Manual de Stacker

Images

Images is where a bracket becomes a stack. The photographs are listed in near-to-far order, one of them is named the reference the others will be aligned to, the bracket is checked for gaps and for frames the stack is better without, and the way the RAW files are converted is decided. Nothing creative happens here, and the chapter explains why that is the point.

The list

Every photograph in the stack has a row. In the Detailed view the row shows a thumbnail, the file name, the focus step and the exposure, and a line of symbols that say what Stacker knows about the frame. The count at the top right reads how many images are in the stack and, on hover, how many are left out in place.

Detailed and Compact

Detailed is one row per image: name, focus step and exposure. Compact is thumbnails only; the selected image’s details move to the panel, and the list narrows so the picture gets the width. Use Compact once the bracket is in order and you are looking at pictures rather than files.

Where the list lives

The list can sit at the left, under the picture as a strip of cards, or in a window of its own to put on a second screen. More ▸ Images panel position moves it; when it is under the picture the same menu chooses which way the cards run. The choice is remembered. On the Finish step the same slot shows the Exports panel instead, because nothing on Finish reads the list. On the Align step the panel is titled Unaligned images, and while you compare alignment methods it lists the methods instead (see Align, Compare methods).

Selecting rows

Click selects one image and shows it in the middle. Shift-click selects a range; Cmd-click (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) adds or removes one. With several rows selected the toolbar’s actions apply to all of them: Include selected, Exclude selected, Remove selected from stack, and New stack from selection. The chip above the list says how many are selected and Clear selection drops them.

Finding an image

The magnifier opens a search box that narrows the list by file name. More ▸ Filter narrows it to flagged images only or to images that are left out, to images with at least so many stars or to unrated ones, and Best rated first puts the highest-rated rows at the top (the arrows that move a row wait while it is on, since the rows on screen are no longer the stacking order).

When the list mixes file types, a row of pills above it counts each one, ORF 21 and DNG 1 say. A pill hides or shows the rows of its type; it only narrows the list, and the stack still holds every image.

Star ratings

The keys 1 to 5 rate the image on screen (or every selected image) that many stars, and 0 clears the rating; the five stars in the image’s Actions do the same with the mouse. The stars show at the end of the row’s name. A rating is saved in the image’s XMP sidecar, IMG_0001.xmp beside the file (or IMG_0001.ORF.xmp when that one is already there), where Lightroom, Bridge, PureRAW and Photo Mechanic read it, and a rating those programs saved is read the same way, from the sidecar or from the file’s own XMP. Stacker never writes into the image file itself, and an existing sidecar keeps everything else it holds. After rating one image the next one comes up, so a bracket can be culled from the keyboard; Settings ▸ General ▸ Next image after rating turns that off.

The symbols

A green tick means the image is developed and ready; a spinner means it is still developing. A crossed-out eye means the image is listed in its place but left out of the stack. More ▸ What the symbols mean shows this legend inside the program.

Left out, removed, duplicates

An image can leave the stack three ways, and they are not the same.

• Exclude (the eye on the row) leaves the image in its place but out of the alignment and the stack. The eye brings it back. This is the right choice for a frame the scan flagged: it stays visible, and nothing is lost if you change your mind. A click on a left-out row previews that image and opens its Image tab without bringing it back, so you can look before you decide.
• Remove (the bin on the row) moves the image to the Removed section under the list. Restore puts it back; the bin there forgets it for good. Remove is for frames that do not belong to this bracket at all. The Delete key is gentler than its name: with one image selected it leaves that image out in place, the same as the eye; with several selected it removes them all.
• Undo (⌘Z; Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux, or Edit ▸ Undo) takes back the last change to the list: a Remove, Exclude or Include on any number of images, a stack made, filled, renamed or deleted, a move, or Remove all flagged. Redo (⇧⌘Z) puts it back. Undo remembers the last 50 changes for as long as the project is open. When an alignment or a stack would be lost, it asks first, as the change itself did.
• A duplicate focus step is left out automatically. When two frames report the same focus position, the camera fired twice at one distance, and the sharper twin is kept; the other sits under Duplicate focus steps with a Use anyway button. The import says how many were skipped.

