How to Use Lightroom Presets in DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve does not read Lightroom presets. It has no importer for .xmp, no plugin that adds one, and no plans to — the two applications model colour differently enough that a direct import would not mean much.
What does work is converting the preset into a 3D LUT. That part is mechanical. The part that decides whether the result looks right is where the LUT goes in your node graph, and that is what most guides skip.
Step one: get a .cube out of the preset
Export or locate the .xmp — Lightroom Classic keeps develop presets in Camera Raw's settings folder, and any preset can be exported from the Develop panel's right-click menu.
Run it through a converter to produce a 33×33×33 .cube. The global settings come across exactly; masks, vignettes, grain and lens corrections do not, because a LUT has no concept of where a pixel sits in the frame. If your preset leans on a graduated filter, expect the LUT to be noticeably gentler than the preset was.
Copy the resulting file into Resolve's LUT directory, then open Project Settings → Color Management and press Update Lists. Resolve does not rescan on its own, and a LUT that fails to appear after that is almost always malformed rather than misplaced.
- ·macOS — /Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/LUT
- ·Windows — C:\ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\LUT
- ·Linux — /opt/resolve/LUT
Step two: put it in the right place
This is the step that determines the outcome. A LUT converted from a Lightroom preset is a *creative look*, not a technical transform, and creative looks belong late in the chain on their own node.
Right-click a node and choose the LUT from the menu. Put it after your primary correction, so you are grading a neutral image underneath rather than fighting the look while you balance the shot. A separate node also means you can dial it back later without unpicking anything.
Do not put it in Project Settings → Color Management. That slot applies to everything as an output transform, after your grade, which is correct for a display or conversion LUT and wrong for a look you want to work beneath.
Step three: fix the input, not the LUT
The most common complaint at this point is that the look is flat, milky and nothing like Lightroom. Almost always the cause is colour space, not conversion.
A preset built on photographs assumes photograph-like input: something in the region of Rec.709 with normal contrast already applied. Log footage — S-Log3, V-Log, C-Log3 — has none of that. Feeding it a look that expects contrast produces exactly the washed-out result people describe, and the maths is being applied perfectly to the wrong numbers.
The fix is ordering. Convert to Rec.709 first, with a Color Space Transform node or through Resolve's colour management, and apply the creative LUT after that. Reaching for the Key palette to tame a look being fed the wrong input treats the symptom and leaves the shot fragile.
Step four: strength, and applying it widely
Resolve has no strength slider on a LUT itself. The node's Key Output Gain in the Key palette is the standard control: at 0.5 the look mixes at half strength over what is underneath. A Layer Mixer with the LUT on the upper layer does the same job with more control.
If the look needs to be permanently gentler — because it is going to a collaborator, a camera monitor or a streaming setup with no opacity control at all — reduce the LUT file itself instead, blending it toward neutral and re-exporting.
To apply the look across a timeline: grade one clip and use Apply Grade to All Clips, or select the rest and use Ripple Node Changes. For a look that belongs to the sequence rather than the shots, switch the node editor from Clip to Timeline and apply it once there.
What you gain over just using the preset
It is worth saying that this is not only a compatibility workaround. A photographer with a consistent Lightroom look and a video project has a genuine continuity problem, and a converted LUT solves it precisely: the stills and the footage are now running through the same colour transform rather than two approximations of the same intention.
The same is true in the other direction. A look developed as a recipe can leave as an .xmp for the stills and a .cube for the timeline, from one source, which is a great deal more reliable than matching by eye across two applications.
Frequently asked questions
Can DaVinci Resolve open .xmp files?
No. Resolve has no importer for Lightroom or Camera Raw sidecars and will not recognise the format. Converting the preset to a .cube LUT is the only route, and once converted Resolve treats it like any other LUT.
Does this work in the free version of Resolve?
Yes, entirely. LUT import, node-level application, Timeline nodes, Color Management and Generate 3D LUT are all in the free build. Nothing about this workflow needs Resolve Studio.
Why does my Lightroom look come out flat in Resolve?
Because the footage is probably log and the look expects Rec.709. The LUT is applying correctly to input it was never designed for. Put a Color Space Transform before the look node, or set up colour management, and the contrast the preset assumed will be there.
Will the LUT match my Lightroom edit exactly?
The global colour transform will be very close. What will be missing is anything spatial — masks, graduated filters, vignettes, grain — because those cannot exist in a LUT. If a preset's character comes mostly from a sky-darkening gradient, the LUT will feel like a different look, and that is a limitation of the format rather than the conversion.
How do I apply the look to every clip at once?
Grade one clip properly, then right-click it and choose Apply Grade to All Clips, or select the remaining clips and use Ripple Node Changes. If the look belongs to the whole sequence rather than to individual shots, put it on a Timeline-level node instead — it applies once and stays editable in one place.
Can I go back the other way and use a Resolve grade in Lightroom?
Partly. Export the grade from Resolve as a .cube with Generate 3D LUT, then convert that LUT into a Lightroom preset. Bear in mind the conversion back is an approximation — a LUT holds far more independent values than a preset has parameters — and that anything you did with power windows will not be in the exported LUT to begin with.
Drop the .xmp into RawCut's converter and download a Resolve-ready 33³ .cube — free, in your browser, and it tells you if the preset contains masks that cannot come across.
Convert your preset