A preset is a small “one-parameter” snippet: a favorite shade of red, a “to the dance floor” position for the moving heads, a specific gobo. Unlike a scene (a snapshot of the whole light at once), a preset stores only a single facet — and that’s why you can layer it onto anything: start any scene, tap the “Position: dance floor” preset, and the heads turn while everything else stays untouched.
📍 Where: the bottom panel → “Presets” tab (the star icon). The “+ Preset” button creates one.
For grouping presets and setting a custom card order, see “Groups and card order”.
How to create a preset:
- Select the fixtures and set up what you want to remember (for example, dial in the right color or aim the heads). Selecting a group on the left (“Heads”, “All fixtures”, your own group) works too — you don’t have to click individual fixtures.
- Click “+ Preset” and give it a name (“Red color”, “Dance floor”).
- Tick the categories — exactly what to save. One or several at a time: “Color” + “Gobo” stores both the shade and the pattern and leaves the heads where they are. The “Select all” button ticks every category at once — then simply untick what you don’t need. When everything is ticked, the same button reads “Clear all” and clears them. At least one category must stay ticked — otherwise the preset has nothing to store, and the program will say so:
| Category | What is remembered |
|---|---|
| Color | The colour as a whole: an R/G/B or CMY mix, separate LEDs (white / amber / UV) and the position of the colour wheel |
| Position (Pan/Tilt) | The direction of the heads only |
| Gobo | The selected gobo, the gobo wheel position, rotation and the prism |
| Beam (zoom/focus/frost) | The beam shape: width (zoom), edge sharpness (focus), softening by frost glass |
| Strobe | Shutter strobing only |
| All categories ticked | A full snapshot of the selected fixtures — including channels that belong to no category (fog, motors, the fixture’s built-in programs) |
- The “Also save brightness (Dimmer)” checkbox is on by default. With it, the preset opens the brightness of the fixtures by itself: press “Red” and the fixtures light up red at once, with nothing left to dial in by hand. Clear it if you want a “clean” colour palette that can be layered over a brightness you have already set, without disturbing it (that is how large consoles work).
- “Save” — the current values of the selected fixtures are written into the preset. The creation window shows exactly what will be saved — for example, “Will be saved: Heads (6 pcs.)”.
How to apply: select fixtures (or a group) and click the preset — it applies to them; with “All fixtures” selected, it applies to all fixtures the preset holds values for. “Applies” means only the categories ticked when it was saved: a color preset won’t touch positions, a position preset won’t touch color, and a “Color + Gobo” preset brings back both the shade and the pattern.
💡 Fixtures added by hand (not from the library) are fully supported too: the preset remembers both the manually set colour/gobo wheel position and the raw values of the beam channels. Zoom, focus, frost and prism are recognized by the program itself — even when the fixture profile records them under the generic “Macro” type (which is how they arrive in almost every profile of the built-in database).
💡 A colour preset does not touch the glowing LED ring around the lens: the ring is a separate decorative light, not the colour of the beam, and the “Red” preset must not repaint the rings of the whole rig. To remember the state of the ring, use the “All parameters” category.
💡 A preset does not put a fixture out “in passing”: channels its category does not concern (the shutter first of all) stay exactly where they were. That is why a colour preset always lights the fixture up instead of leaving it dark with the right colour.
💡 Tip: build a “palette” of 5–6 color presets and 3–4 positions tailored to your venue — and you’ll assemble any scene in seconds by combining presets like building blocks.
💡 Tip: mark your go-to presets with a star ★ — they’ll appear in the «Favorite Presets» block in Live, at hand during a performance.
⚠️ While a chase or a playlist is running, a preset from the Programmer stays invisible. The Programmer is the lowest light layer, and a running chase sits on top of it (see how light is mixed). The program says so honestly: instead of “preset applied” you get a hint that the show overrides it. To change color and gobo on the fly, press the preset in Live — there it goes ON TOP of the chase and the playlist.
⚠️ Note: editing a preset changes the name, the category and the brightness checkbox — they are applied at once. To overwrite the light values themselves, select fixtures with the light you want and save the preset anew. Only the selected fixtures are re-captured — the other fixtures of the preset stay exactly as they were, so you can safely fix a preset one head at a time. The flip side: editing cannot remove a fixture FROM a preset — for that, delete the preset and save it anew.
💡 Old presets (and the presets of the demo project) did not remember brightness. To add it to a preset you already have, without rebuilding it: set the fixtures to the brightness you want, open the preset with the pencil, tick “Also save brightness” and press “Save”.