Why. Excluding keeps the row so the scan’s reasoning, the frame’s place in the order and the option to bring it back are all one click away. Removing is for mistakes of import, not of judgment.

Groups of stacks

A folder that holds several brackets can be split into stacks here instead of importing each folder separately. New stack from selection makes a stack from the selected rows; tabs above the list switch between stacks, All shows everything, and Manage renames, moves images between stacks and ungroups. Only the stack on screen is aligned and stacked.

When the camera bracketed in-body, every image carries its focus step, and a take shot again shows as the step counting from 1 again. While there are no stacks, the list then offers them: “2 takes found: the focus step starts again. Make a stack of each?”, with a chip per take and its image count. A take’s chip menu merges it with the next one; Accept suggested stacks makes a stack of each, named Take 1, Take 2 and so on, and Not now puts the offer away until the project is closed. Images without a focus step (TIFFs, most JPEGs) are never grouped this way.

Batch…: whole folders unattended, and a card dump cut into brackets

File ▸ Batch… stacks folders while you do something else: each folder is developed, aligned, auto-cropped and run through every ticked engine, and a 16-bit TIFF with its processing record (and a JPEG, if ticked) lands in the output folder, named after the source folder and the engine. The open session is untouched; the last run’s log stays in the dialog.

Brackets handles the folder that holds a whole session. Tick Split each folder into brackets by capture time and Stacker sorts the frames by the capture time in their EXIF, cuts wherever two neighbours are further apart than Bracket gap (s) (2 s unless you change it; under a second needs a camera that writes fractions of a second, otherwise the gap is raised to 1 s), and stacks each run as its own stack named folder stack 1, folder stack 2, and so on. Runs shorter than Minimum images per bracket are test shots or false starts and are left out, as are frames without a capture time; the log says how many of each. Only sort into stack folders moves each bracket’s frames into a stack N subfolder of the source folder and stops there, so you can check the cut in a file manager, then stack the subfolders as ordinary batch folders. Leftovers stay where they are; nothing is copied or deleted.

Why by capture time and not by file name: a bracket is a burst, and a pause is a new subject or a reframe, whichever numbers the camera gave the files.

The context menu

Right-click any row (or press its …) for everything that applies to that image: Set as reference, show the file in the file manager, Move up and Move down, Include in stack or Exclude from stack, the stack actions, Remove from stack, and for a RAW file, Use as colour target… and Use as flat field…, which are explained under Camera develop below.

Stack

The facts about the stack as a whole, and the two things you do here most.

The facts

Images is how many are in the stack. Reference names the image the others are aligned to. Left out counts the images excluded, hidden or dropped as duplicates. Folded, the section shows the same three as a count, a reference mark and a left-out count beside its title.

The reference image

Every other image is aligned to this one. Pick the sharpest frame near the middle of the bracket: alignment errors grow with distance from the reference, so a middle frame keeps them smallest at both ends. Until you pick one, Stacker uses the middle of the focus order. Right-click a row, or use Set as reference on the Image half of the panel.

Order matters

A bracket should run near-to-far. If the camera wrote the files out of order, Move up and Move down on an image put it right; the Align step’s Diagnostics can also sort the stack by the magnification it measured. The note in the section says so until you press Got it; the small i beside the section’s ? brings it back.

Add images and Finish this photo

Add images… brings in more frames of the same bracket; they develop in the background and join in name order. With a single photograph there is nothing to align or stack: the note says so, and Finish this photo takes it straight to Finish for the stamp and the export once it has developed.

Sending a bracket from Lightroom, ON1 or Capture One

You do not have to export a bracket to a folder and go looking for it. Any program that can hand files to another application can send them straight to Stacker, and they arrive as one stack with the edits you made there already applied to every frame. That is the right way to use noise reduction, lens corrections or a colour treatment from your RAW editor on a whole bracket: do it once on all the frames, send them over, stack.

