Look Slots - Setup & Usage Guide

1. Before you start

What this plugin does

Lightroom Classic has one clipboard for develop settings. Copy a look, and the moment you copy another, the first is gone. Look Slots gives you nine clipboards side by side. Copy a portrait recipe to Slot 1, a landscape recipe to Slot 2, a B&W to Slot 3 - then paste any of them onto any photos, in any order, all day. The slots keep their contents even after you close Lightroom.

Every copy opens a checkbox window that mirrors Lightroom's own Copy Settings dialog - about 27 setting groups plus one checkbox for every mask on the photo - so each slot holds exactly what you chose, nothing more.

What you need

• Adobe Lightroom Classic. The cloud-based "Lightroom" (previously Lightroom CC) is not supported.
• The plugin zip from your purchase email and your license key (also in the email).
• Works on macOS and Windows. It's a pure Lightroom plugin - no separate downloads, no AI files, nothing runs in the background.
• Optional, on both platforms: a free helper app if you want a keyboard shortcut for every slot - Hammerspoon on macOS, AutoHotkey on Windows. The menus work fine without it - see section 5.

One important thing to know up front

2. Easy start - your first 5 minutes

If you only read one section, read this one. Five steps from zip file to your first cross-photo paste.

Step 1 - Install the plugin

1. Unzip the file from your purchase email. You'll get a folder called develop-clipboard.lrplugin.
2. Move that folder somewhere permanent - Documents, Desktop, or the standard Lightroom modules folder. Any spot works as long as you won't delete it later.
3. Open Lightroom Classic. Go to File > Plug-in Manager.
4. Click Add and select the develop-clipboard.lrplugin folder.
5. You should see Look Slots in the list with a green Installed and running status.

Step 2 - Activate your license

1. Still in the Plug-in Manager, select Look Slots in the list on the left.
2. Find the License section on the right. Paste your license key from the purchase email.
3. Click Activate. The status line shows Licensed when accepted.

Your license works on one computer at a time. Need to switch machines? Click Deactivate on the old one first, then activate on the new one.

Step 3 - Copy your first look

1. In the Library or Develop module, click a photo you've already edited - one whose look you'd happily reuse.
2. Choose File > Plug-in Extras > Copy Develop Settings to Slot 1.
3. A checkbox window opens - the same layout as Lightroom's own Copy Settings. Leave the ticks as they are for now and click Copy.
4. A small on-screen note confirms: Copied [filename] to Slot 1.

Step 4 - Paste it onto other photos

1. Select one or more different photos - a whole batch is fine.
2. Choose File > Plug-in Extras > Paste Develop Settings from Slot 1.
3. Every selected photo takes the look, in one step. Press Ctrl/Cmd+Z if you want them all back the way they were.

Step 5 - Load a second slot

1. Click a photo with a different look - say your black & white treatment.
2. Choose Copy Develop Settings to Slot 2.
3. Now both looks are loaded at once. Paste from Slot 1 or Slot 2 whenever each fits - no recopying, ever.

That's the whole idea. Nine slots, each holding a look of your choice, all available all the time. Read on for the copy window's options, keyboard shortcuts, and what happens with AI masks.

3. The full workflow - Copy, Paste, Manage

The plugin runs on a simple loop: load your looks in the morning, paste them all day, tidy up when the job changes.

Copy to slots → Paste onto batches → Manage slots → Repeat

3.1 Copy - choose exactly what goes in

Select the photo whose look you want and pick any of the nine Copy Develop Settings to Slot… menu items. The checkbox window opens with three columns of setting groups - White Balance, Tone, Color, Effects, Crop, and so on - plus one checkbox for each mask on that photo, listed by name.

• Your last choices are remembered. The window opens with the same ticks you used last time, so the fast path is just pressing Return.
• Crop and Remove (healing) start unticked on a fresh install. Most looks shouldn't carry a crop or another photo's healing spots - tick them when you really want them.
• Check All / Check None buttons at the bottom get you to either extreme in one click.
• Copying reads the photo's settings. It changes nothing on the photo itself.

