Adobe Bridge Plugin

The Macro Studio plug-in for Adobe Bridge sends a focus bracket straight from Bridge to Macro Studio. Right-click your frames, choose Stack in Macro Studio, and the app opens the stacked result ready for you to adjust. Save it into the same folder and Bridge shows it alongside your originals.

Installing the plug-in

1. In Macro Studio, choose Integrations → Install Bridge Plug-in…
2. Say yes when your computer asks permission. Bridge only loads plug-ins from a folder that belongs to the whole computer, so this one cannot install quietly the way the Lightroom plug-in does. macOS asks for your password; Windows asks you to allow the change. Macro Studio tells you before either prompt appears.
3. Restart Adobe Bridge.

You will find Stack in Macro Studio when you right-click a selection, and under the Tools menu. Both do the same thing.

If you would rather not give permission, nothing is broken. Macro Studio puts a copy of MacroStudio.jsx in its own folder, shows you both that file and the folder it needs to go in, and offers to open the two of them for you. A copy you make by hand works exactly the same.

Stacking from Bridge

1. In Bridge, select the frames of one focus bracket.
2. Right-click and choose Stack in Macro Studio.

Macro Studio comes forward, stacks the frames, and opens the result so you can retouch and adjust it. Save it into the folder your frames came from and Bridge picks it up on its own, with no refresh needed.

Bridge stays usable the whole time. The plug-in watches the job in the background rather than blocking, so you can carry on browsing while a stack runs.

One bracket at a time

Everything in one send is treated as one stack. Send two brackets together and you get a single stack of all of them, which is not what you want.

If you have a folder of brackets to get through, Autostack is the tool for that job: it splits a folder into brackets by capture time and stacks them as a batch, without going through Bridge at all.

What gets sent

Your original files, untouched. Bridge has Camera Raw, but rendering the frames first would cost quality for nothing: Macro Studio does its own RAW conversion, and it can only do that from the originals. Nothing is exported, and no copies are written into your folder.

Folders and collapsed stacks in a selection are skipped, so pick the individual files.

A note about Photoshop

This is a Bridge plug-in, and it cannot be a Photoshop one. Photoshop’s plug-in system has no way for a panel to launch another application with a list of files, and its scripting has no timer, so a Photoshop plug-in could not watch for the result without freezing Photoshop while it waited.

Bridge can do both, comes free with every Creative Cloud plan, and is where most photographers browse anyway. Once your stack is saved, Bridge can hand it to Photoshop like any other file.

If nothing happens

• No Stack in Macro Studio command. Restart Bridge; a plug-in is only loaded when Bridge starts. If it is still missing, re-run Integrations → Install Bridge Plug-in… and make sure you allowed the change: macOS asks for your password, Windows asks you to allow it.
• “Macro Studio has not been launched on this computer yet.” Open Macro Studio once and try again. The plug-in finds the app through a file Macro Studio writes each time it starts, which is deliberate: guessing where the app lives is how these integrations break after an update.
• “Select at least two frames.” A single image is not a stack. Folders and collapsed stacks are skipped too.
• Nothing appears in Bridge after saving. Check you saved into the folder Bridge is showing. Macro Studio can save anywhere, and Bridge only watches the folder you are looking at.