Recently I wrote about using stacks in Lightroom: Reduce Visual Clutter and Organize Your Photos by Using Stacks in Lightroom. As I mentioned, I use stacks to collapse photos that are pieces of a panorama, bracketed exposures for HDR, and other very similar shots. Sometimes these have been captured very closely in time.
In fact, you can have Lightroom automatically stack photos together based on capture time — you specify how closely together in time the photos have to have been captured. As you can imagine, the longer the time between photos allowed, the more stacks of unrelated photos you are likely to get.
Auto-Stack works best when photos are captured very closely together — with your camera set to auto-bracket, for example. Another scenario where I find it particularly useful is if you shoot raw+JPEG and choose to import both into Lightroom. You can automatically stack them together by requiring that there be zero time between captures. (For more posts on raw+JPEG, see Shooting in Raw+JPEG: Why Most of Us Shouldn’t, and How to Set Preferences If You Do and Raw+JPEG Continued: Managing Raw+JPEG Files in Lightroom.)
Here’s how to automatically stack photos based on capture time:
- In the Library module, select a folder or collection of photos to work with. (There is no need to select the photos within the folder or collection – Lightroom automatically will work with them all.)
- In Grid view (G), right-click in any photo and choose Stacking>Auto Stack by Capture Time.
- In the Auto Stack dialog, adjust the Time Between Stacks. This can be up to one hour.
In this example, any photos taken within 10 seconds of each other will be stacked together. Lightroom tells me that in the folder I am in, this will result in 173 stacks, and 427 photos that will not be part of stacks. It also previews for me in the Grid exactly which photos will be stacked together — stacks it will create are indicated in dark gray:
This preview updates immediately as you change the Time.
- Hit Stack to finalize.
- If there are any stacks that have been created that you do not want, right-click on any photo in the stack and choose Stacking > Unstack.
- To remove a photo from a stack, right-click and choose Stacking > Remove from Stack.
- If there are photos that you want to include in a stack that were not included (like my third above), select all the photos in the stack plus the missed one(s) by clicking on the first and then shift-clicking on the last, and choose Stacking > Group into Stack.
This makes it so much easier to scan through a series when I use high speed continuous shutter at sporting events or a selection for HDR
You could think they could do it based on exposure Bias? 0 +1 +2 -1 -2 0 +1 +2 -1 -2 0 +1 +2 -1 -2
Etc
I hate, hate, hate stacking and have again spent half an hour searching for a way to turn it off, especially for virtual copies.
I’m working on black and white virtual copies and every time I select (click) an image it stacks with the original and I then have to ensure I have the copy not the original. Maddening waste of time.
You can’t turn off the feature, Ramona, but you can select the two, right-click and choose Stacking>Unstack. That said, I can’t think of any circumstance where it matters whether you are using the original or a virtual copy, unless you are trying to protect the edits on one or the other. Clicking on a virtual copy doesn’t stack it – creating the virtual copy automatically stacks it with the original. Clicking on the little “1 of 2” badge will collapse or expand the stack.
You can also use the Library Filter bar in grid view to just show your virtual copies or your masters, so this could help you to work on the one you intend to. (It is an attribute filter.) This video tutorial shows how to use the Library Filter. You could also keyword your virtual copies with “black and white” and filter on this keyword.
Perhaps watching my video tutorial on virtual copies would be helpful.
Thanks Laura, I’ll check them out. I do change the copy to bw and “Remove from stack” (I think) rather than unstack. I am attempting to retain edits for black and white images.
Good point, Ramona – remove from stack is equally effective.
HI Laura,
I know this is an old post, but it seems that auto-stacking is not present in the latest LR CC (for desktop). I’m primarily interested in it for stack multiple exposures for HDR processing, so auto-stacking by capture time would satisfy me.
Any idea why it’s not there?
Hi Kevin, what do you mean by LR CC? Today there’s the cloud-based “Lightroom” and “Lightroom Classic”. It is available in Lightroom Classic, just as it was in CC 2015, 6, and earlier versions. Photo>Stacking>Auto-Stack by Capture Time.
Hi Laura,
I meant cloud-based LIghtroom, and I gather by your response that this feature is only currently available in LIghtroom Classic. And easy sharing between multiple devices running cloud-based LR and and PC running LR Classic doesn’t seem to be available.