3.2 Paste - one look onto any selection

Select the target photos - one photo or a few hundred - and pick the matching Paste Develop Settings from Slot… item. What each slot holds is what gets applied, exactly as you copied it.

• One undo step. Ctrl/Cmd+Z restores every photo the paste touched.
• Videos are skipped automatically - they don't have develop settings.
• Nothing selected? Nothing happens. Paste refuses to run without an active photo, so it can never spray settings across your whole filmstrip.

3.3 Manage - see, rename, and clear your slots

Choose File > Plug-in Extras > Show Look Slots… to open the overview window. For each of the nine slots you'll see what it holds - the source photo's filename, when you copied it, and whether any groups were left out.

• Nicknames. Give a slot a name like Portrait warm or B&W punch so you don't have to remember what number means what.
• Clear. Empty a slot you're done with. Slots also just overwrite - copying to a full slot replaces its contents, no clearing needed.
• Slots persist. Restart Lightroom, switch catalogs, come back next week - your slots are still loaded.

4. Every menu item, explained

Everything lives under File > Plug-in Extras - and the same items appear under Library > Plug-in Extras, so whichever menu you reach for works. That also means shortcut tools can target either menu.

Copy Develop Settings to Slot 1 … Slot 9

Reads the active photo's develop settings, opens the checkbox window, and stores your ticked selection in that slot. Each slot is independent - copying to Slot 3 never touches Slot 2.

Paste Develop Settings from Slot 1 … Slot 9

Applies that slot's stored settings to every selected photo in one undoable step. If the slot is empty, a small note tells you so and nothing changes.

Show Look Slots…

The overview window: what each slot holds, nicknames, and clearing. This is also the quickest way to check "which slot was the landscape look again?"

The License section (in the Plug-in Manager)

Select Look Slots in File > Plug-in Manager to find the license field, Activate and Deactivate buttons, and a Buy a License link. Activation needs an internet connection for a moment; after that the plugin checks in quietly about once a day and keeps working offline in between.

5. Keyboard shortcuts (macOS and Windows)

The menus need no setup at all. But if you paste looks many times a day, a key per slot is the difference between a tool and a reflex. There are two tiers:

Tier 1 - just use the menus (macOS and Windows)

Everything in this guide works from File > Plug-in Extras, on both platforms, with nothing extra installed. If that's enough for you, skip the rest of this section.

Tier 2 - a key for every slot, with a free helper

Lightroom Classic gives you no way to assign a keyboard shortcut to a plugin's menu item - not on either platform. On macOS it swallows the keys before the system's App Shortcuts can route them; on Windows there's simply no menu-shortcut setting to use. So on both platforms the answer is the same: a small, free helper app that presses the menu item for you when you press a key. The plugin ships with a ready-made configuration for each.

Jump to your platform: macOS (Hammerspoon) · Windows (AutoHotkey). Both give you the same nine-plus-nine shortcuts, and both also handle the AI-mask update step for you (section 6).

On macOS: Hammerspoon

Setup takes about two minutes:

1. Install Hammerspoon. Download it free from hammerspoon.org - you'll get a zip with the Hammerspoon app inside. Drag the app into your Applications folder and open it once.
2. Allow it to press menu items. The first launch asks for permission under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility. Click Allow - without this, the shortcuts can't press Lightroom's menus for you.
3. Add the shortcuts file - the copy-paste way. Open the Terminal app (press Cmd+Space, type Terminal, press Return), then paste this whole line and press Return:
   mkdir -p ~/.hammerspoon && curl -sL -o ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua https://lightroom-tools.com/downloads/look-slots-hammerspoon-init.lua
   That one line downloads the shortcuts file and puts it exactly where Hammerspoon looks for it. You can close Terminal right after.
4. Reload. Click the little hammer icon in your menu bar and choose Reload Config (or quit and reopen Hammerspoon). You'll see a short on-screen note: Lightroom slot hotkeys loaded. Done.
5. Set it to start at login. Click the hammer icon > Preferences and tick Launch Hammerspoon at login, so your shortcuts are always there.

