---
title: "Presets: save and apply a look · Manual"
description: "Save a look as a preset, choose what it carries with its eighteen switches, apply it from the deck or the Settings menu, and copy and paste settings."
url: "https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets"
date: "2026-11-03"
---

[Manual](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual)

# Presets

**Presets in Open Negative Initiative: a look you saved, laid on your next photo in one click.** The deck under the photo, the Save a Preset sheet and its eighteen switches, the Settings menu, and Copy and Paste for a look you did not save.

![The editor with the presets deck raised at the bottom of the photo: a card to save a new preset, then Cool, Punch, Soft and Warm, Warm lifted and previewed on a glass lift lit green on a Paris pavement at night.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/_astro/manual-presets.CykHvbOa_3iBey.webp)

## The deck

**A preset is a look, saved in one file of its own.** The deck is where you meet your presets while editing, under the photo.

### The deck

Your presets stand as cards along the bottom of the photo, a thin strip until the pointer reaches it. Hover a card to preview it on your photo; click to apply it to the selection, or to the open photo. The last card, a **+**, saves this photo's settings as a new preset.

- A right click on a card: **Edit…**, **Update with Current Settings**, **Duplicate**, **Share Preset…**, **Copy Preset Code** and **Delete**.
- Update with Current Settings asks first, then replaces the settings the preset stored; its name, colour, description and switches stay.
- Delete sends the preset's file to the Trash, where it can be put back; photos it was applied to keep their settings.
- The deck stands aside under the Crop tab, whose handles use that edge, and on the Scanner face.

- [Save a Preset](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-dialog) (Presets)
- [What a preset carries](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-carries) (Presets)

## Saving

**Save as Preset… in the Settings menu, or the deck's last card.** The sheet asks for a name, a colour and what the preset carries.

### Save a Preset

**Save a Preset** asks for a Name, a Color for its card, and what it Carries: the switches open on every setting your photo moved, the white balance left out. Save stays dark while the name is blank.

- **Edit Presets…** lists your presets beside the same form, with a Description, and Duplicate, Share…, Copy Preset Code, Delete and Done; an edit is saved as soon as you pause.
- A preset is one file of its own: Share… writes it where you choose, to send; Copy Preset Code puts it on one line of text, to paste in a message.

- [What a preset carries](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-carries) (Presets)
- [White balance in a preset](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-white-balance) (Presets)

## Carries

**A preset stores the names of the switches it was saved with, and their values.** The white balance is a choice rather than a switch.

### The app's own note on Carries

> A preset never carries crop, straightening, rotation or the conversion mode.

### What a preset carries

Eighteen switches in four blocks, Settings, Color, Details and Scanner, each all or nothing. The white balance is a choice of its own, at the head of Color.

- Lighting carries Exposure, Shadows, Highlights, Black point, White point and Contrast too, though Contrast sits in Effects.
- Scanner Keypad carries the Scanner face's letters, its machine and its finish, and the face with them: a preset saved on the Scanner face opens your photo on it.
- A preset carrying nothing is allowed, and the sheet says so: applying it changes no setting.

- **Settings**: Source Encoding, Flat-Field, Dye Separation
- **Color**: Color (Temperature, Tint), Color Density, Chroma Decompression, Lighting, Vignette, Chrome, Paper Correction, Curves, Density Ceiling, Spectrogram Finishing, Saturation Curve
- **Details**: Sharpening, Chroma Denoise, Texture
- **Scanner**: Scanner Keypad

- [White balance in a preset](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-white-balance) (Presets)
- [Copy, Paste and Paste to Roll](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/crop#crop-copy-paste) (Crop)

### White balance in a preset

A choice rather than a switch, in the Color block: **Not carried**, **Copied WB (gains + per-channel levels)**, or **Automatic WB (Temperature, Tint)**, which runs Auto White Balance on each photo the preset lands on.

In the app, the ? beside **White balance** says:

> Not carried leaves every photo its own balance. Copied WB pastes this photo's gains and per-channel levels as numbers. Automatic WB re-measures each photo it lands on.

- A new preset opens on Not carried, whatever your photo moved: a look never carries a balance unasked.
- Copied WB makes sense within one roll digitised on one rig, where the numbers really are the same.
- A preset naming a former automatic balance gets Auto White Balance instead.

