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

[OUcaveman001]

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.

[armin_staudt]

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...

[ponga18797389]

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

[Sreenivas R]

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

[JohannesK]

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...

[armin_staudt]

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.

[JBrenn2014]

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.

[JBrenn2014]

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]

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.

[Califdan2]

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

[OUcaveman001]

Sreenivas, as folks have indicated throughout the many replies in this thread, I don't think your expectation matches the reality of how people use Lightroom, at least in some cases. Especially when it comes to bracketed/HDR shots, I want to treat all of those images together as one "unit", and auto-stacking based on capture time is usually the easiest way to accomplish that. However, as Armin notes, by default the flag/metadata/whatever only applies to the top image of the stack. You have to expand the stack and select all of the images in the stack to make changes (e.g. rate/flag the image, apply metadata, etc.) This adds a lot of time to the workflow of processing bracketed photos.

As Dan said, there are other valid workflows in which applying a flag, metadata, etc. to all images within the stack would NOT be desirable - hence why having an option to "apply to all in stack" would be useful. I like the idea of having a system-level setting that would allow the user to specify the desired behavior, as I'm guessing that most users tend to use stacks predominantly in one way or the other.

[johnrellis]

It's pretty clear to me that Adobe isn't going to add the option that many of us want. The Syncomatic plugin is a good (though not as convenient) workaround.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I hear it's on the list to be done on 2048.

2019, almost. Still not done. Sheesh. Copy directories in lightroom still occasionally bombs. Not always. Enough to be annoying. Such a great and powerful program, and they let dumass stuff irritate you.

[Thany2]

Oh boy, there's quite a list of things that are deeply, deeply annoying about LR.
The problem is that we put up with it because apart from its "interesting" quirks, it is a pretty good program. And Adobe damn well knows this fact. They don't give a monkey's toss about small bugs, as long as big features are hoiked in and most users are happy enough to keep paying.

[bhousto90]

The status of this request is currently shown as 'Not planned', so everyone is going to be waiting for quite some time.

In the meantime add your vote/get others to vote, then Adobe's position on this request may change to at least 'Under consideration'.

Personally, if it does come to fruition, I hope it would be an optional setting.
After years of treating stack operations the current way, it could result in mistakes in applying settings if it starts working just the new way.

[Thany2]

Well then, how can we get them to "plan" it?

[bhousto90]

More people need to add their 'me too' vote at the top of the page so that Adobe sees that there is interest in the feature. Currently only 29 voted for it over the past 5 years.

[Bob Somrak]

Jeffery Tranberry is a recent voter so maybe something will get done

[jimm87446850]

I think that after a while people just give up on Adobe.  Also, I wonder what the "vote" equivalence is - that is how many users are represented by one user's vote.  Most users don't know about this site and most users are complacent; they just take what's handed to them. One person actually figuring out that a feature is needed, finding this site, and then taking time to request that feature must represent thousands if not tens of thousands of users who would actually benefit from the feature.

I'd love to hear from them why such an obviously needed feature is so hard for them to implement.  

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Probably not really important in this thread, but I have just created a plugin which syncs flag status across stacks: https://github.com/wrygiel/stacksync.lrplugin (very limited functionality, but that's just enough for my own needs)

[john beardsworth]

My Syncomatic plugin has been doing this for (I'm not sure how many) years. It can sync all metadata and adjustments within stacks.

[Avilev]

Having to "unstack" photos before either reject or delete is a waste of time. Allow these hotkey operations in both Develop and Library Modes please.

[johnrellis]

I fully agree. A couple of workarounds that ameliorate a bad situation:

- Shift-click on the stacking badge in the upper-left corner of the stack thumbnail you want to reject. That will expand the stack (not unstack its photos) with all the stacked photos selected. Then type "x".  (Unfortunately, there's no keyboard shortcut equivalent of shift-click.)

- With stacks collapsed, mark the ones you want to reject by typing "x". Then run the Syncomatic plugin, which copies the rejected flag from the stack tops to the other photos in the stacks.

[NetHawk]

I'm pretty sure, this has been suggested before, so this is to support former requests: when adding keywords to images, these are not applied to photos that are stacked. However, in most cases, stacked photos need the same keywords that are applied to the top-in-stack photo.

[JohanElzenga]

It's already very easy to do this and do it quickly. Shift-click on the small number in the left corner of the stack. That will expand the stack and select all its members. Enter your keywords and they will be applied to all the images.

[NetHawk]

Thanks for your answer. I'm aware of that, but this is an additional step, that sometimes is forgotten and should not be required at all. I also have stacks that I want to be expanded (e.g. different views) and others that I don't (e.g. bracketed shots). And if you want to apply keywords to hundreds of images, the default behaviour should be something that is the most expected. And at least for me, that is applying keywords to ALL photos, not only the ones that are on top of the stack.

If you move a bunch of photos all the stacked ones come with it. For me, that's prove, that photos in a folded stack should be treatet like the one on top of the stack, not only when moving, but also when keywording.

This was already suggested in forums back in 2008 and it's hard to believe, that this is not a common request, even if it's not high priority.