Manual de Stacker

Settings

File ▸ Settings… (Cmd , by default) opens one window with four pages: General, Performance, Shortcuts and Account. The pages are the icon tabs at the top right of the window, under the line “Configure Stacker to match your workflow.” Every page has its own ? at the right of its section title, which starts a short guided tour of that page.

Every change on these pages is saved the moment you make it. There is no Apply button; Done or Esc just closes the window.

Why. Nothing in Settings changes what a stack computes. Language, window layout, power mode, memory budgets and key bindings change how fast, how quietly and in what shape Stacker works, never the pixels of a result. That is why none of it is written into a session file: a session opened on another computer with other settings produces the same picture.

General

The General page is one list of rows: the language, updates, the window and its panels, the focus map, crash reports, the mode, what happens after an import, and file names. Its caption reads “How Stacker starts, which language it speaks, and what it reports.”

Language

Language picks the language of menus, messages and hover text. System default, the first entry, follows the operating system. Under the divider are the sixteen languages Stacker speaks, each written in its own script: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese and Korean. The change applies at once, with the fonts the language needs; nothing restarts.

Check for updates automatically

Switched on, Stacker asks once a day, when it starts, whether a newer build exists. It is on by default. Switch it off on a computer that should never talk to the internet on its own; Help ▸ Check for Updates… still works by hand either way.

When a newer version is found, a notice offers Download and Skip this version. A skipped version is not mentioned again; the next one after it is.

After import

Two switches decide how much Stacker does on its own once images arrive. With both on, an import develops, scans, aligns and moves to Crop, where it waits for you to confirm the rectangle.

Align after import starts the alignment by itself once the images have developed and been scanned. It is off on a fresh install: the stack waits on Images with the message “Scanned — press Align images when you are ready”, and nothing moves until you press the button on the Align step, so the steps are easy to follow the first few times and the scan’s flags can be read before any alignment runs. While it waits, the Align step’s ring in the tracker at the top pulses in blue, dashed, to show that pressing it is the next thing to do. Switch it on once the steps are familiar and you want the stack to run ahead of you.

Go to Crop after aligning moves on to Crop by itself when an alignment lands. Switched off, Stacker stays on Align with “Alignment complete”, so you can toggle Show aligned images and read the diagnostics before going on; the Crop step’s ring pulses meanwhile. Either way the later stops are unchanged: Crop waits for you to confirm, and Stack waits for engines and options.

Pointer and wheel

Five rows decide how the pointer and the wheel work over a picture. Hold to pan names the key (Space by default; H, Z or G instead) that, held down, makes a left-button drag pan the view on the steps where that button otherwise paints or moves the crop box: Touch up and Crop. The right and middle buttons pan everywhere without a key.

Wheel over the image is what the mouse wheel, or a two-finger scroll, does on Images, Align, Crop, Stack and Finish: Zoom (the default, about the pointer), Pan, or Step through the images, where every notch moves the selection one image. Wheel on Touch up is the same choice for the Touch up panes, with Brush size, Brush feather and Brush strength in place of stepping. Reverse the wheel runs every gesture the other way round. Wheel sensitivity is how far a notch goes: 1 is as the wheel comes, 0.25 a quarter of that, 4 four times. Pinching on a trackpad, and Ctrl or Cmd with the wheel, always zoom.

Default look

Where Finish’s Look slider starts for a new session: Natural (the default), or an Enhanced step that adds local contrast and clarity. The slider on Finish changes it for the open session only; this row is what the next session begins with.

File names

The name every export proposes, written once as a pattern. Leave the box empty and a stack exports as stack and a single photo under its own name, as always. Type a pattern and the pieces in braces are filled from the session: \{first\}-\{last\} names the file after the first and last frames of the bracket (P8290610-P8290646), \{folder\} \{date\} after the folder the frames came from and the capture date. The chips under the box set the common patterns in one click, and the line beneath shows the name the open session would get. Hover the row for the full list of pieces: \{first\}, \{last\}, \{folder\}, \{count\}, \{date\}, \{time\}, \{today\}, \{now\}, \{engine\}, \{look\}, \{enhance\}, \{camera\}, \{lens\} and \{photo\}. A piece the session does not know, such as a lens on a frame without one, comes out empty; characters a file system refuses are replaced. The pattern also names Batch… output, with the engine added when several engines run and the pattern does not name it. Each export dialog shows the proposed name in a File name box you can change for that one file.