Rather have someone walk you through it? Ask your AI assistant. If you'd feel safer with a step-by-step conversation, copy the whole box below and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whichever assistant you use. It explains exactly what you're installing and why, so the assistant can guide you click by click and check each step worked before moving on.

I bought the "Look Slots" plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic from lightroom-tools.com. It adds nine develop-settings clipboards to Lightroom, as menu items under File > Plug-in Extras (for example "Copy Develop Settings to Slot 1" and "Paste Develop Settings from Slot 1").

Lightroom on macOS does not allow native keyboard shortcuts for plugin menu items (macOS App Shortcuts do not work - Lightroom swallows the keys), so the plugin developer ships a ready-made configuration file for Hammerspoon, a free open-source macOS automation app. With it, Ctrl+Option+1 through 9 copies to Slot 1-9 and Ctrl+Option+Cmd+1 through 9 pastes from that slot. The shortcuts are only active while Lightroom is the frontmost app.

Please guide me through the setup step by step, one step at a time, and confirm each step worked before moving to the next:

1. Install Hammerspoon on my Mac - free download from https://www.hammerspoon.org - and open it.
2. Give Hammerspoon Accessibility permission (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility). It needs this to press Lightroom's menu items for me.
3. Put the developer's config file in place. The file is called hammerspoon-init.lua and is inside the plugin folder I downloaded (develop-clipboard.lrplugin); it can also be downloaded from https://lightroom-tools.com/downloads/look-slots-hammerspoon-init.lua . It must end up at ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua - note that the .hammerspoon folder is hidden in Finder, so a Terminal command is probably easiest. Important: if I already have a ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua from before, append this file's contents to the end of it instead of replacing it.
4. Reload Hammerspoon's config (hammer icon in the menu bar > Reload Config) and confirm I see the on-screen message "Lightroom slot hotkeys loaded".
5. Set Hammerspoon to launch at login (hammer icon > Preferences).

I am not very technical - please give me the exact clicks, and exact Terminal commands to copy and paste where needed, and ask me what I see after each step.

Everything in that box matches this guide - it's the same five steps, just with a helper who answers back.

On Windows: AutoHotkey

Windows has no setting anywhere that assigns a key to a plugin's menu item, so the plugin ships a ready-made script for AutoHotkey, a free open-source Windows automation tool that presses the menu item for you. Setup takes about two minutes:

1. Install AutoHotkey v2. Download it free from autohotkey.com and run the installer. Make sure you get version 2 - our script won't run on the older version 1.
2. Get the shortcuts file. It's already inside your plugin folder as autohotkey-init.ahk, and you can also download it here. Put it somewhere it can live permanently - your Documents folder is fine.
3. Double-click it. That's the whole install. You'll see a short note - Lightroom slot hotkeys loaded - and a green "H" icon appears in your system tray (bottom-right, next to the clock). The shortcuts are live.
4. Set it to start with Windows. Press Win+R, type shell:startup, press Enter - a folder opens. Drag the autohotkey-init.ahk file into it while holding Alt (that puts a shortcut there, not the file itself). Now your slot shortcuts are there every time you log in.
5. That's it. Open Lightroom and try Ctrl+Alt+1 - the copy window for Slot 1 should open.

Rather have someone walk you through it? Ask your AI assistant. Copy the whole box below and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whichever assistant you use, and it will guide you click by click.

I bought the "Look Slots" plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic from lightroom-tools.com, and I'm on Windows. It adds nine develop-settings clipboards to Lightroom, as menu items under File > Plug-in Extras (for example "Copy Develop Settings to Slot 1" and "Paste Develop Settings from Slot 1").

