This is a Lightroom Tool

You heard it right, a Lightroom tool and not a preset. You load it up as a preset; it works by applying a set of predefined Lightroom settings, but since you are not going to leave this enabled when you are done editing, I am not calling it a preset.

Why?

The Lightroom Visual Helper enables you to look at the photo you are editing in black and white and edit its brightness and contrast values without being influenced by the colors in your photo. For example, yellow feels brighter than blue, even when both colors have the same brightness value, so your eyes might be easily deceived. As a result, seeing your photos in B&W helps you balance exposure properly, and your final edits will look so much better.

How does it work?

This tool creates a Lightroom mask over the entire image with Saturation set to -100 and the amount set to 200%. This way, unless you already messed with the color wheels, you will see the image in Black and White, and you can adjust the exposure in your photo using masking for the perfectly balanced tones. And most importantly, this can be toggled on and off. --- Without affecting the rest of your edit.

Examples:

Editing Journey: SOOC → SOOC with Visual Helper ON → Lots of Masking → Final Photo

Again SOOC → SOOC with Visual Helper ON → Lots of Masking → Final Photo with Color Grading

It is all about technique

The Lightroom Visual Helper will only enhance your editing experience and help you have a better understanding of the tone in your image. Afterwards, it's up to you. I recommend that you first set the White Balance and do the basic tone adjustments to your photo for a neutral starting point, and then use the Lightroom Visual Helper while you apply local area masks to enhance the contrast of your images. These masks should mainly use the curves adjustments and the exposure and contrast sliders.

How to use the Lightroom Visual Helper?

The idea is to use this as a supporting layer to get a better view of the luminance values in your photos.

So to use it you will

1. Click the preset to turn the Lightroom Visual Helper on
2. Adjust the luminance locally using masks or globally with any Lightroom sliders as you see fit
3. Click the second preset to turn Lightroom Visual Helper off

INSTALLATION:

Copy the .xmp files to the specific folder:

Windows: C:Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings

macOS: User Library>Application Support>Adobe>CameraRaw> Settings

You can make as many subfolders and organize the files however you see fit, as Lightroom won't care, and it will load everything in them

To learn how to add any presets to Lightroom, you can follow these steps:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/faq-install-presets-profiles.html