P: Stacking in folders and collections should be global

John, I didn't mention all the various ways I've come to rely on stacks being global in my workflow. Finding workarounds for every single case will be really annoying.

Frankly I'm just amazed at how Lightroom, which has a database behind it and should be a true DAM like Aperture, really just seems to be a fancier version of Bridge. It wants you to still use folders to manage everything and to play with files directly. That's so funky. I want it to abstract my folders away and really make collections & similar first-class citizens.

"I don't use a "show" keyword + smart collection because I don't want that showing up when I export my images to my agent."

Given LR's wierdness with stacks and collections, you might reconsider using keywords rather than collections to manage your workflow. This would allow you to use stacks the way you (and most others) expect.

You can easily stop a keyword from getting exported -- in the Keyword List pane in Library, double-click the keyword and uncheck the option Include On Export.

I'm an Aperture user gradually switching over to Lightroom. One of the biggest pains I've found in Lightroom is that stacks are collection-specific. I'd really love it if when I stacked two images, they were stacked globally (and the images in each stack added to other collections as needed). Here's a sample of my workflow:

- I have a collection set for each project/shoot.
- I create collections for each card in a shoot, grouped within the collection set, and I go through each collection and rate my images plus possibly edit them in an external editor (Nik suite, Photoshop, etc.).
- I might have 300 5-star images after a two week shoot (think a photo trip), and of those, I'll make a new collection that I'll show people/upload to my website that has 100 of my favorite 5-star images in it. I don't use a "show" keyword + smart collection because I don't want that showing up when I export my images to my agent. Similarly, I don't use flags + a smart collection because I use flags for short-term purposes, such as when I'm picking which images to print for a show.

Given both the original image + the edited ones have a 5-star rating, it's frustrating seeing duplicates when I filter the collection set for 5-star images. They're stacked: just show me the top of the stack. Next, it's annoying when I drag my favorites into a "Show" collection to have to figure out if I'm looking at the edited image or the original RAW. Last, it's really painful if I decide to tweak an image in the Show collection in Photoshop to have to then go copy the image to the original collection and re-stack it there.

Aperture handled this well. When an image is stacked, it's stacked. If I drag an image that's stacked, the stack moves with it. If I filter, there are options to look at top of stack only or the whole stack. It's very simple and elegant, and it makes it easy to keep the original RAW, edited TIFF(s), and any virtual copies together seamlessly.

I want my stackage in collections the same as my stackage in folders.

I'd be perfectly happy to handle this via plugin, if the requisite functions were added to SDK, although I imagine some people would prefer this option in Lightroom, natively.

Bonus points to anybody who can come up with the SQL required to accomplish this, then I could just add it to SQLiteroom, as a work-around solution.

LR4: Is there a way to move stacks of images into a collection and have those stacks retain their original stacking "formation"/order?

Yes, correct, and this is another annoyance (i.e., folder stacking attributes being visible/available in collections generally). This is really orthogonal (although may have implementation coupling) to the request for (independent) stacking in smart collections.

"So standard collections seem to be fine."

Note that stacks created in a collection are specific to that collection -- the stacking isn't visible in other collections or in folders. And stacking created in a folder isn't visible when viewing collections. In four years, I haven't heard anyone justify this design.

The issue of stacking across folders and (non-smart) collections is indeed a separate concern. Stacking is obviously supported for images like those you indicate above - e.g., from a burst, which are likely necessarily in the same folder - personally I do a lot of stacking related to panoramas, which are also, in my case, always in the same folder.

I just tried stacking in a standard (non-smart) collection and this does indeed work (LR CC), including for elements of the stack that are in different folders. A series of images that pre-exist as a stack in a folder do not remain in the stack when they're added to a collection, but at least one can "re-create" the stack from within the collection. So standard collections seem to be fine.

My request here (and the reason I stumbled onto this 4+yr old request...) is related to smart collections; I would just like to see the same support for stacking in smart collections as in standard collections.

Unless they've changed something recently stacking only works for images in the same physical folder. I'd be happy if I could create a stack containing images from different folders, let alone a collection, smart or otherwise.

Of course you have to go back to the concept of stacking. It was designed to mimic the standard film process of a light table with slides where you "stacked" the slides that were essentially the same image, like several shots from a burst. In those cases you pretty much were only dealing with images from the same role as in the time it took to change rolls the model moved but I suppose one could extend the concept to several rolls exposed one after the other in a tight time frame. Anyway, this is what LR stacking was meant to simulate.

So, within that context, stacking images from multiple folders or collections (which usually implies images that are not essentially the same) doesn't fit the model for which stacking was created.

Now, that isn't to say that extending the concept to multiple folders or collections might not bring added value but it's not what it was intended for and the technology would be complex. For example, Metadata is at the image (or VC) level. So if one image was in several collections with different stack positions in each one the stack position would need to be stored at the intersection of the image metadata and the collection data (a many to many relationship). Not impossible but not likely to get traction with Adobe..

I see no reason why the "stacking attributes" cannot be observable from a smart collection. Other attributes (picks, ratings, keywords, etc.) are available and the logic needed to correlate the stacked elements as a secondary heuristic once the smart collection rules are satisfied seems straightforward to me. I think that this cataloging/metadata feature needs to be avaialble from within smart collections.