Frequently Asked Questions

General

What is focus stacking?

Focus stacking is a technique where you take multiple photos of the same subject at different focus distances, then combine them into one image where everything is sharp. It’s essential in macro photography where depth of field is extremely thin — at high magnification, a single frame might only have a millimeter or two of the subject in focus.

What kind of photos does Macro Studio work with?

Macro Studio is designed for focus-bracketed image sets — a series of photos taken at progressively different focus distances. It works best with macro photography but can also be used for landscape focus blending and product photography.

Does Macro Studio require an internet connection?

No. Stacking, masking, and editing all run entirely on your local machine, and your images are never uploaded for processing. Macro Studio does talk to the network for these things:

License checks — an online check when you first activate, then a quick background re-check each time you launch. It sends your license key, email, a machine identifier, a description of your computer, and a few of your app preferences — see Getting Help.
Update checks — a once-per-day check at launch (toggleable in Preferences), plus manual checks.
An announcement check at launch — asks whether there’s an in-app notice to show, sending your app version and platform.
Species identification (if you use it) — sends the stacked image plus, when your camera recorded them, the GPS coordinates and capture date. See Species ID for what’s sent and why.
Anonymous performance statistics (only if you opt in) — a small summary after a stack, with no images, file names, or personal details. Off until you agree; see Getting Help.
Sending log files or a stack to support (only when you choose to) — see Getting Help.

What languages is Macro Studio available in?

The interface is available in English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Filipino. By default Macro Studio follows your operating system’s language when it’s one the app ships; you can also pick a language explicitly in Preferences. A language change takes effect the next time you start the app. The translation catalogs ship inside the app and language resolution happens locally. Don’t see your language? Let us know and we’ll add it!

What are Library and the Editor?

Macro Studio is split into two modes:

Library (press L) — folder browser, frame strip, stacking controls.
Editor (press E) — post-stack editing surface with masks, adjustments, crop, spot correct, and Save.

See the Quick Start guide for the full workflow.

Licensing

Is there a free trial?

Free trials are currently invite-only — they go out through partner communities and courses rather than from this site. Why invite-only? Because we want to grow at a pace that allows us to continue offering the level of support we’re committed to. If you have a trial link, see Free Trial for how it works and what the app can still do once the 30 days are up.

Either way, every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If Macro Studio doesn’t meet your needs, contact us within 30 days for a full refund — no questions asked.

How much does it cost?

Macro Studio is a one-time purchase. See the pricing page for the current price. All features are included, all updates within the version are included, and you can use it on up to 3 machines.

Can I use my license on multiple computers?

Yes. Each license activates on up to 3 machines (e.g., your desktop and laptop). To move a license to a new machine, deactivate it on the old one first, or contact support to free up a slot.

Do I have to upgrade to future versions?

No. The version you buy is yours to keep and use forever. Future major versions may be released as optional paid upgrades — we haven’t committed to a release cadence yet, and we’ll continue shipping improvements under the existing version for a long while.

Will my version keep getting updates?

Yes. The version you buy continues to receive feature enhancements and bug fixes for the lifetime of that version line. Updates land automatically when you launch the app on an internet-connected machine; there’s nothing to re-buy to get them.

What’s the refund policy?

30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. Contact [email protected] or request a refund through your Paddle receipt. See our Refund Policy for details.

Workflow

How do I edit a single image (no stack)?

Select a single frame in the filmstrip and press Return/Enter, or double-click any thumbnail. Macro Studio opens it in the Editor with the full editing pipeline — masks, adjustments, crop, spot correct, save. No stacking step.

This is also how you re-edit a previously saved TIFF — load the folder it’s in, double-click it.

Does Macro Studio work with Lightroom?

Yes, both ways. Macro Studio ships a plugin for Lightroom Classic: select the frames of a bracket, choose File → Plug-in Extras → Stack in Macro Studio…, and the stack comes back into your catalog automatically, saved next to your originals and stacked with them. Install it from Integrations → Install Lightroom Plug-in… inside Macro Studio. See Lightroom Classic Plugin for the full workflow, including which of your develop settings travel across.

Without the plugin you can still work with Lightroom by hand: export your frames, stack them in Macro Studio, and add the result back. Saving as DNG is worth it there, because your Macro Studio adjustments arrive in Lightroom as live, resettable sliders rather than baked into the pixels.

The cloud-based Lightroom app is a different product and has no plugin support, so it is the by-hand route only.

Can I save multiple formats at once?

Yes. The Save dialog has checkboxes for TIFF, JPEG, and DNG. Check any combination and Macro Studio writes all of them in one pass. See Saving for details.

What’s special about DNG?

DNG is the only format that keeps your work editable. Instead of baking your edits into pixels the way TIFF and JPEG do, a Macro Studio DNG stores the stacked result plus your adjustments as live settings — so Lightroom opens it showing your edits with the sliders still adjustable, and Macro Studio can reopen it with your masks, Look and edit history intact.

The tradeoff is size. On its own Macro Studio writes DNG uncompressed, which makes it larger than the equivalent TIFF — 1.2× to 1.6× on the stacks we’ve measured — not smaller. Install Adobe’s free DNG Converter and Macro Studio compresses each saved DNG through it instead, roughly halving it with identical pixels; that lands it below the TIFF. See Compressed DNG files.

Macro Studio doesn’t watermark DNG output, of either kind — baking a watermark into the pixels would defeat the non-destructive round-trip the format exists for. The watermark Apply to row lists only TIFF and JPEG.

Do I need to use masks?

Not necessarily. Many edits work fine on the Global mask alone — adjust exposure, contrast, color, and you’re done.

