When should you use Lightroom stacks, and when does Auto-Stack by Capture Time help?
Asked 10/18/2015
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In Lightroom, when is stacking useful for organizing photos in the filmstrip or grid? What kinds of shoots work well with stacks, and when is Auto-Stack by Capture Time especially helpful? I'm asking about Lightroom's organizational stacking feature, not focus stacking or combining images into one photo.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
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Off the top of my head (I'm assuming you mean stacking feature within the filmstrip, not the computational photography techniques which you cannot do in plain Lightroom-5):
I sometimes use stacks simply to have less scrolling to do in the filmstrip.
It is useful, for examples, when you have shot 360° panoramas where the frames overlap to some amount and you have say 10 shots of the same panorama. Stack them => decrease the scrollbar width 10-fold.
The same holds for HDR images where you have 3 or 5 exposures of the same subject. Stacking these pictures reduces the width of the filmstrip bar considerably.
Maybe this is related to your "Auto-stack by capture time" subquestion. Modern cameras with HDR-bracketing (or in fact any type of bracketing) create lot of pictures by multiple exposure within the fraction of a second.
Same use-case holds for focus-stacking, whenyou have 10-250 shots of the same insect, or droplet, or whatever. Stack them, save space.
Originally by user11262. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11262
10y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom stacks are mainly an organization tool: they group related files so your filmstrip/grid is less cluttered and easier to browse.
Common good uses:
- RAW+JPEG pairs from the same shot
- Exposure brackets for HDR
- Panorama source frames
- Burst/continuous shots or near-duplicates of the same subject
- HDR panoramas, where both bracketing and pano frames create lots of files
Auto-Stack by Capture Time works best when related images are shot within very short time gaps, such as RAW+JPEG pairs with matching timestamps, bracketing sequences, and burst shooting. It’s less reliable if unrelated photos were taken close together, or if the sequence has pauses that break the timing pattern.
Many photographers place the final merged HDR/panorama at the top of the stack and collapse it. That keeps the originals available but hidden unless needed, and makes browsing cleaner. It can also help when selecting/exporting so you focus on the final composite instead of all source files.
Manual stacking is still useful for grouping similar keepers that aren’t strictly time-based.
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