• Lightroom Classic, with the plugin. In Stacker, choose Help › Install Lightroom Plugin… once, then restart Lightroom. From then on, select the bracket and choose File › Plug-in Extras › Send to SpikerSoft Stacker…. The dialog asks three things and remembers them: send the camera files (RAW or DNG, untouched, with Lightroom’s white balance and Basic sliders passed along as the starting point for Camera develop and Finish) or 16-bit TIFFs rendered by Lightroom with every edit baked in; whether to split the selection into brackets wherever two frames are more than a chosen number of seconds apart, each bracket going to Stacker in turn once the one before has a result; and whether to bring the result back. With that on, Lightroom keeps watching while you stack: every file you export lands in the originals’ folder (the export dialog proposes it), is imported into the catalog stacked above the first original with its rating, label, title, caption, copyright, GPS and keywords, and is added to a collection named after the bracket inside a SpikerSoft Stacker set. Cancel Lightroom’s progress bar when you are done. Send to SpikerSoft Stacker with last settings repeats the last choices without the dialog, and File › Export… › SpikerSoft Stacker does the TIFF route with every export setting.
• Lightroom Classic, without the plugin. Under Preferences › External Editing, add Stacker as an Additional External Editor with TIFF, 16 bits, and sRGB or AdobeRGB. Select the bracket, choose Photo › Edit In › Edit in SpikerSoft Stacker, and pick Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments. Lightroom renders a TIFF of every frame and opens Stacker with all of them. An export preset with Post-Processing › After Export: Open in Other Application set to Stacker does the same from the Export dialog.
• ON1 Photo RAW. In Browse, select the frames, right-click and choose Send to Other Application…, then Stacker. ON1 makes TIFF copies with its edits and sends them together.
• Adobe Bridge. In Stacker, choose Help › Install Bridge Script… once, then restart Bridge. Select the bracket, right-click and choose Stack in SpikerSoft Stacker (it is also under Tools). The images arrive as one stack in Bridge’s order, and every export is proposed for the originals’ folder, so the result appears beside them in Bridge.
• Capture One on macOS. In Stacker, choose Help › Install Capture One Script… once, then in Capture One choose Scripts › Update Scripts Menu. Select the bracket and choose Scripts › Send to SpikerSoft Stacker. The images arrive as one stack; every result you export is saved beside the originals and opened with Capture One, which asks where to import it. It keeps watching for results for two hours.
• Capture One on Windows. Select the frames and use Edit With… with Stacker as the application.
• A file manager. Open With on a selection of images, or drop them on the Stacker window.

TIFFs, JPEGs and PNGs that arrive are treated as finished pictures: Camera develop is skipped, because the files were developed by the other program, and the Finish step’s Render shows them exactly as they came rather than adding Stacker’s own camera rendering on top. If Stacker is busy with a job when the files arrive, they wait, and the status bar says how many are waiting; they import the moment the job finishes.

Tip. Without the plugin, each program passes the files to Stacker on one command line, which on Windows holds roughly 250 files of typical path length. A larger selection is split into more than one Stacker window by the sending program; stack each window on its own, or use the plugin, which hands Stacker the folder instead.

Curate

Curate answers two questions before you spend time aligning: did the bracket cover the subject, and are there frames the stack is better without?

Coverage

The five facts need lens focus data from the camera’s RAW files (Olympus and OM System bodies record the focus step and distance) and at least four images.

Why 70 %. Below about 70 % the slices overlap comfortably and every point of the subject is sharp in at least one frame. Above 100 % the slices do not touch, and the band between them is soft in every frame. Nothing sharp was recorded there, so no engine can recover it. A GAP symbol in the list marks each place that happened.

Scan stack

The scan looks for images the stack is better without. It runs by itself after an import, once the images have developed, and the stack then waits here until you press Align images, unless Settings › General › Align after import is on, in which case the alignment starts on its own; Scan stack runs it again after you change the stack. Flags are advisory: nothing is excluded until you say so.

What the flags mean

Hover a flag on a row, or in the Image half of the panel, for the measurement behind it.

