How to create and apply custom presets in Google Photos

Google Photos has a good editor. It's the same editor whether you're touching up one photo or, in theory, a hundred. The catch is the "in theory" — once you've tuned a single photo until it looks right, there's no built-in way to bulk- or mass-edit that tuned look across the next ninety-nine. Every photo starts from scratch.

Custom Presets is the part of Batch that closes that gap. You fine-tune one photo in Google Photos' own editor, save the result as a Custom Preset with a name you'll recognize ("Reception warm-tone," "Lake-house brighten," "Catalog spring drop"), and Batch applies that same preset across every photo in your selection. The adjustments are Google Photos' own — brightness, warmth, shadows, saturation, vignette, the rest — so the output looks like the rest of the editor's output. It just looks that way across two hundred photos instead of one.

Custom Presets is available on every plan. Free, Plus, and Pro all get the same preset-creation tools and the same per-photo behavior; the only difference is how many photos a month you can run through them, which is the same shared monthly quota as Auto Enhance, Filter, Crop, and the other batch actions. No separate preset tier, no per-preset upcharge.

What a Custom Preset actually is

A Custom Preset is a snapshot of every adjustment you made to one photo in Google Photos' Adjust panel, saved as a reusable recipe. When you save a preset, Batch records the exact values of every slider you moved — brightness, contrast, white point, black point, highlights, shadows, saturation, warmth, tint, skin tone, blue tone, pop, vignette, and so on. Apply the preset to another photo, and Batch sets every one of those sliders to the same values on that photo.

That's it. There's no AI re-interpretation, no "smart" adjustment per photo. The preset is deterministic: same values in, same values applied. If your reference photo was sunny and bright and the next photo is a dim interior, the preset will apply the same sunny brighten to the dim interior — which is sometimes exactly what you want and sometimes too much. We'll come back to that.

When to use a preset vs. Filter vs. Auto Enhance

Three tools, three jobs. Picking the right one for the situation is most of the workflow.

Auto Enhance is per-photo. Google's AI looks at each photo individually and decides how much to brighten, warm, and balance it. Across a mixed set — some bright, some dim, some backlit — Auto Enhance produces sensibly-edited photos that don't necessarily look like each other. Right tool for a vacation backlog where every shot is its own scene.

Filter is one of Google Photos' named looks (Vivid, Honey, Alpaca, Vista, and the rest) with a single intensity slider. Same look across the batch, but you're limited to Google's library and one knob. Right tool when one of the built-ins gets close enough and you don't want to fiddle.

Custom Preset is the same look across the batch, but built from your own adjustments. Right tool when none of the built-in filters quite hit the look you want, or when the look you want is something you'll reuse — a specific warmth and brightness for wedding receptions, a specific cool-bright for real-estate interiors, a specific muted-natural for a product catalog.

A simple decision: if you're doing this once, Auto Enhance or a Filter is faster. If you're doing this every month, or across a project that needs to feel cohesive, build a preset.

Step-by-step: tune one photo, save it, apply to the batch

The whole workflow lives in two places — Google Photos for the tuning, Batch for the application.

1. Pick a representative reference photo. Open the album you want to edit in Google Photos and pick the photo that's most typical of the set — middle-of-the-road lighting, the kind of subject you have a lot of, exposed the way the rest were exposed. Avoid the brightest or darkest outlier as the reference; the preset will look right on the reference and wrong on everything else.

2. Tune it in Google Photos. Open the photo, tap Edit, go to the Adjust tab, and move sliders until the photo looks the way you want every photo in the set to look. Brightness, warmth, shadows, saturation, vignette — every slider you touch becomes part of the preset. Don't worry about Auto Enhance interacting; you can layer Auto Enhance underneath and the preset captures the adjustments you make on top.

3. Save it as a Custom Preset in Batch. With the tuned photo still open, open the Batch extension and choose Save as Custom Preset. Name it for the project, not the feeling — "Reception warm-tone" outlasts "Looks nice" by years. The preset is now in your Batch preset library, tied to your Google account.

4. Select the rest of the photos. Back in the album, multi-select every photo you want the preset applied to. Batch respects the selection you make in Google Photos' UI; the standard shift-click and ctrl-click work for ranges and additions.

