Working with looks

Apply a look to give a photograph a starting treatment, then adjust its strength and individual settings.

Press L or click the looks icon beside the filmstrip and info-panel buttons to open the left sidebar. Hover a look to preview it; click to apply.

Included looks. Twenty-three looks are organised in five groups: Starting points (Flat Base), Contrast (four), Split tone (four), Stocks (seven) and Monochrome (seven). Every one is Frames’ own. Saved looks appear in Mine. Stocks shows family subtitles under its codes in the tile grid, and each stock carries the grain of the film speed its code names.

Click a group heading to expand its two-column tiles or fold to a heading and count. Several groups can remain open. Panel width, visibility and expanded groups are remembered.

Favorites. Click the star inside a look’s tile, or right-click and choose Add to Favorites. The look also appears in Favorites at the top of the sidebar and stays in its original group. Click the filled star or choose Remove from Favorites to remove it from Favorites. Favorites are remembered across launches.

Previews. Tiles use the current decoded photograph and require no downloads. They show placeholders until it is ready. Tiles provide a standard comparison without the photograph’s RAW white balance, Detail settings or gain-map effect; the canvas shows the actual edited result. Tiles pause updates during slider drags and refresh on release.

Hovering saves no edit, creates no treatment and publishes nothing. Leaving the tile restores the canvas. Preview and editing controls are disabled under ORIGINAL.

Auto tone first. The switch under the Looks heading, on by default, balances the photograph before a look goes on: a click writes Auto tone’s Balanced answer into Background’s six Tone controls and applies the look in the same step, so one ⌘Z removes both. The hover preview and the tiles show the same result the click produces. Tone you set yourself is never overwritten, and the auto tone a previous click wrote counts as yours, so a second click changes the look alone. A look that carries its own Tone values, Flat Base or Red Filter, is applied as it is, since a Background value would replace the look’s. With the switch off a click applies the look alone.

Adjust an applied look. Applying a look selects Background so the photograph’s adjustments, including Auto tone, stay visible. Select the look’s row above Background in Layers to show its settings and Amount, which scales the look’s contribution. Grain shows the look’s amount, stock and format. The settings show values before Amount: grain 60 at Amount 50 renders at 30. Select Background to return to the photograph’s own adjustments. Controls changed on Background replace the corresponding look settings and stop following Amount. Curves combine: the look’s curve runs first and your curve follows. Colour mixer settings replace rather than combine.

Select the look’s row to edit its own Tone, curve and mixer values for this photograph. Group RESET affects only that look’s group. Bypassing its curve preserves your separate curve. The curve panel shows the look as a dashed reference at its current Amount, with the result in the colour ribbon. Bypass and ORIGINAL hide that reference.

Disable or remove. The eye temporarily hides the look. This is session state; leaving it hidden saves no rendered proxy and publishes nothing, while the recipe retains the look. Click ✕ to remove the look and retain your own adjustments. Only one look can be applied at a time. Applying another replaces it. Apply, Amount and removal each support ⌘Z.

Save and manage. Use Save current as look… under the header’s ＋ menu. Looks include supported tone, curves, mixer, colour, monochrome, toning, presence and effects. They exclude crop, RAW white balance, Detail and masks, and report omitted settings.

A look’s menu has Rename…, Update from current settings, Delete and Export Look…. Included looks cannot be renamed or deleted. Updating one creates a copy in Mine.

Share. Export Look writes a .frameslook file. Export Group… writes one file per look to a chosen folder and reports the count. Export is available without a decoded photograph and under ORIGINAL.

Drop files onto the sidebar or choose Import Looks… to import several files. A .frameslook preserves name, group and recipe with a new identity. Importing it twice creates two entries without overwriting.

Lightroom presets. Import Lightroom, Camera Raw and third-party .xmp presets using Camera Raw settings the same way. Supported values include Tone, vibrance, saturation, four point curves, eight colour-mixer bands, black-and-white conversion and grey-mixer bands, split toning, and supported Presence and Effects settings. Split toning transfers with black-and-white conversion. Grain amount transfers, while grain size is approximated with a Frames stock.

Legacy Lightroom .lrtemplate Develop presets import directly, including exposure, clarity and point curves. Legacy tone controls without a matching Frames control are reported as unsupported. If a preset contains both legacy and modern versions of a setting, the modern value takes precedence, even when it resets the setting to neutral.

Extract ZIP packs before selecting their XMP or .lrtemplate files. DNG presets, DCP profiles, LUTs and Capture One styles are not imported. Export remains .frameslook; Frames does not export Lightroom presets.

The result can differ from Lightroom because processing functions and mixer weights differ. The import sheet reports that limitation. Parametric curves are approximated as points and combined with the composite curve. Camera-profile calibration is omitted and reported as Profile calibration.

Import report. Each file is listed, including unreadable files, unsupported types and presets with no applicable settings. Empty presets create no look and list any recognised unsupported settings. The report names known unsupported changes by category: white balance; toning and grading; calibration; sharpening and noise; vignetting; grain frequency; lens corrections; masks; profile references; legacy tone controls; and automatic tone. Adobe preset reports confirm supported settings were imported, without promising every vendor extension transferred.

Imported looks keep their source group and name; an unnamed Adobe preset uses its filename. When an XMP preset supplies translated names or groups, the source’s default name and group take precedence. Colour and grey-mixer settings import independently of the app’s language. Names matching built-in groups or Mine use a separate heading, such as Stocks (imported). Duplicate names gain a suffix.