Start maximized

Switched on, the window fills the screen when Stacker opens, so the image list, the preview and the panel all fit without you resizing anything. It is on by default. Switch it off to have Stacker open at the size you last left it. Applies from the next launch.

Next image after rating

On (the default), rating the image on screen with a star key brings up the next image, so a bracket can be rated without leaving the keyboard. Off, the selection stays where it is.

Images panel

Where the image list lives. Left side (the default) puts it beside the picture. Bottom turns it into a strip of cards under the picture, which suits a wide screen. Separate window floats it in a window of its own, which you can drag to a second screen. The same choice is also under the list’s own More ▸ Images panel position.

Bottom strip

Which way the cards run when the Images panel is under the picture: Right to left (the default) or Left to right. It only matters with Bottom chosen above.

Inspector

Where the panel on the right lives: Right side (the default), beside the picture, or Separate window to put it on another screen and give the picture the whole main window.

Inspector sections

How the fold sections of the panel start when Stacker opens. Start collapsed (the default) opens every section folded, so each step shows only its titles until you open one. The one exception is Align’s Method, which starts open because everything below it follows from that choice; fold it and it stays folded. Start open unfolds them all. Remember how I left them restores each section as it was when you last quit. The choice applies now, not only at the next launch.

Tip. Start collapsed keeps a long step such as Finish short and scannable. Once you know which sections you use, Remember how I left them saves the clicks.

Show the splash screen at startup

The artwork Stacker shows over the window while it starts. On by default; switch it off for a plain start. Applies from the next launch.

Focus map

The sharpness tint that Capture draws on the live view and Touch up draws on the result and the source. The four segments pick its colour, the camera’s own peaking colours: Red (the default), Yellow, White or Blue. Pick the one that stands out against your subject. The slider under them is Peaking: how far below the sharpest area still lights up. Lower lights more of the picture; higher keeps only the sharpest. It runs from 0.05 to 1 and starts at 0.2.

One colour and one peaking value serve both steps. Changing them here, on Capture or on Touch up changes them everywhere.

Crash reports

What Stacker does with reports of crashes and internal errors from earlier sessions. A report holds the error, a stack trace, hardware details and recent log lines. It never includes photos, and your home folder, user name and sign-in tokens are removed before anything is sent.

Mode

Standard or Expert: how much of Stacker is on show. The same switch sits at the top right of the window, left of the account chip: a pill with a camera and Standard on one side, sliders and Expert on the other, and an aperture button in the middle. The lit side is the mode you are in. Click the aperture, or the side that is off, and the blades close and open once before the light slides across. A fresh install starts in Standard; an install from before the switch stays in Expert.

Standard keeps what a focus stack needs and hides the expert controls: on Capture the colour calibration, the camera-settings window and the exposure limits; on Images the camera profile, flat field and lateral-CA rows of Camera develop; on Align everything after Method (model, options, seed resolution, diagnostics); on Stack the Subject detail window, the Shared settings and Review sections, the engine gears, the all-engines disclosure, the already-aligned checkbox, JPEG quality and the science bundle; the companion-stack button; on Finish the Curve, Colour mixer, Colour grading and Effects folds, the print chain after the Render picker, Apply, the Topaz hand-off and the science bundle; in the File menu the science bundle, Topaz, Batch and the matrix; in Settings the Performance tab. Nothing is lost: the values behind a hidden control keep applying, and Expert brings every control back.

Performance

The Performance page is two columns. On the left, Power mode and the Hardware overview; on the right, Memory & GPU budgets and the Warp engine. Nothing on this page changes a result. It changes speed, memory and battery use.

Power mode

Three segments decide which processor cores stacking runs on.

A change applies from the next job; a stack already running finishes as it started.

Why. On a laptop in the field, a deep stack at full speed can empty the battery before the bracket is done. Auto notices the cable coming out and drops to the efficiency cores by itself, and the result is the same to the pixel, only later.

Keep uncropped images for Undo crop

Switched on (the default), a crop keeps the full-size images on disk until the next import, so Undo crop on the Crop step can put them back. They take about the size of the whole stack in the temporary folder. The crop itself is no slower either way. Turn this off on a small drive if you never undo crops; when the drive is nearly full the safeguard is skipped anyway.

