I’m building a plugin that lets you stack straight from Lightroom Classic — select your frames, pick a menu item, and the finished stack appears back in your catalog next to the originals.
The basics are working. But in testing, I hit a design fork that I'd like user input on, because it comes down to how you like to work.
The decision to make
When you send frames from Lightroom to Macro Studio, we can hand over one of two things:
Option A — Macro Studio receives TIFF files as Lightroom shows them.
Lightroom renders each frame with your edits applied (exposure, white balance, profile, crop) and passes those as TIFFs to Macro Studio. What you see in Lightroom is what gets stacked.
The catch: what arrives into Macro Studio is a finished picture rather than the original sensor data. Your sharpening and noise reduction are already applied, and the brightest and darkest tones have already been settled, so Macro Studio is stacking images that have been developed once already, and can't reach back past that. Also there would be some limitations on Retouching: you could retouch in that session, but couldn’t open the DNG later and Retouch again.Option B — Macro Studio receives your original RAW files.
Macro Studio reads the RAW files directly, exactly as it does when you use it on its own. Color is fully preserved, quality is the best we can produce, and you can retouch and re-blend the result afterwards.
The catch: your Lightroom edits to your source frames aren't applied. Any exposure, white balance, profile or crop work you'd done gets left behind, because we're going back to the untouched RAW file.
Neither is universally better…hence the question!
What I'd love to hear from you:
Answer any or all — even one-line answers help. If you've got a workflow that doesn't fit either option, tell me that too.
Which matters more to you: your Lightroom edits carrying through, or maximum image quality and colour? If you had to pick just one, which?
Would you rather the stack happen quietly in the background in LrC and just show up in your catalog, or open “live” in Macro Studio so you can retouch, adjust and fine-tune before sending it back? Or does it depend on the shot?
Do you edit your stacks anywhere besides Lightroom? DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, Photoshop, ON1, something else? This affects what file format we should send back.
Macro Studio has two looks — Natural and Enhanced (extra sharpening and local contrast). If getting the best possible color and file compatibility meant the returned file arrived without Enhanced baked in — you'd apply your own sharpening in Lightroom instead — would that be a fair trade, or a dealbreaker?
How do you do this today? Export TIFFs by hand? Stack outside Lightroom and re-import? Not stacking from Lightroom at all? Knowing the workaround you've settled on is helpful input.
Thanks for helping make Macro Studio the best it can be!
