Skip to main content
Participant
May 30, 2014
Not Prioritized

P: When selecting a collapsed stack, provide option to apply changes to all photos in the stack

  • May 30, 2014
  • 63 replies
  • 4885 views

In Lightroom 5.4, if I select a collapsed stack of photos in the Library module, I would like the option to automatically apply changes (e.g. metadata) to all photos within that stack.

Background: as a first-time Lightroom user, I used the auto-stacking feature so that my 3-shot bracketed (i.e. HDR) photos would be stacked together. With the stacks collapsed, I went through my library, selected multiple stacks, and typed in a GPS location to be applied to those photos. I assumed that by selecting the (collapsed) stacks, the metadata would be applied to all photos within those stacks. However, the GPS locations were only applied to the first photo within each stack.

After the fact, I learned that stacks must be expanded in order to select all photos within the stack. From my perspective, this defeats the purpose of creating stacks - if one must expand the stack to apply changes to all photos within the stack, there doesn't seem to be much point of creating stacks in the first place.

63 replies

JBrenn2014
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
Definitely agree with you, Armin, that using stacks when the backing photos are just 'for reference' seems a much smaller use case than the numerous use cases that have been presented here for years now and by so many people.
JBrenn2014
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
I'll admit I'm obviously not the developer, but I'm pretty sure the program can determine if the stack is expanded or closed pretty easily considering how bizarre some of the workarounds are for getting around this feature shortcoming. Hopefully Adobe will finally listen as this is a huge workflow issue for many people.
JBrenn2014
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
I wouldn't even need a toggle shortcut--just a user preference/setting--because my entire use of stacks is when grouping numerous images that are essentially a set (bracketed, focus stacked, timelapse, pano) that are always treated as such. When stacked and collapsed, I am usually looking for the complete set that is the best of all the sets. While I do understand that some people use stacks for grouping photos that aren't essentially a set that needs to be kept together, I have to believe that with HDR and Pano sets that are becoming more popular, a very large--if not majority--of people use it for group a set of directly related images.
Known Participant
August 23, 2018
In LR the expectation is that users stack images when they care only about the top most image and the other images are for reference only.
I never understood stacks in this way. Pictures in a stack belongs to each other. I use stacks in two ways, first for HDR/ bracketing and for series. If you have a shooting with many bracketings, with 3 to 9 pic each, you don't want to see every of this pics, you only want to see the first and than to decide if you will keep it or not. So you can tag it with the possibilities of LR, with flags, colos etc.
Normally I use the key "x" for the flag rejected and after wards command-delete to delete all rejected pics. But if you flag the first of a stack, only the first of the stack gets the flag.
So, if you have a bracketing all pics in this stack belongs to each other and it would make no sense to delete only the first of the stack. You have to practice this to understand it.
So if you want to delete the rejected pics you have to open each stack, marking all pics in the stack and then type x or delete them. This is very time intensive and makes no sense.
So it would be a great feature if you have a kind of synchronisation state for stacks. If you flag the first of  a stack, all in the stack gets this flag. You can turn it on and off, like the Aoto Sync. we have for ever in LR.
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
This would be also a useful implementation für batch-process with stacks: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/batch-hdr?topic-reply-list%5Bsettings%5D%5Bfi...


Adobe Employee
August 23, 2018
Hi,

I would like to understand your problem better. In LR the expectation is that users stack images when they care only about the top most image and the other images are for reference only. Hence all operations done on stack apply only to the top image and not the others. Hence filters are also considering only the top most image and not the rest. 

Hence I want to understand what was the result you were expecting from the filter for the stack. We have heard about requests in other workflows as well where they are using stacks for a different purpose and hence expect all operations to apply to all the images inside stacks. Do you agree with that kind of workflow?

Thanks
Participant
August 22, 2018


in lightroom, if the first stack image was rejected, and the I used filter and select pick, the whole stack will disappear
Known Participant
August 15, 2018


I'm working al lot with stacks. i.e after shot al lot of bracketing photos I choose "Auto Stack by capture time", collapse the stacks and have a first look on the shooting and set flags like "set as rejected" etc.

But every flag or tag is just valid for the first pic not for the pics in the stack.
It would be very helpful to have a button for "Sync Stack"-Mode, similar to the Sync-Button in Library-Mode, so that every tag, flag etc. means all the pics in a stack.

Also it would be cool, if you are in the "Auto-Stack by capture time" dialogue, you could scroll down the grid to look if the stacks are correct. Now you only can see the first screen...

PS: I know the trick to shift-click on a stack to open it and mark all the pics in it. If you work with a lot of pics it would be much better to do this with short-cuts and not thousand times with mouse-clicks...

Steve Gandy
Inspiring
January 5, 2018
You don't know how the programming is done from the get go. Adding a key might make it an easy fix. Having the program determine whether the stack is closed or open might make it a lot more difficult. Or vice versa. It is a good idea, let's see if they implement it.
Steve GandyPhotographer - Instructorstevegandy.com
Known Participant
January 5, 2018
> But how does Lr know you are referring to the stack or the top image then?

Because the stack is either collapsed or expanded. When expanded, you're selecting individual images. When collapsed, you're selecting the whole stack. This is how it is visually, and it makes total sense, so that's how it should be functionally as well.