P: Better auto stacking for bracketing, HDR, Focus Stacking and Panoramas

[Gary_Rowe]

I currently shoot a lot of Bracketed shots for exposure blending, and with each shot having a different shutter speed the auto-stacking can fail to accurately stack the grouped shots - especially when the shutter speed gets up into 10+ seconds!I would love an option for Auto Stacking to work on the time delay between the shutter closing and the shutter opening again, so it is a true measure of the gap between shots. In this way I can auto-stack on all bracketed shots even when the shutter speed is seconds long. Calculate the time between shots by adding the shutter speed to the capture time of the first shot, and then compare this to the capture time of the next shot, and if I am using Continuous shooting, this gap will be only a fraction of a second, regardless of the shutter speed.Gary

[garry2306]

Any chance that we can restart requesting the auto stacking feature that LR is missing, ie select a group of images and request these be stacked into groups of n. It would be up to the user to ensure s/he selected the correct number, ie an integer multiple on n, although LR could easily check this 😉

[cjonesmn]

A feature to automatically stack photos before merging. The new HDR batch feature added in version 8.4 isn't useful from a time savings perspective. It actually introduces two extra steps to create a merged file, (first create the stack, then select all Stacks for the merge).

Why couldn't Adobe create an automated merge process where you simply select all photos you want merged and then define how many photos there are per bracket? It could then use that information to automatically create Stacks and perform the merge based on that. Other HDR programs do something similar automatically.

[Rob Larsen]

It's great that you have enabled batch processing of HDR and Pano images. A great next step in efficiency would to be able to auto-stack an entire folder of bracketed images.

Often I have very large folders of images that are full of bracketed images of the same sequence quantity. To use the nice batch HDR merge feature, I first need to manually stack hundreds of images to use that feature. I wish I could just select all and choose an option to auto-stack "every x images" where "x" is user defined. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Auto-stacking by number of pictures would seem to be so simple to implement. I'm coming from Corel's much inferior Aftershot, which DOES have this feature. Surprised to see that LR doesn't!

[garyrowe]

Cannot believe this is such an old thread ... and the problems are still there!

[Rich Fisher]

Auto stacking for HDR should be rather simple, check change in exposure, in particular shutter speed, small time step between the end of the one image and the start of the next.  Look for groupings of 2, 3, 4, 5 with predictable set of changes in shutter speed.  Might even do a quick comparison of the images to assure that they overlap (or batch process).

Auto stacking for focus stacking and panoramic is harder but doable if overlaps are checked.

[Rich Fisher]

@Rikk Auto stacking we are referring to, is not stacking when I manual processing the image but rather identify the images that should be stacked together to form an HDR image, a panoramic image (harder), a HDR panoramic image (much much harder), or a focus stack (again harder).

Might ask the user when type of auto stacks they are looking for.

[naestyoh]

My background is image processing. The HDR really isn't that hard. They have metadata to work with. They can see sequential shots with specific exposure changes... 1 stop, 2/3 stop, 1/3 stop... LR already looks at this with the "Match Total Exposures". LR could further inspect the images for overlapping features. In fact, this would be very simple because they can find features in the first and then confine their search space in the successive images rather than running the entire array in the successive images. 

Panos would simply require a large kernel and quick pass rough feature matching.  

A combination of the above approaches wouldn't be significantly more difficult. 

[cjonesmn]

Yes... and if the comparison doesn't work programmatically, then ask the user how many images are in each bracket. 

[Pacoh]

One thing that would be a big help would be for camera manufacturers to tag the bracketed shots, perhaps with an index number and maybe even an indication of what kind of bracketing is in use.  Then LR could accurately stack those bracketed shots.

This would not cover all cases, but then again neither can auto-stacking hope for that.   

[Rich Fisher]

@pecohen If not automatically adding a tag, let me flag the first (and perhaps the last image) of a series

[Rich Fisher]

@bryn_forbes One "problem" is Adobe's auto stacking algorithm, which I think should be extremely eas... 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

@Rikk

What we need is stacking with fix amount of pictures. When i shot virtual tours in a DSLR i set my braketing to 5 or 7 images.

having the ability to set fix number fix images per stack would help us a lot.  

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

What we need is stacking with fix amount of pictures. When i shot virtual tours in a DSLR i set my braketing to 5 or 7 images. sometime my exposure will be 1/30 and next image is 3 secs

having the ability to set fix number fix images per stack would help us a lot. 

[merkk]

Not really a solution, more like a work-around. But a useful one until adobe implements better automatic handling of brackets.

[bryn_f]

My understanding is that canon does flag the bracketed images in exif

[Rich Fisher]

Have LR scan my images, look for images that were shoot in sequence (and rapid succession, time should be measured from end of the image to the start of the next image, not start to start since I could have a  15 second exposure) and vary by aperture.  Look for a pattern such as -2 EV, -1 EV, 0 EV, +1 EV, +2EV. If requested run a quick comparison to make sure images are somewhat aligned (and of the same subject).    Might ask user for how HDR were shot (-0+, 0-+; though this could be learned by examining the image sequences, possibly number of shots, ...).  

[johnrellis]

Why conversations get merged:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-auto-import-to-folders-orga... 

[markusd1984]

Since the auto stacking by time doesn't always work accurately, especially if some photo meta data are missing or let's say some pairs are missing a photo, it would be so much easier to select a group of photos and specify the amount of pairs to be stacked sequentially starting from the first selected photo.

I.e. stack every 3 photos from the first photo in the selection. 

Faster then manually selecitng pairs and using CTRL + G.

P.S. didn't find a feature request link on main page and understood from the migration that this is the new place to post them.

[DdeGannes]

The info provided in your earlier post in the forum is also relevant to this issue. Better to use the “idea” section of the forum to make a recommendation for a new feature.

[DdeGannes]

You are posting in the "Discussion" section of the forum, use the "Ideas" section.

See the screen capture.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography : Please merge with the existing Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/lightroom-classic-better-auto-stacking-for-br...

[garyh41951415]

I often employ focus stacking when taking photographs. To remember where the focus stack set starts and stops, I will take a picture of my hand in front of the lens at the start and end of the stack set. When I import my photos into lightroom, my hand photos are included which keeps my stack sets grouped together but looks kinda ugly! It would be really cool if there were a way to select several images, in Lightroom, and link them together as a focus stacked group. This could be indicated by another small glyph, similar to the has been cropped, is in a collection, has edits glyphs. The glyph would appear on each image in a focus stack set group. Then when your hover over or click the glyph, all the pictures in the focus stack grouping could be highlighted somehow to indicate they belong together. Then, I could dispense with all the hand photos!

[GoldingD]

You may want to request that Adobe adds Photo Merge Focus Stack first.

And you could expand the request to include glyph for HDR and PANO stacks.

[Matthileo]

Adobe Lightroom Classinc currently supports two modes of blending photos. Either blending multiple exposures into an HDR image or sitching multiple images into a single panorama. It would be so so so so nice if it was possible to perform the blending for focus stacking multiple image into one image in the same way, with the output being a DNG file, without having to open photoshop.