Lightroom Classic on Windows has no way to assign a keyboard shortcut to a plugin's menu item, so the plugin developer ships a ready-made script for AutoHotkey v2, a free open-source Windows automation tool. With it, Ctrl+Alt+1 through 9 copies to Slot 1-9 and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+1 through 9 pastes from that slot. The shortcuts are only active while Lightroom is the focused window.

Please guide me through the setup step by step, one step at a time, and confirm each step worked before moving to the next:

1. Install AutoHotkey version 2 (NOT version 1) - free download from https://www.autohotkey.com
2. Find the file autohotkey-init.ahk inside the plugin folder I downloaded (develop-clipboard.lrplugin). It can also be downloaded from https://lightroom-tools.com/downloads/look-slots-autohotkey.ahk . Save it somewhere permanent, like my Documents folder.
3. Double-click the .ahk file to run it, and help me confirm it's running (a green "H" icon in the system tray, and a "Lightroom slot hotkeys loaded" notification).
4. Make it start automatically when I log in, by putting a shortcut to it in the shell:startup folder.
5. Test it: open Lightroom Classic, press Ctrl+Alt+1, and confirm the Slot 1 copy window opens.

I am not very technical - please give me the exact clicks, and tell me exactly what I should see after each step.

The shortcuts you get

Same nine slots on both platforms - only the modifier keys differ:

• macOS: Ctrl+Option+1 through 9 copies the active photo's settings to Slot 1-9. Ctrl+Option+Cmd+1 through 9 pastes from Slot 1-9 onto the selection.
• Windows: Ctrl+Alt+1 through 9 copies to Slot 1-9. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+1 through 9 pastes from Slot 1-9 onto the selection.

On both platforms the shortcuts are active only while Lightroom is the focused app. In every other app your keys behave exactly as before.

6. AI masks - what to expect

Lightroom's AI masks - Select Subject, Select Sky, Select People - outline something in the specific photo they were made on. Look Slots handles them the way you'd hope: paste a look with AI masks, and each mask re-finds its target in each destination photo. The subject mask wraps around the new subject, not the old one.

The only thing to understand is when that re-finding happens:

• With the helper installed (section 5) - on either platform: automatically. Right after an AI-mask paste, the helper triggers Lightroom's own Update AI Settings command for you. You'll see the masks settle into place within a few seconds. This works the same way with Hammerspoon on macOS and AutoHotkey on Windows.
• Without the helper: one manual step. Keep the pasted photos selected and run Settings > Update AI Settings (in the Develop module) or Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings (in Library). Lightroom re-finds every mask in one pass.

Masks that aren't AI-based - brushes, linear and radial gradients, range masks - paste as-is and work immediately, no update step needed.

7. Tips for the best results

• Load your slots at the start of a session. Pick your best frame of each type, copy each to its own slot, and the rest of the edit is selection + paste.
• Give slots nicknames right away (Show Look Slots…). "Slot 4" means nothing on Thursday; "Backlit warm" always will.
• Leave Crop unticked unless the whole batch shares a framing. A pasted crop rarely fits a different composition.
• Leave Remove (healing) unticked - healing spots belong to one photo's sensor dust and skin, not to a look.
• Copy fewer groups for "seasoning" slots. A slot holding only Color Grading, or only Tone Curve, layers nicely on top of photos you've already exposed by hand.
• Paste onto the whole shoot, then fix outliers. It's faster to paste 200 photos and re-expose five than to paste five at a time.
• Same-orientation masks travel best. An AI subject mask re-finds any subject, but the manual gradient you dragged across a horizontal sky will sit differently on a vertical frame - check one photo before pasting a hundred.

8. Real-world scenarios

The wedding: two rooms, two looks, one evening

A wedding photographer comes home with 2,400 frames - airy window-lit prep and ceremony, then dark amber reception. Edit one frame of each until they're perfect. Copy the ceremony look to Slot 1 (nickname: Ceremony airy), the reception look to Slot 2 (Reception amber). Then work the filmstrip in passes: select all ceremony frames, paste Slot 1; select the reception, paste Slot 2. The looks stay loaded even when culling stretches into tomorrow.

