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

I agree to both sides of this discussion.  There are times when I wish my changes (color label, pick flag, star rating, keyword application, etc.) to apply to just the top image of selected but collapsed stacks.  But, there are just as many times when I want the change to apply to the entire stacks.  

For example, let's say I'm applying a keyword such as "Paris".  Presently that KW will only be applied to the top image of the stack where it should apply to all images in the stack.  This gets really problematic when later I move a different image from the stack to the top position.  In this case that image would not have the "Paris" KW and if I filter for "Paris" would not show up.

Another example is where a KW shows a count of 100 images (number shown in KW List).  So, I filter on that KW, select all images and remove that KW from the images.  Now the image count still shows, say, 13 images, but none show up in the grid (as they are buried in collapsed stacks).  To find the missing 13 images would entail expanding all stacks in the catalog (90,000 images) so the filter would find them and then re-collapsing all stacks - and thus losing state of which stacks had previously been expanded or collapsed, or using some other cumbersom workaround.

What I've suggested several times is that when making a metadata change to a set of selected images, if you want the change (whatever it is) to apply to all images in selected stacks, hold down the Alt or Ctrl or CMD key.  Couple this with a set up setting for the default behavior of either "consider all images in collapsed stacks" vs "don't consider images in collapsed stacks" and use the control key on a case by case to override the default for that one operation.

In case anyone is interested, I have written a blog on a somewhat simple workaround for this problem (but most users would not know about this).  You can see the blog here:
https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/blog/2017/12/lr006---show-images-buried-in-stacks-when-using-lr-fil...

Thanks -- Dan

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

in lightroom, if the first stack image was rejected, and the I used filter and select pick, the whole stack will disappear

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...


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.