The perturbation of a light field might affect preheating and hence generate a contribution to the spectrum and non-gaussianity of the curvature perturbation ζ. The field might appear directly in the preheating model (curvaton-type preheating) or indirectly through its effect on a mass or coupling (modulated preheating). We give general expressions for ζ based on the δN formula, and apply them to the cases of quadratic and quartic chaotic inflation. For the quadratic case, curvaton-type preheating is ineffective in contributing to ζ, but modulated preheating can be effective. For quartic inflation, curvaton-type preheating may be effective but the usual δN formalism has to be modified. We see under what circumstances the recent numerical simulation of Bond et al. [0903.3407] may be enough to provide a rough estimate for this case.