- [What a preset carries](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-carries) (Presets)
- [Auto White Balance](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/color#auto-white-balance) (Color)
- [Source Balance](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/roll#source-balance) (Roll)

## Settings menu

**Every preset gesture is in the Settings menu, which is also the presets' only surface in the gallery.**

### The Settings menu

The Settings menu holds every preset gesture: **Save as Preset…**, **Edit Presets…**, **Import Presets…**, **Paste Preset Code** and **Show Presets Folder**, then each preset by name with what it carries, and **Delete a Preset**.

- The list is headed by its target: Apply to 12 Photos, or Apply to the name of the one photo it would land on.
- In the gallery, where there is no deck, it applies a preset to the photos you selected.
- Import Presets… reads preset files someone sent you; Paste Preset Code reads a code copied from a message.

- [The deck](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-deck) (Presets)
- [Copy Settings, Paste Settings, Paste to Roll](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/presets#preset-copy-paste) (Presets)

## Copy and paste

**The quick way to spread a look without saving a preset.**

### Copy Settings, Paste Settings, Paste to Roll

**Copy Settings** (`⇧⌘C`) and **Paste Settings** (`⇧⌘V`) carry the Color and Details tabs whole, rest values included, and nothing else. **Paste to Roll** lays them on the open photo and every photo of its roll.

- The same three gestures are keys in the centre of the bar, the last one PASTE TO ROLL.
- A paste lands on the selection if there is one, else on the open photo, and its title counts: Paste Settings to 12 Photos, Paste to Roll (36 Photos).
- Pasting onto a photo of another roll asks first: a look made on one roll's window may not hold on another's.
- The Roll tab's settings and the framing never travel this way.

- [Copy, Paste and Paste to Roll](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/crop#crop-copy-paste) (Crop)
- [Measured Roll](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/roll#measured-roll) (Roll)

## The rest of the manual.

**Every surface of the app, in the order of your work.** From the folder of scans to the exported file.

- [Archive Opening the folder of your scans, your folders and favourites, the Archive and Projects tabs, a roll's own facts, the Rolls and Labels menus, and the ONI Trash.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/archive)
- [Prepare the Roll The five steps a roll goes through before its frames are edited: film, flat-field, film base, flags, measuring frame, then Measure.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/prepare-the-roll)
- [Roll What a roll shares: film type, flat-field, source encoding, the manual balance, the levels, dye separation and Balance strength.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/roll)
- [Crop The framing's own Copy and Paste, aspect ratio, straightening, quarter turns and mirrors, and the measuring window.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/crop)
- [Color Auto White Balance, Temperature and Tint, Lighting, Effects, Curves, the finishing blocks, and Paper Correction on a paper profile.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/color)
- [Details Sharpening, chroma denoise and texture, the stages that act on the grain, judged in the loupe at full resolution.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/details)
- [De-dust The brush for dust and scratches, its size, and the list of corrections painted on the open photo.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/de-dust)
- [Scanner The Scanner face: ONI or Frontier, a lab scanner's keypad of D, C, M, Y and TEMP, and the finish laid after its render.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/scanner)
- [Export The export screen: three presets, format, space and paper profiles, size, the HDR hack, each photo's EXIF line.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/export)
- [Toolbar and menus Every key of the bar and of the canvas margin, and every menu item with its shortcut.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual/toolbar)
- [The whole manual Every surface on one page, in the order a roll goes through the app.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/manual)
- [The guide Your first negative converted, step by step.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/guide)

## Convert your first roll tonight.

**Add your folder, prepare the roll once, export.** Free, and nothing else to install.

[Download for Mac](https://github.com/5e1y/open-negative-initiative-releases/releases/latest/download/OpenNegative.dmg) · [Download for Windows](https://github.com/5e1y/open-negative-initiative-releases/releases/latest/download/ONI-windows.zip)

[How to convert a film negative, step by step](https://open-negative-initiative.com/guide)

- **Mac**: macOS 13 or later on Apple Silicon or Intel
- **Windows**: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit)

[Blocked at first launch?](https://open-negative-initiative.com/download#verify)

![A snowy Paris street at night, a lit cafe under arcades, tyre tracks in the snow.](https://open-negative-initiative.com/media/carousel/snow-night-1400.webp)

***Snow night.** Kodak Gold, converted in Open Negative Initiative.*