Skip to main content

Lightroom plugin - how should it work?

Feature Request

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.

  1. Which matters more to you: your Lightroom edits carrying through, or maximum image quality and colour? If you had to pick just one, which?

  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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?

  5. 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!

Posted by Ryan Cush ·
Status: Completed14 comments

Log in to comment and vote

Comments14

  • Derek Bridel

    •

    Aug 14

    1/ Max image quality/colour. LR edits are easy to copy over.

    2/open live

    3/LR and PS and occasionally DSO

    4/Fair trade

    5/Zerene stacker returns a tiff. In LR right click and export to Zerene then returns a tiff and I have to syncronise which is inconvenient but ok. Helicon does same but no need to sync as appears in LR straight away

  • Kurt Ruppel

    •

    Aug 16

    I don’t use LRc so it is not important to me; however, I don’t see why you would want to have a plug in to any editing software. Maybe my workflow is flawed, but I stack in MS and then get a tiff to work on in PS.

    What I would desperately like to see is the navigation in Touch-Up be the same as PS. Especially the touchscreen control of the brush size, opacity and feathering. Zoom and undo key commands as well. Thanks - I really enjoy the file handling of stacks this program provides, autostacking and touch-up ability are great.

    • Ryan Cush

      Team•

      Aug 16

      Thanks for weighing in, @Kurt Ruppel ! I think one big use case for a plugin is that people use their editor as their “home base” for all of their photography, including organization/asset management, and so they want to be able to initiate stacking from there. Also, some people like to apply adjustments like exposure and white balance pre-stacking.

      Regarding retouch navigation — you can customize that in the Preferences menu, both keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures! Take a look and let me know if there’s anything in there that can’t be made PS-compatible. I used LrC as the basis for the defaults, so I would think it would be close (though I’m not sure how compatible PS and LrC are, offhand.)

  • Mark Taylor

    •

    Aug 17

    1. maximum image quality & colour matter most

    2. It depends on the shot. If I had to choose I’d choose to open “live” in Macro Studio so you can retouch, adjust and fine-tune before sending it back

    3. I use DXO PureRaw 6 on the raw images, convert them to compressed dng and return them back to LR.

    4. Without enhanced is not an issue for me

    5. I use DXO PureRaw 6 on the raw images, convert them to compressed dng and send them to Helicon Focus, the open the new files in LR

    I hope this helps I’ve only downloaded the software an hour ago!

  • Juul Thielen

    •

    Aug 14

    I would go for option B

    Which matters more to you: your Lightroom edits carrying through, or maximum image quality and colour? If you had to pick just one, which?
    maximum image quality and colour 100%

    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?
    open “live” in Macro Studio so you can retouch, adjust and fine-tune before sending it back

    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.

    Mostly using Lightroom, Photoshop and Topaz (but I ended sub for the last one)

    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?

    TBH, I turn it down to 0%, as natural as possible, I want to make the final grade myself

    🙂


    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.

    My workflow now is going to MS, stack, export en import to lightroom most of the time. I've done some editing in MS but find Lightroom still King for my way of working (but I liked the editing the last time in MS, huge improvements!)

    Best regards,

    Juul Thielen

  • [email protected]

    •

    Aug 15

    Question 1

    I normally make my basic Lightroom adjustments on one RAW frame, then sync those adjustments to all the frames before exporting them for stacking. This is the workflow I've been using with Zerene Stacker.

    I would still very much like to use Macro Studio for my stacking and for the adjustments and retouching that Macro Studio offers. Then I would save the finished stack back into Lightroom Classic and do my final adjustments there.

    So ideally, I would like my basic Lightroom adjustments to carry through to Macro Studio, while still maintaining the best possible image quality and colour.

    Question 2

    I would prefer the stack to open live in Macro Studio. I like to work on one stack at a time. I would select the frames in Lightroom, send them to Macro Studio, let Macro Studio do the stacking, and then use Macro Studio to inspect, retouch, adjust and fine-tune the result before saving it back to Lightroom for my final adjustments.

    This is the way I like to work with my macro photography, and it is similar to how I have been using Zerene Stacker.

    Question 3.

    I mainly use Lightroom Classic for my editing. I also use Photoshop when I need it for certain photographs, but my normal workflow for my macro images is Lightroom → Macro Studio → Lightroom. I would therefore ideally like the finished stack to come back into Lightroom in a format that retains the maximum quality and editing flexibility.

    Question 4

    I would prefer to keep the choice of Natural or Enhanced and use Macro Studio as I do now. I like to do the stacking, retouching and adjustments in Macro Studio and then save the finished result, usually as a DNG or TIFF, before doing my final adjustments in Lightroom.

    If keeping Enhanced meant that the finished file couldn't automatically be returned to Lightroom, I would be quite happy to save it from Macro Studio and bring it into Lightroom manually, as I do now. For me, keeping the full Macro Studio workflow would be more important than making the transfer back to Lightroom completely automatic.

  • Wolf Amri

    •

    Aug 15

    I so appreciate your approach of asking users, Ryan!

    Here’s my answers:

    1.Lightroom edits

    1. Open in Macro Studio and then send it back

    2. Sometimes photoshop, but that depends on the image

    3. I never use enhanced above 40%, and very often not at all, so for me I could live without it. But perhaps you could leave it in the app?

    4. I usually edit in Lightroom, export as jpg, change computer (you know that mine is relatively old 😉😂), stack, change computer again and import to Lightroom 😅.

    Sorry, gotta run again 😅

  • woodburj

    •

    Aug 17

    1. Maximum image quality and colour.

    2. Open live in Macro Studio so that retouching can be done as this can’t be fixed easily in Lightroom. I would rather get the stack right in Macro Studio (that’s what its great at) and hand back to Lightroom for final touches.

    3. Only Lightroom or Photoshop (Camera Raw)

    4. Happy to apply sharpening in LR ( especially now that it has Topaz included)

    5. Since switching to OM1 I find my raw files are very clean and don’t require a lot of colour work whereas my old Canon produces very flat Raw files. My preference would be to take the raw files into Macro Studio for stacking and retouching and then back to LR for any further work needed.

  • Ian Moran

    •

    Aug 17

    1 - Option A.

    2 - Open Live in Macro Studio.

    3 - Yes I use DxO Photlab in preference to LR these days but that can change depending on feature releases in these products.

    4 - Natural look please.

    5 - Current workflow is Photo Mechanic for ingest & culling -> Move RAW files to a folder -> Use MS to stack the folder and output TIFF - Edit Tiff file in DxO or Lightroom - usually the former.

  • AndewLamberson

    •

    Aug 18

    Like sue.north I would edit one image and then sync the rest and then send them to stack. That way they all have the same color edits, etc. But to tell you the truth, I probably would prefer to just to stack from the hard drive folder in Macro studio and then add the result to that folder and then import or sync the new stacked image. I would be nice if the file I imported to LRC was fully LRC editable but it seems to me I can do just about everything in your editing program.

  • Markus Lettau

    •

    Nov 4

    1. LR Plugin would be nice for workflow, if I have to choose I would prefer quality!!!

    2. open live

    3. DXO, Photoshop

    4. fair trade

    5. If using Helicon, export as RAW (DNG) and re-import to LR. If using Zerene, export as TIF. Zerene often gets better results, but at the moment Macro Studio seems to be the best over all. I did some trials and the results often have been better. Before stacking I sent pictures through DXO Pure RAW if ISO was too high when taking the images.