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johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
April 2, 2011
Open for Voting

P: Stacking in folders and collections should be global

  • April 2, 2011
  • 88 replies
  • 3779 views

Stacks should be handled uniformly, regardless of the source selected. As it stands, stacks are second-class citizens in Lightroom.

* Currently, photos in different folders can’t be stacked. This restriction forces users to be aware of which folder a photo resides in, which goes against the mainstream digital-asset-management philosophy of hiding folder locations. I don’t know of any use-case justifying this restriction.

* Stacking isn’t displayed when viewing collections and smart collections. This is especially annoying when viewing smart collections, since smart collections are the only way to do advanced searching. It would be better if stacks were viewable within collections just as they are within folders and with filtering – when more than one photo in a stack is part of a collection, then the stack could be collapsed or expanded, but only the photos in the collection will be shown. This is the way stacks work now with filtering, so extending this to collections would be consistent. Users who don’t want to see stacking in collections could simply invoke Expand All Stacks.

* And of course, you should be able to stack and unstack photos when viewing a collection.

    88 replies

    Show previous replies
    ssprengel
    ssprengel
    Inspiring
    September 12, 2015
    Smart Collections are created on the fly using criteria so images can be added and removed at any moment by something changing about the image. I guess it is hard to stack within such a fluid collection.
    ColdForest
    ColdForest
    Inspiring
    September 12, 2015
    Just discovered this (no stacking in smart collections) :(. Seriously? There doesn't seem to any good reason for this (?)...
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    March 8, 2013
    I keep the RAW versions of images on an external drive since they're large, and keep the finished .jpg versions in a folder on my MacBook Pro. In my Photoshop Elements catalog I stack the photos to keep them together and reduce clutter. But when I tried to stack photos in this manner in LR I got an error message saying it is not possible to stack photos from separate folders.

    Adobe, please make it possible in the Lightroom catalog to stack photos that exist in differing folders and/or drives.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    July 6, 2012
    But not in Smart collections.
    A
    Anonymous
    June 17, 2012
    Yes, the stacking feature of LR is, at the same time, a potentially very powerful feature, and not quite living up to its promise.

    I would also like to see a way to expand a stack and have all the images become "selected" as part of the expansion (rather than just the top image). As a suggestion, perhaps if you hold when you click the "1 of x" symbol the stack is expanded with all images selected.

    I'd also like to see a way to have meta data changes applied to the entire stack when you change it on the top image on a collapsed stack. Perhaps a preference setting. For example, if I add or remove a Keyword to the top image of a collapsed stack I'd like to be able to have that change replicate to all images in the stack rather than just the first one.
    areohbee
    areohbee
    Legend
    June 11, 2012
    You can have stacks in collections be same as in folders using Stacker:

    http://www.robcole.com/Rob/ProductsAn...
    B
    bengineer
    Participating Frequently
    January 27, 2012
    I liked it better when flags were local.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    January 14, 2012
    Surely, this isn't the way you would expect stacks to work? In Elements stacks seem to work the way I would expect - so if you stack images together they are effectively treated as a single photo where ever you view them from! I can see some possibilities of context specific stacking - but in general I would have thought that this is not what is required. I would completely agree with John's original proposal about how stacking should work and if do a search or use a Smart Collection you should be presented with the pre-stacked photos and have the option to expand them if required. It would be a real shame for LR4 to do some work in this area - but still not deliver functionality which is already working in other members of the Photoshop family!!
    H
    hsbn
    Participating Frequently
    January 12, 2012
    Can you create a collection that contain All Photographs? Would the stack transfer from one collection to another?
    johnrellis
    johnrellisAuthor
    Legend
    January 11, 2012
    That's what we thought was the intended design. But according to Beat, if you stack two photos in a collection (regardless of whether they are in the same folder or not), they won't appear stacked when you select All Photographs.
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