Keep the computer awake while a job runs

Switched on (the default), Stacker holds the computer out of idle sleep while it develops, aligns, stacks, batches or captures, and lets go the moment it is idle again. The screen may still dim or lock; only the system is kept up. It is the difference between a batch that is done in the morning and a laptop that slept at the second folder. Switch it off if you would rather the operating system’s own sleep timer applied regardless.

Before a stack

Before any engine starts, Stacker works out roughly what the stack will take and compares it with what the computer has. Memory: the heaviest chosen engine’s working set for the picture’s size (measured per engine on a real bracket) plus the images up to the image cache budget. Scratch space: the uncropped copies kept for Undo crop and one cached result per engine, on the scratch folder’s volume. When either is short, Stack stops with the figures, for example “This stack needs about 9.1 GB of memory and 6.2 GB is free”, or “It will write about 4.8 GB to the scratch folder, which has 1.1 GB free: free 3.7 GB there, or pick another scratch folder”. Close other programs, pick fewer engines, crop smaller, or press Stack again to go ahead regardless; the same stack is not warned about twice.

Scratch folder

Where Stacker keeps its working files while it runs: the developed images, the uncropped copies for Undo crop and the cached results. By default this is the system’s temporary folder. On a small system drive, Choose… points it at a bigger or faster one; Default goes back. The row says which folder is in force now and how much is free there. A stack needs about six megabytes per megapixel per image. The change applies from the next launch.

Hardware overview

Four facts about this computer, as Stacker found them when it started, and the budgets in force now. They are for reading, not changing.

• CPU: the processor’s name, how many cores Stacker schedules on, with the number of efficiency cores in brackets, and the instruction set the fusion kernels use.
• Memory: the installed memory and how much of it was free at launch. The image cache budget below is derived from the free figure.
• GPU: the graphics device and the backend the GPU stages run on, whether its memory is shared with the processor’s, and what its driver offers.
• Budgets: the image cache, the bake in-flight count, the GPU resident budget and the GPU upload path in force right now, which are the automatic values unless you overrode them below.

Memory & GPU budgets

Three budgets, each with its own row. By default every one is Auto, derived from free memory and the GPU, and the row shows the value in use with “(auto)” after it. Untick Auto on a row and a slider appears, starting at the automatic value; the row then shows your value and the automatic one beside it. An override applies at once and stays across launches. Results never change, only speed and memory.

Tip. Leave all three on Auto unless a stack runs out of memory or you share the computer with something else that needs it. A smaller image cache is the first thing to try when another program starves; a larger one helps only when you re-stack the same images repeatedly.

Warp engine

Which processor warps the images during alignment and the crop bake. Auto (the default) times one warp on the GPU and one on the CPU and keeps the faster; on a computer with memory shared between the two, the CPU usually wins. GPU and CPU force the choice. Even forced to the GPU, a kernel that has no GPU shader falls back to the CPU.

Reset to auto and Log hardware summary

Reset to auto clears every override, the three budgets and the warp engine, so all of them follow the hardware probe again. It is only enabled while an override is set. Log hardware summary writes the one-line hardware profile and the effective budgets to the log file and shows the same line in the status bar as “Logged: …”; paste it into a bug report.

Shortcuts

Every action a key can do, grouped by where it applies: File, Stages, Touch up, Images and Finish. The chapter Reference lists the factory bindings. The caption under the title says how the page works: “Click Change, then press the new key combination (Esc cancels). Cmd means ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl elsewhere. Changes save immediately.”

Reading a row

Each row is the action’s name, its key combination in bold, then Change, Clear and Reset. A combination shown in the warning colour is shared with another action in the same group; hover it to read “Also bound to:” and the other action’s name. An action with no key reads unbound.

Two actions in different groups may share a key without conflict, because they are never live at the same time: Undo in Touch up and Undo in Finish both use Cmd Z by default. A held key such as the A/B flip may also share a key with a pressed one.