The findings and Remove all flagged

The status line says what the scan concluded: not scanned yet, no problem images, or how many were flagged as moved, soft or without gain. A permanent move is spelled out in full under it. Remove all flagged takes every flagged image out of the stack in one go; they land under Removed and can be restored.

Camera develop

This section decides how the RAW files are turned into the neutral images every later step works on. It is colour science, not editing: there is no exposure, contrast or curve here, and there never will be. TIFF, JPEG and PNG files skip it: another program has already developed them, and the controls here say so.

Why this is decided before stacking

The RAW files are converted into linear images: values in proportion to the light that reached the sensor, with no tone curve and no brightening, because that is what the alignment and every engine were designed and tuned against. Four facts about the camera and the lens have to be settled before those images are compared, because they are exactly the things that go wrong if they are not: a colour fringe would be stacked as if it were detail, vignetting would decide which frame wins at the edges, and a white balance that differs between frames would leave colour seams in the result. Everything creative waits for Finish, where it is applied without touching these pixels.

White balance rule

Every image develops with one white balance, so the camera’s automatic white balance cannot tint frames against each other. The line above the choices shows what the camera chose for the reference, as a colour temperature and tint.

A pick reports the temperature and tint it found, or says that nothing neutral was there because the sample was clipped or black.

Camera profile

The colour matrix the images develop through. Embedded is the file’s own, which is what the camera maker measured for that body. Calibrate from the reference image… fits a profile to a ColorChecker Classic you photographed under the stack’s light, which is as exact as colour gets; the Capture step’s Shoot colour target and the list’s Use as colour target… feed it. Import a profile file… loads one made on another computer, and Export… saves this one.

Flat field

The lens’s vignetting, measured from an evenly lit plain surface shot with this lens at this focal length and aperture, and undone on the camera-native data before white balance. Sample from the reference image… measures it from the reference; the Capture step’s Shoot flat field and the list’s Use as flat field… are the usual ways in. Stacking rewards it more than single frames do: a vignette makes the engines distrust the edges of every frame alike.

Lateral CA correction

Automatic removal of the colour fringing a lens leaves toward the edges of the frame, measured and corrected on the linear RAW data. On by default; off keeps the RAW’s own fringes. It applies when images are developed, so changing it on an open stack calls for a re-develop.

Re-develop

Applies a changed rule, profile, flat field or CA setting to the open stack. Alignment, crop and touch-up strokes are kept, because colour moves but edges do not; the stacks run again from the new images. The button lights when the images were developed under a different policy than the one shown, and a note says when they were developed against a different reference than the current one.

The selected image

Click a row and the Image half of the panel shows that photograph. Without a selection the half is dark and says to click an image in the list.

Stepping through the stack

The arrows beside the section’s ? step to the previous and next image; the line under the caption says which image this is of how many. The up and down keys do the same from the list.

The file

The file’s mark says what kind of file it is (an Olympus or OM System RAW, a DNG, a TIFF, a JPEG, a PNG), the name carries a REF chip when it is the reference, and hovering the name shows the full path.

Capture details

What the camera recorded for this frame: focus step, distance, focal length, aperture, shutter, ISO, lens and image size, each a dash when the file does not say. Two rows are Stacker’s own: Sharpness, its measure of how much of the frame is in focus, and Alignment, how this frame’s alignment went, with a warning when it fell back to a coarser solve.

Flags

What the curation scan found about this image, one pill per finding, in the flag’s colour. Hover a pill for the measurement behind it; several findings of the same kind share one pill.

Actions

The five stars rate the image (click the lit star again to clear it). Set as reference makes this the image every other one is aligned to. The eye includes or excludes it in place. The arrows move it up or down in the near-to-far order. Remove takes it out of the stack (it stays restorable under Removed). The last button opens the folder with the file selected in the file manager.

Status messages on this step

The status bar reads “Click an image to preview · {prev} / {next} step · {remove} removes · right-click for reference and ordering” with your own shortcuts filled in, and the scan’s summary at the right once it has run. The step card reads “No images yet”, “{n} images in the stack”, or “{n} images in the stack · {out} left out”. The Align step stays dark until two images are in.