Move stacked photos

[wcjxxx]

Lightroom Version

11.3.1

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

Hello. Help will be greatly appreciated. I have a folder that contains many stacked photos. Is it possible to simply move all photos and stacked photos from a folder into a collection. When I try the stacking is lost and must be reconstructed in the collection stack by stack. Seems like this must be a common problem but I can't find the solution.

 

[johnrellis]

Unfortunately, stacking in folders and stacking in collections are completely separate, and there's no easy way to replicate folder in collections or vice versa. It's one of many unfortunate consequences of the stacking design in LR. Plugins can't solve the problem, since Adobe doesn't allow plugins to change the stacking of already-imported photos.

 

[Califdan]

A bit of a long way around, but....

1) Use "Any Filer" plugin to search for all images that have a stack position of "n" (eg 1)
2) In results, assign Key word "Stack-pos-1"
3) Repeat for each sucessively higher stack position and assing appropriate KW
4) In Collection, use keywords to re-stack image sets, one set at a time

Like I said, a long way around and I can't imagine worth the time involved.

 

[wcjxxx]

Unfortunately, stacking in folders and stacking in collections are completely separate, and there's no easy way to replicate folder in collections or vice versa. It's one of many unfortunate consequences of the stacking design in LR. Plugins can't solve the problem, since Adobe doesn't allow plugins to change the stacking of already-imported photos.

Thank you for the rapid response. Unfortunate that it is not possible. Seems it should not be impossible for Adobe to provide a solution.

 

[Califdan]

I think the problem is logic not technical as one can have different stacking in a collection than in a folder, For example in a folder you may want to stack Bursts and Bracketed sets. But, in a collection of, say, "Birds" you may want a stack for each species with the best rendition on top.

 

[johnrellis]

I think the problem is logic not technical as one can have different stacking in a collection than in a folder,

When you drag a bunch of photos that are stacked (in either the source folder or source collection) to a collection, LR could ask if you want to replicate the stacking in the collection. This would be similar to the right-clicking a collection and doing Duplicate -- the copied collection contains the same stacking as the original.

LR already has a long list of rules for how it handles stacking in various situations (inconsistent and hard to remember), so adding one more rule wouldn't break the design!

 

[Califdan]

Yes they could. Don't hold your breath. IMHO many other tweaks in the Library module are way more important, including some trivial to implement ones and some more compicated like supporting keywords Cloud Sync.

 

[johnrellis]

Agreed.

 

[BHousto]

You can create a collection that retains the stacking from a folder:
The key is that it has to be created as a new collection and it will contain all of the files in that folder.
It is done from the folder collection & collection panels not the photo grid.

From the folders panel select your folder with your stacks and then drag it into the collections panel into your desired collection set.
A new collection with the same name as the folder will get created with the original stacking retained.
It does not work with publish collections however.

Duplicating a collection will also retain stacking.

 

[johnrellis]

From the folders panel select your folder with your stacks and then drag it into the collections panel into your desired collection set.

Excellent. I thought there was a way of doing it, but I tried dragging the photos to the collection / collection set, not the folder itself.

 

[Califdan]

Always something new to learn.

 

[wcjxxx]

You can create a collection that retains the stacking from a folder:
The key is that it has to be created as a new collection and it will contain all of the files in that folder.
It is done from the folder collection & collection panels not the photo grid.

From the folders panel select your folder with your stacks and then drag it into the collections panel into your desired collection set.
A new collection with the same name as the folder will get created with the original stacking retained.
It does not work with publish collections however.

Duplicating a collection will also retain stacking.

I tried and was not successful. From the Folders panel I chose a folder with stacked photos and dragged it to the Collections panel. It did not stick. I then made a collection set and tried again to drag the folder to the collection set. This time it did stick and all photos were in collection but in an unstacked form with no stacking indicated. Either I am doing something wrong or this does not work as others have suggested. Sure wish it were possible.

 

[BHousto]

I will work with it tomorrow night after work and put together a screen recording of the steps I used.
I am currently using Windows 11 (it also worked with earlier LR versions with Win7/10), so perhaps it only works for Windows?

 

[PhilBurton]

Excellent. I thought there was a way of doing it, but I tried dragging the photos to the collection / collection set, not the folder itself.

I'm sure that some of these approaches were not anticipated by Adobe engineers, but there are some very, very smart people in this group.

 

[johnrellis]

Here's a screen recording showing dragging a folder with stacks to a collection set, on Windows 10 with LR 11.4:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7kfnr0jqnnyj4zu/dragging-folder-to-collection-set.2022.06.20.mov?dl=0

 

[wcjxxx]

Here's a screen recording showing dragging a folder with stacks to a collection set, on Windows 10 with LR 11.4:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7kfnr0jqnnyj4zu/dragging-folder-to-collection-set.2022.06.20.mov?dl=0

I sure appreciate this groups persistence but unfortunately the suggested approach does not work on a Mac using LR Classic 11.3.1. The stacked photos all come across in the transfer (folder dragged to collection set) but the photos became unstacked and all indication of having been stacked was lost.

 

[johnrellis]

Very curious -- here's a screen recording of LR 11.4 on my Mac OS 12.4. This functionality long predates LR 11.3.1, but you might upgrade to LR 11.4 regardless.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/88axcl4pne666wn/dragging-folder-to-collection-set.mac.2022.06.20.mov?dl=0

 

[wcjxxx]

Very curious -- here's a screen recording of LR 11.4 on my Mac OS 12.4. This functionality long predates LR 11.3.1, but you might upgrade to LR 11.4 regardless.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/88axcl4pne666wn/dragging-folder-to-collection-set.mac.2022.06.20.mov?dl=0

Updated to LR 11.4 and did exactly what you did and stacking disappeared. I usually import as DNG and not as ARW (I shoot Sony also) and then run photo through Topaz and end up with my DNG and TIFF from Topaz in a stack. Love to hear other thoughts. I keep looking for something I am doing differently. I do appreciate your efforts.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I just tried it on my system and stacks do indeed come over in the new collection.

 

[BHousto]

In your last post wjcxxx, it sounds like the round trip from LR to Topaz and back creates system generated stacks?

Can you try the same drag/drop operation with a folder with photos in stacks that you manually create?
It could be that the 'system generated' stacking may lack some setting or stores it differently from the user created stacks.
And then this drag & drop operation does not have what it needs to retain the stacking info?
Or it could be because there are two types of files in the stack?

It does not seem to be a OS limitation since John has it working with MacOS.
I found a FAQ post on John Beardy's website that this has been a feature since at least Lightroom 4.

 

[wcjxxx]

Just to follow up as all have been so helpful. I again tried the suggested method shown on your videos. No luck. So I wondered what the difference might be. Made a folder with 3 photos and edited 2of them and stacked them. Then I transferred to a collection set by drag and drop. It worked!! However when I again tried to transfer my original folder of 300 photos with about 50 stacks and the process did not work. seems that this must somehow be volume related. Stumped.