Change, Clear and Reset

• Change turns the row’s combination into “press keys…” and waits. Press the new combination, modifiers included, and it is bound and saved. Press Esc, or click the button again (it now reads Cancel), to keep the old one. The key you press to bind is not also acted on.
• Clear unbinds the action. It is enabled only while the action has a key.
• Reset returns the row to its factory combination; hover it to read “Factory:” and that combination. It is enabled only while the row differs from the factory.
• Reset all to defaults, at the bottom left of the window, does the same for every row at once.

The bindings live in the file named at the bottom of the window, keybindings.json; hover the name for its full path. The file is plain text, so it can be copied to another computer or edited by hand. Cmd in the file means ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl elsewhere, so one file works on every system.

Tip. Keys only act while no text box has the keyboard. Typing an “f” into the brush Size box stays an “f”; it does not cycle the focus map.

Account

The Account page shows the licence this computer runs under and the spikersoft.com account Stacker publishes with. The same page opens from the far right of the menu bar: a Sign in button when you are signed out, or your user name with a green lock when you are signed in.

The trial, free mode and the licence

Stacker is free to use. A fresh install runs a 30-day evaluation with no limits; add as many images as you like. After it, free mode allows 15 images per stack, and every export, prints, pan videos, share slides and publishes, carries a small QR code pointing at spikersoft.com/stacker. You choose where the code sits and how it looks, under Finish › QR codes. A one-time licence, Buy a licence — $39.99, lifts both limits. The link opens the shop in your browser.

The first lines of the page say which of the three applies:

A licence is checked against spikersoft.com and then kept on this computer, so Stacker keeps working without a connection until the date shown. A licensed copy asks for a fresh copy of the licence once its own is 30 days old, whenever you sign in or, for a key, on its own. If you see “Licence file could not be read — sign in again to restore it”, do that.

The evaluation clock starts at the first launch on this computer. When you sign in, the account’s own first use counts if it is earlier, so a reinstall does not start a new trial.

Why. The 30 days have no limits at all so that you can judge Stacker on your own brackets, at their full depth, before deciding. Free mode after that is meant for the occasional stack; a serious bracket is rarely 15 frames.

What free mode changes

With a free-mode cap in force, an import that would take a stack past 15 images adds only the first of them and says so: “Only {kept} of {n} images were added — free mode allows 15 images per stack.” The count at the head of the image list reads “{n} / 15”. A batch run uses the first 15 images of each folder, sorted by name. A session saved during the evaluation opens whole, however many images it holds; the cap applies to what you add, not to what you saved.

Signing in

Sign in with www.spikersoft.com opens your browser on the spikersoft.com sign-in page; the page says “Opening your browser…” while it waits, and the button is disabled until the browser comes back. Sign in with the same account you use on the website. Once signed in, the page reads “Signed in as {user}”, and Stacker can publish to your gallery and blog, identify subjects, fetch your sponsorship link, make the SpikerSoft QR your referral code, and pick up a licence bought on the website. The session is kept across launches (“Signed in — session restored”).

Sign out replaces the sign-in button once you are in. It forgets the session on this computer; a licence bought with the account stays valid until its offline date.

Enter license key

For a computer that never signs in. The field under Enter license key takes a key in the form shown, SSK-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX; Activate becomes enabled once the text looks like a key. Press it and the page reads “Checking your key…”, then “Licence activated — thank you.” The key is stored on this computer so that the licence renews itself without an account. The field and the button disappear once the computer is licensed.

A refused key says why: “This key is not valid or has been refunded.” or “Too many attempts — try again in a minute.” A stored key that is later refunded or revoked ends the licence: “Licence key no longer valid — exports carry the SpikerSoft QR again.”

Status messages from Settings

Settings is a window, not a step, so it has no status line of its own; a few of its actions write to the status bar at the bottom of the main window:

• “Logged: {summary}” after Log hardware summary.
• “Signed in as {user} — Licensed”, “Signed in as {user} — Trial, {n} days left” or “Signed in as {user} — Free mode” when a sign-in completes.
• “Signed out” after Sign out.

The Account page keeps its own line under the licence text for what it is doing: “Opening your browser…”, “Checking your key…”, “Licence activated — thank you.”, and, in the warning colour, “Sign-in did not finish — try again”, “This key is not valid or has been refunded.”, “Too many attempts — try again in a minute.”, “Licence could not be verified — please update the app.” and “Licence key no longer valid — exports carry the SpikerSoft QR again.”