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Mini-stack from source frames in Retouch

Feature Request

It would be really useful to be able to select a few of the source frames already loaded in Retouch and send those frames directly to the Editor as a mini-stack.

This would be especially useful when working with TIFFs that have come from Lightroom, because the Lightroom adjustments are already baked into those TIFF source frames. At the moment, even if Lightroom and Macro Studio use the same folder, the source frames in Macro Studio don't give me a simple way to make a mini-stack from them.

Being able to select the relevant source frames in Retouch and make a mini-stack directly in Macro Studio would make the retouching workflow much easier.

Posted by [email protected] ·
5 comments

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Comments5

  • Ryan Cush

    Team•

    Aug 30

    Oooh, @[email protected] that’s a really cool idea! My first thought was “you could do that from the Library tab” but as you said, if you’re working from files that came over from Lightroom (or another editor), then you may not have access to the exact frames.

    So maybe in the filmstrip at the bottom of retouch, you could SHIFT-Select multiple images and click a button to run a mini-stack, and when it’s done, it shows up in the Editor Images at the bottom, ready to use? Does that sound like a good user interface?

    • [email protected]

      •

      Aug 30

      Yes, Ryan, I think that would be a very good user interface.

      Trying the new Lightroom plugin has really brought this home to me. When frames come over from Lightroom as RAWs or TIFFs, Macro Studio only has access to the frames that were actually sent over; it cannot access the other original frames from Lightroom.

      Having the ability to select the frames already available in Retouch and make a mini-stack directly from them would therefore be really useful. I had thought for some time that it would be nice to do this all in the same place, but I just got on with the existing workflow. Using the Lightroom plugin has shown me how useful it could be.

      I think your Shift-select idea would work very well.

      Sue

    • [email protected]

      •

      Sep 24

      Hi Ryan,

      I’ve been having a play with manual slabbing while you’re working on adding slabbing to Macro Studio, and I thought the results might be useful to share here for anyone interested in trying it themselves.

      I first did a direct stack of the 142 original ORF frames, which took about 20 minutes. StackCheck suggested that the last 18 frames looked unused.

      I then manually slabbed the same 142 original frames into five overlapping slabs:

      Slab 01: frames 1–35 — 7 minutes
      Slab 02: frames 31–65 — 7 minutes
      Slab 03: frames 61–95 — 6 minutes
      Slab 04: frames 91–125 — 7 minutes
      Slab 05: frames 121–142 — 6 minutes

      I saved each slab as a Developed DNG and then stacked the five slab DNGs together. The final stack took only 2 minutes, making the total stacking time for the manual slabbing process 35 minutes.

      So the manual method wasn't faster overall, although each individual slab was much quicker to process. I was more interested in seeing what effect slabbing would have on the final result.

      Looking at the two 142-frame results side by side, I think the slabbed result looks cleaner overall, particularly around the fine edges. I can also see a little more shadowing in parts of the slabbed result, so there are differences in both results rather than one simply being better.

      I then ran StackCheck on demand on both finished results.

      The direct 142-frame stack again suggested the last 18 frames, exactly the same as when the stack first finished.

      The final 142-frame slabbed result gave:

      “StackCheck looked at this stack and found nothing to suggest.”

      I found that particularly interesting because both final images came from the same 142 original frames.

      I also discovered that Macro Studio is quite happy to take the Developed DNG slab results and stack those DNGs together to make the final image.

      I thought I'd share this because it might be useful to anyone interested in experimenting with slabbing manually while the feature is being developed. 😊

      Sue

      • Ryan Cush

        Team•

        Sep 27

        Hi @[email protected] - thank you for doing this experiment and reporting the results! I think the reason StackCheck didn’t fire on the slabbed result is because by that point, it had lost visibility into the original source frames and was just working off of the 5 slabbed ones, which were probably much “cleaner” at that point.

        • [email protected]

          •

          Sep 28

          H Ryan

          That makes sense, it was really interesting doing the experiment and comparing the results.

          Sue