5. Run the preset. Click Batch in the toolbar, choose Apply Custom Preset, pick the preset you just saved, and let it run. Batch opens each photo, applies the saved adjustments, saves, and moves on. The tab stays open; nothing leaves Google's infrastructure. Free runs through 25 photos a month, Plus through 500, Pro through as many as you've selected.

6. Spot-check and revert outliers if needed. A deterministic preset will occasionally be too much on the outliers — the brightest photo in the set gets blown out, the dimmest gets muddy. Open those individually in Google Photos and either revert to the original (Edit → Revert) or fine-tune manually. Every preset application is fully reversible per-photo; Pro adds bulk revert if you want to undo the whole run.

Preset recipes for common projects

Starting points, not gospel. Adjust the values to taste on your reference photo before saving the preset.

Wedding reception warm-tone. Reception lighting is uneven, warm in the middle of the room and cool near the windows. A preset with warmth +15, shadows +20, highlights -10, saturation +5, and a touch of vignette pulls the whole batch toward the warm-evening look without losing the dim interior shots.

Real-estate brighten. Phone photos of interiors underexpose to protect the windows. Brightness +20, shadows +30, warmth +5, saturation -5 lifts the rooms without making the windows blown out. The slight desaturation reads as "professional listing photo" rather than "phone snapshot."

Travel cohesion. A two-week trip moves through different lighting conditions — morning beach, midday city, golden-hour mountain. A gentle preset (warmth +5, saturation +10, shadows +10, contrast +5) is enough to make the album feel like one trip without forcing every shot into the same look.

Product catalog consistency. For Etsy, eBay, or Shopify drops shot on the same surface, warmth +0, brightness +10, saturation -5, contrast +10 produces the muted-natural look most product photography aims at. Save the preset per product line; a candle catalog and a vintage clothing catalog want different presets.

What presets won't do

A preset is a set of adjustments, not a brain. Three known limits to plan around.

Crops and rotations aren't part of a preset. Custom Presets capture the Adjust panel values only. If you want to crop or rotate the batch, use Batch's Crop or Rotate actions as separate passes. This is the right separation — a crop ratio depends on the destination platform, not the look — but worth flagging if you expected a single preset to handle everything.

Outliers will look wrong. The preset is deterministic. A photo that's much brighter or darker than the reference will get the same adjustments applied and end up in the opposite direction. Plan to spot-check after the run, especially on mixed-lighting projects.

Videos are skipped. The Google Photos web editor doesn't expose the same Adjust panel for video, so Batch skips videos in the selection. They don't count against the monthly quota.

Custom Presets FAQ

Are Custom Presets a Pro-only feature?

No. Custom Presets are available on every plan — Free, Plus, and Pro — and they count against the same monthly photo quota as Auto Enhance, Filter, Crop, and Rotate. Free is 25 photos per month, Plus is 500, Pro is unlimited. There is no separate preset quota and no tier where presets unlock.

How is a Custom Preset different from a built-in Filter?

A built-in Filter is one of Google Photos' named looks (Vivid, Honey, Alpaca, and so on) with a single intensity slider. A Custom Preset is a snapshot of every adjustment you made in Google Photos' editor — brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation, shadows, highlights, vignette, and the rest — saved as a reusable look you named yourself. Use a Filter when one of the built-ins gets close enough. Build a preset when you want a specific look across a specific project.

Does Batch upload my photos when it applies a preset?

No. Batch runs in your Chrome tab and drives the Google Photos web editor the same way you would — opening each photo, applying the saved adjustments, hitting Save. Nothing leaves Google's infrastructure. There is no Batch server in the middle.

Can I share a Custom Preset with someone else?

Not today. A preset lives in your browser's Batch extension, tied to the Google account you used to create it. Preset sharing is on the roadmap; until then, the tunable values are visible in the preset editor and can be reproduced manually on another account.

What happens if I apply a preset to a video?

Batch skips videos automatically. The Google Photos web editor doesn't expose the same adjustment panel for video, so presets only apply to still photos in the selection. The video stays untouched and doesn't count against the monthly quota.

Build one preset for one project. Apply it across the batch. That's the whole idea.