Subject and Background masks become useful when you want to treat the in-focus subject differently from the defocused background (e.g. push subject sharpness without sharpening the bokeh, or warm the subject while cooling the background). See Masks for the full picture.

What if the auto-detected Subject mask isn’t quite right?

Click Refine Mask below the mask buttons. The brush editor opens with the current mask loaded, and you can paint additions or erasures to clean up the edges. See Masks for the full editor controls.

Can I undo edits?

Yes. ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z undoes and ⌘⇧Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes, on the image you’re currently looking at. The HISTORY panel in the Editor sidebar shows every edit as a clickable timeline you can step back through.

That covers pixel work too — Retouch strokes, Spot Correct and Defringe gestures can be undone after you Apply them. And if you save as DNG, your history is written into the file, so reopening it later lets you keep undoing. See Edit History & Undo.

Can I stack a whole folder of brackets at once?

Yes — that’s what Autostack does. Point it at a folder that holds several focus brackets and it groups the images into sets by capture time and stacks each set for you, so you can quickly spot the keepers. It runs in the background, so you can keep working while it goes. Open it from File → Autostack a Folder…. See Autostack.

Why don’t I see Masks, Adjustments, or the Retouch and Spot Correct tools in the Editor?

You’re in Standard mode, which keeps the Editor minimal for new users. Flip the Standard / Advanced switch in the top-right of the Editor to Advanced and the full toolkit appears — Masks, Adjustments, History, Spot Correct, Defringe, and Retouch. The Look slider and Crop are available in both modes. New installs start in Standard; the choice is remembered. See Editor overview.

Technical

Which image formats are supported?

Input: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and most RAW formats (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RW2, PEF, SRW, X3F, RAF). 16-bit TIFF and 16-bit PNG are decoded at full precision.

Save: TIFF (16-bit), JPEG, and DNG. See Saving for when to use each.

My camera is brand new — will its RAW files work?

Probably, and if the decoder doesn’t recognise the body yet, Macro Studio won’t just fail.

The best outcome comes from installing Adobe’s free DNG Converter. When it’s on your computer, Macro Studio converts a copy of each unreadable RAW to DNG and stacks that instead — full 16-bit RAW quality, nothing lost. It only ever runs a copy you installed yourself, and it never downloads or installs anything for you. See Cameras too new to decode.

Without the converter, Macro Studio falls back to stacking the JPEG preview your camera embedded in each RAW, and shows a banner naming the body so you know it happened. Those previews are 8-bit and already processed in-camera — white balance, sharpening and noise reduction are baked in, and you lose the latitude you’d normally get from RAW. The stack still works; it just won’t have full RAW quality.

Either way, let us know via Share Feedback → Send Feedback… and we’ll get the body added to the built-in decoder.

How many frames can I stack?

There’s no fixed limit, and frame count usually isn’t what constrains you — sensor resolution is. A 12-frame stack from a 45 MP body demands far more memory than a 50-frame stack from a 20 MP one.

Before each stack Macro Studio estimates what the job needs and compares it against what your machine actually has free. If it’s tight it’ll trade speed for a smaller footprint and tell you so; if there genuinely isn’t enough, it refuses up front with a specific figure rather than failing halfway through. See System Requirements.

The stacked result has artifacts. What can I try?

Make sure your frames overlap sufficiently in their focus zones (no big focus gaps).
Ensure consistent exposure across frames — shoot in manual mode.
Re-shoot any frame that’s motion-blurred or got nudged mid-bracket — a single bad frame can leave a soft patch.
Add a few more frames through the transition where the artifact appears, so the engine has finer focus steps to work with.
Send us the stack. If you can’t get a clean result, right-click it in the history strip and choose Send this stack to us… — that uploads the frames so we can reproduce the problem and help (or improve the engine).

If you’re still seeing issues, contact support and we’ll help troubleshoot. The Share Feedback → Send Log Files… option bundles up your logs and uploads them in one click.

How do I remove purple/green color fringing?

That’s chromatic aberration (CA) on out-of-focus highlights. Switch the Editor to Advanced mode and use the Defringe brush — paint over the fringe and it neutralizes the false color while keeping detail intact. See Defringe.

Why can’t I use DxO DeepPRIME on my stacked file?

Because there’s no sensor mosaic left for it to work on. DeepPRIME denoises and demosaics in one step, straight from the raw mosaic where each pixel records a single colour. Stacking has to demosaic before it can do anything — frames can only be aligned and blended once every pixel has all three colours — so any stacked file, from any program, arrives at DxO already demosaiced. PhotoLab still opens it and develops it properly, but offers only Standard denoising. PureRAW won’t open it at all.

The fix is to change the order: denoise your source RAW frames in PhotoLab first, then stack the denoised DNGs it writes. DeepPRIME gets real sensor data that way, and stacking starts from cleaner frames — which helps alignment as much as it helps noise.

You don’t give anything up by working in that order. PhotoLab’s denoised DNG still carries your camera’s own unprocessed colour, so it joins a camera-raw-mode stack like any other raw file and you still get a Raw DNG at the end.

Which stacking method should I use?

None — there’s nothing to choose. Macro Studio uses a single unified stacking engine that combines the strengths of the old Pyramid and Depth Map methods automatically: more detail, cleaner backgrounds, and fewer artifacts on tricky subjects. Just select your frames and press Stack. See Stacking.

Where are debug logs?

Preferences → Advanced → Reveal Debug Log in Finder… (or Show in Explorer) opens the log folder. Logs rotate automatically; the most recent file is what support typically asks for.

The easier path is Share Feedback → Send Log Files… which bundles + uploads automatically.