How to save your own Quick Looks

The built-in Quick Looks are a handy start, but the looks that matter most are usually your own. A colour grade you've tuned for your wedding photos, a black and white mix that suits your street work, a filter setting you keep reusing: all of them can become one-click looks in Paint by Zaweba, sitting in the Quick Looks panel next to the built-in ones.

What you can save

Save current as look takes one of three things.

The active adjustment layer. If you've built a single Curves or Colour Grading layer you like, select it and save it.

The adjustment layers in the active group. Real looks often take several adjustments working together, say Curves for contrast, Hue/Saturation to calm a colour and Colour Balance for a tint. Put them in a group, select the group and save, and all of them become one look.

The last filter applied. If you've just run a filter with settings you want to use again, you can save that too.

Managing your looks

Looks can be renamed and deleted, imported and exported, either in the Quick Looks panel or in the Libraries panel.

Renaming matters more than it seems. A vague name means nothing a month later; "Soft warm portrait" tells you what you'll get.

Export is how you back looks up and move them to another computer. Import is how you bring them in. If you work on two machines, or share looks with a friend who also uses Paint by Zaweba, export the ones you want and import them on the other side.

Building a good look

Build it on an ordinary, well-exposed photo. A look made on a very dark or very bright picture often includes corrections specific to that picture, and those don't transfer well.

Keep adjustment layers separate for each job. One layer for contrast, one for colour, one for tint. When you later apply the saved look and something is slightly off, you can tell which part to tweak.

Avoid masks that only make sense for one photo. A look is meant to apply broadly. If your grade depends on a mask around a face, that mask won't fit the next face.

Test on two or three different photos before you rely on it. A look that's lovely on a sunny beach may be awful on a grey city street.

Using your looks day to day

Once saved, your looks appear with the built-in ones. Hover to preview, click to apply, and use the intensity slider to set strength. You can apply them to a layer, the whole image or a selection, just as with the built-in looks.

Working through a set of photos is where this pays off most. A consistent look across a set of photos gives an album or a portfolio a unified feel, and a saved look means each photo gets exactly the same treatment.

Keeping your looks safe

Saving the wrong thing is common. If the active item is a single adjustment layer when you meant the whole group, you'll get only one part of the look. Check what's selected before saving.

Forgetting to export before reinstalling or moving to a new computer is the other. Export your important looks now and then and keep the file somewhere safe.

And don't hoard. Fifty looks with near-identical names are slower to use than ten you know well. Delete the ones you never pick.

Saving your own looks turns a good edit into a habit. Over time the Quick Looks panel becomes a record of your own style, a click away.