- 3–8 selects + 1 reference (or a constrained look picker)
- Predict sliders; show a before/after using those sliders on a preview JPEG
- Download XMP that Lightroom Classic 13+ accepts
- Pro: batch the same recipe across a folder
 
User flow: upload selects → lock look → preview sliders → pay → XMP.

3. Slider Map

Add a "what this preset does" panel that lists each slider delta in English so the shooter can nudge in Lightroom instead of filing a refund. Store the map next to the XMP.

Sources

• GM Insights — AI image generator
• Grand View — AI image generator
• MarketsandMarkets — AI image/video generator
• Aesthetics of Photography — AI photography stats
• Adobe Lightroom
• Evoto AI
• FilterGrade
• r/Lightroom