The Look

Every stack Macro Studio produces is baked with a Look — a base treatment that runs from Natural, which matches your source frames exactly, to Enhanced, which adds local sharpening and contrast on top.

The LOOK section sits at the top of the Editor’s right sidebar, above Masks. Unlike Masks and Adjustments, it’s visible in both Standard and Advanced mode.

The slider

Six notches, from Natural to Enhanced:

Notch	Reads as	What you get
0	Natural	Matches the source frames exactly — no added sharpening or contrast
20	Enhanced 20%
40	Enhanced 40%
60	Enhanced 60%	The default for new installs
80	Enhanced 80%
100	Enhanced	High local sharpening and contrast

The notches in between blend the two. Many images look great fully Enhanced, but some can look overly processed — a middle notch keeps some of the polish without the crunch. Subjects with fine repeating detail (compound eyes, scale patterns, hair) tend to be where full Enhanced tips over.

The slider commits when you release it, not while you drag, so you get one clean re-render per change rather than a stutter of intermediate ones.

Setting the default for new stacks

Preferences → Default Look on new Stacks sets the Look that gets baked into every new stack. It uses the same six notches.

New installations default to Enhanced 60%. If you’ve been using Macro Studio since before the strength slider existed, your default stays at full Enhanced (100%) — the setting you effectively already had — until you change it yourself. That’s worth knowing if your results look different from a colleague’s on the same file.

Changing this preference affects stacks you make from then on. It doesn’t touch results you’ve already stacked.

Changing the Look after stacking

Move the slider and the image re-renders at the new Look. What happens underneath depends on the result:

Recently stacked images change instantly. Macro Studio retains the material needed for an instant switch on the last 10 stacked images. This is a memory tradeoff, not an arbitrary limit.
Older images re-blend from their source frames on demand. Slower, but the result is identical.
Reopened DNGs and Autostack results re-blend on the first change. This re-decodes the source frames — a bit quicker than the original stack, since the alignment is reused — and every switch after that is instant. The source files must still be on disk.
A reopened Raw DNG can’t change Look at all. The slider is unavailable on it, even with every source frame in place. Its pixels are unprocessed sensor colours that your raw editor develops; re-blending would rebuild them the way Macro Studio develops instead, shifting the whole picture’s colour. Stack the frames again if you want a different Look.

Your edits come with it

Changing the Look does not throw away your work:

Adjustments, Masks and Crop stay editable throughout. They’re parametric — they re-apply to the new base automatically.
Pixel edits are replayed. Retouch strokes, Spot Correct, and Defringe gestures are re-executed onto the new look, in order. You don’t have to redo them, and you don’t have to sequence your work around the Look any more.

This is also why changing the Look invalidates warmed Retouch frames: the source frames shown in Retouch are matched to the result’s current look, so they have to be re-matched when it changes.

When the slider is unavailable

The slider greys out with a reason attached. The common ones:

Reason shown	What to do
”Re-stack to change the look”	The result has no retained blend and can’t be rebuilt from source — an older result, a single-image edit, or a file saved by an older version. Re-stack from the Library.
”Source frames not found — relocate them in Retouch to change the look”	A reopened DNG whose source frames have moved. Open Retouch and use the relocate prompt to point Macro Studio at them.
”Finish or cancel the current edit to change the look”	The canvas isn’t showing a plain result. One of three things: a tool editor is open (Crop, Retouch, Spot Correct, Defringe or the mask brush) — commit it with Apply, or Cancel; a Radial / Linear gradient’s handles are on the image — pick a non-gradient mask (Global, Subject, Background or Brush), since switching Radial↔Linear just moves the handles to the other gradient; or you’re in Compare — exit it.
”Look is locked once Retouch / Spot Correct / Defringe is applied”	The image carries painted pixels Macro Studio can’t reproduce, so re-rendering would drop them. This covers a very long editing session whose stroke history was trimmed, and cloning from another Editor image across an area too large to store in the DNG.
A rebuild is in flight	Another image is rebuilding. Wait for it to finish.

One thing changing the Look does not move: pixels you cloned in from another Editor image. Those came from a finished image with its own look already applied, so they stay exactly as you painted them while everything around them re-renders. On a small blemish fix you won’t see it; across a large area a plain clone can end up looking flat against a re-contrasted frame. Painting with Match tone on avoids it — a tone-matched stroke takes its brightness and colour from the picture it lands in, so it follows the Look with the rest of the image. Check that it’s ticked before you start, because fresh installs begin with it off: each stroke records how it was painted, so a stroke laid without it stays a plain clone even if you tick the box afterwards. See Match tone.

Where the Look shows up

The Look isn’t only a preview setting — it’s recorded in what you save:

The Info panel shows it on a Look row, as Natural, Enhanced, or Enhanced 60%.
The default save filename carries a token: Nat for Natural, or Enh-20 through Enh-100. A file called beetles - 2026-07-19 14.32.07 MS Enh-60.tif was saved at Enhanced 60%.
The saved file’s metadata records it in the Software tag, alongside the frame count.

So a file tells you which Look produced it, long after you’ve forgotten.