The portrait session: subject masks that follow

A portrait session with the same light all hour. On the best frame: skin tones dialed in, a Select Subject mask lifting the person, a Select Sky mask pulling the background down. Copy everything to Slot 3 - each mask has its own checkbox, so take both masks. Select the rest of the session and paste. Every frame gets the recipe, and the subject and sky masks re-find the person and background in each photo. One Update AI Settings pass (automatic with the helper) and 80 portraits are graded.

The travel catalog: a personal style on standby

A hobbyist returns from three weeks away with a mixed bag: cities at night, beaches, food. Their three signature treatments live in Slots 7-9 permanently - Night neon, Beach bright, Food warm - loaded once from favorite past edits. New trip, same taste: select each batch, paste the matching slot, done. Because slots survive restarts and follow the plugin rather than the catalog, the style kit is simply always there.

9. Frequently asked questions

Buying & licensing

Slots & copying

Pasting & safety

Shortcuts

10. Troubleshooting

The menu items don't appear under Plug-in Extras

Quit Lightroom completely and reopen it. Lightroom builds its plugin menus at startup, so a freshly added plugin sometimes needs one restart. Also check File > Plug-in Manager shows Look Slots as Installed and running.

"Slot N is empty" when I try to paste

That slot has nothing in it yet - copy something to it first. Open Show Look Slots… to see what every slot currently holds.

Pasted photos look wrong - too dark, masks missing

If the look carried AI masks, they need one Update AI Settings run to re-find their targets - see section 6. If the exposure itself looks off, check what the slot holds in Show Look Slots… - the copy may have excluded groups you expected (the copy window remembers your last ticks).

The keyboard shortcuts do nothing

First, on both platforms: Lightroom must be the focused app - the shortcuts switch off everywhere else on purpose. Then check your platform:

On macOS:

• Check Hammerspoon is running (its hammer icon in the menu bar) and has Accessibility permission in System Settings > Privacy & Security.
• If you edited the config file, reload it from the Hammerspoon menu - and make sure it's saved at ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua.

On Windows:

• Check the script is running - look for the green "H" icon in the system tray, next to the clock. If it isn't there, double-click autohotkey-init.ahk again.
• Check you have AutoHotkey version 2, not version 1. Version 1 can't run this script. If you're unsure, reinstall from autohotkey.com and pick v2.
• Shortcuts gone after a restart? You skipped the startup step - put a shortcut to the .ahk file in the shell:startup folder (section 5, step 4).

Updated Lightroom recently? Very occasionally a Lightroom update renames menus. Check the plugin still shows its items under File > Plug-in Extras, and email us if a shortcut stopped working after an update - we'll ship a fix.

A message says "Menu item not found" (or "Couldn't find the menu item")

The helper couldn't find the menu item it was asked to press - usually because the plugin was removed or Lightroom hasn't finished starting. Confirm Look Slots is installed and running, then try again once Lightroom is fully open. If it keeps happening, email us and tell us your Lightroom version - we'll sort it out.

Activation fails

• "Please enter a license key" - the field is empty; paste the key from your purchase email.
• "That key belongs to a different Lightroom Tools product" - you have more than one of our plugins; check the email for the Look Slots key specifically.
• "Activation limit reached" - the key is active on another machine. Deactivate there first, or contact us for a reset.
• Network error - check your connection and try again; activation needs internet for a moment.

11. Need help?

The fastest way to reach us is email: [email protected]. A real person reads every message and replies, usually within a day. Tell us what you were doing and what happened - a screenshot always helps.

Stuck on something this guide doesn't cover? Found a bug? Have an idea that would make Look Slots better? Send quick feedback or use the contact form - your message lands with the developer, and a real reply comes back, usually within a day.

Want more from your catalog? Smart Search finds any photo by typing what's in it, and the Instagram Grid Planner sequences your next nine posts by color flow - both from Lightroom Tools.