Lightroom Classic Plugin

The Macro Studio plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic sends selected frames to Macro Studio for stacking and brings every result straight back into your catalog: saved next to your originals, stacked with them, and added to a collection. Lightroom stays fully usable the whole time, and results are imported automatically as you finish and save them in Macro Studio.

Installing the plugin

1. In Macro Studio, choose Integrations → Install Lightroom Plug-in… It copies the plugin into Lightroom’s per-user Modules folder.
2. Restart Lightroom Classic.
3. You’ll find the commands under File → Plug-in Extras.

Re-run the same menu item after updating Macro Studio to refresh Lightroom’s copy of the plugin.

The plugin works with Lightroom Classic only. The cloud-based “Lightroom” app has no plugin support and its external-editor feature sends one photo at a time, which can’t express a focus stack. There, export your frames, stack them in Macro Studio, save the result, and add it back to Lightroom by hand.

Stacking from Lightroom

1. Select the frames of one or more focus brackets in the Grid or Filmstrip. Selecting a single collapsed stack works too, and the plugin stacks that whole burst. Video files in a selection are ignored.
2. Choose File → Plug-in Extras → Stack in Macro Studio…
3. Pick your options (below) and click Stack.

By default your untouched camera files are handed straight over, which keeps the most options open: nothing is clipped on the way, your develop settings still come across, and a Raw DNG becomes possible. You can have Lightroom render TIFFs instead; see What gets sent to Macro Studio below. Either way Macro Studio stacks using the settings currently selected in its Library footer, progress shows in Lightroom’s top-left progress area and on Macro Studio’s own history strip, and you can keep culling while it runs.

For repeat runs, File → Plug-in Extras → Stack in Macro Studio with last settings skips the dialog entirely.

What gets sent to Macro Studio

Lightroom renders exports each frame as a 16-bit TIFF with your develop settings applied, so what you stack is what you saw. The cost is colour: those exports are sRGB, which is narrower than Lightroom’s own working space, so intensely coloured subjects lose the parts that fall outside it. See Very saturated subjects below.

Original RAW files (the default) hands your camera files over untouched. There is no export step at all, so nothing is clipped on the way over and Lightroom has no rendering to do before the job starts. Your develop settings are not baked into the frames, since the stack starts from the raw capture, but most of them travel across separately and arrive on Macro Studio’s Adjustment sliders, already set, waiting for you in the Editor.

Sending renders is not the same as stacking the RAWs

With Lightroom renders you’re stacking Lightroom’s rendering of your frames (TIFF files) rather than the original RAW data, so two things differ by design:

• Brightness. When Macro Studio stacks RAW files it matches the result to your camera’s own JPEG rendering (“Match camera brightness”). A TIFF carries no camera JPEG, so that step is skipped and you get Lightroom’s rendering, typically a little darker.
• Sharpening and contrast. Lightroom has already sharpened and tone-mapped your frames, so the plugin defaults to the Natural look rather than Macro Studio’s usual Enhanced. See Look below.

Sending Original RAW files removes both differences, since Macro Studio then gets exactly the files it would have opened itself: the camera-brightness match applies, and nothing has been sharpened ahead of it, so Enhanced is worth trying there even though Natural stays the default. Most of your Lightroom edits come across too, as Adjustments rather than baked-in pixels. See Which Lightroom edits come across.

Original RAW files also unlocks camera-raw mode if you have that preference on: a plugin stack of your originals runs exactly as it would if you had stacked the same files in Macro Studio yourself, which means a Raw DNG is on offer when you save. Lightroom renders can’t do this: a TIFF is not raw data, so the mode has nothing to work with.

Which Lightroom edits come across

These arrive as Adjustments you can still change: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Texture, Clarity, Vibrance, Saturation and Noise Reduction.

Noise reduction deliberately lands after stacking rather than on each frame, and it is better there. Applied first it smooths away the fine detail Macro Studio measures to work out which frame is sharpest at each point, so the stack itself comes out worse. Applied once, at the end, it does its job on a clean picture.

Sharpening is deliberately not carried across. Lightroom’s Sharpening slider is capture sharpening applied to raw sensor data, and it sits at 40 on every photo whether or not you have touched it. Macro Studio’s is a sharpen applied after blending, on top of a Look that already sharpens. Passing one along as the other would stack two sharpening passes and give you the harsh result the plugin already works to avoid, which is why it turns Lightroom’s export sharpening off and defaults to the Natural look. Macro Studio’s own Sharpness slider is there if you want it.

White Balance comes across too, and it is the one with a condition. It arrives differently from the rest: rather than landing on a slider, it is applied when Macro Studio reads the raw files, the same point at which Lightroom applies it. So the frames are decoded at the white balance you chose, and Macro Studio’s own Temperature and Tint sliders stay at zero, meaning what they always mean: nothing added on top.

White Balance needs the Adobe DNG Converter

Working out what a Lightroom Temperature means for your camera takes that camera’s Adobe colour profile, and Macro Studio reads it from a conversion by Adobe’s free DNG Converter. That is the only extra requirement: white balance does not need camera-raw mode turned on, and works the same either way.

It holds in camera-raw mode too, including the Raw DNG you can save from it. A Raw DNG has no white balance in its pixels at all, so yours is recorded as the file’s own and Lightroom opens it already balanced the way you chose.

Without a converter, white balance is left as the camera recorded it and the rest of your edits still come across. The stack then opens in the Editor under a note saying so, with a link to the converter.

Whites, Blacks and Dehaze get there a third way: Macro Studio has no slider for them, so it hands them straight back in the DNG it saves and Lightroom picks them up as sliders again, untouched, because nothing here ever applied them. (Saving as TIFF drops them: a TIFF carries no develop recipe for Lightroom to read.)

Worth expecting, because it surprises people: these three are missing from the picture while you work on it in Macro Studio, and they come back when the file returns to Lightroom. A stack of a photo you had lifted with Dehaze looks flatter here than the same edit sent over as a Lightroom render, then matches again on the way back. There is a second reason on top of that one: Macro Studio renders raw files neutrally on purpose, with no camera profile and no baseline tone curve, so you start from the capture rather than from somebody’s interpretation of it. A Lightroom render arrives with all of that already applied. Between the two, a raw stack is meant to look flatter than a rendered one, and the contrast is yours to put back.

Left behind: the tone curve, HSL and colour grading (no matching control, and too large to carry blindly), Sharpening (above), and anything that changes the shape of the picture: crop, masks, spot removal, lens corrections and Upright. Those last ones are not merely unsupported: Macro Studio has already aligned and warped the frames by the time they would apply, so replaying a geometric correction on top would distort the result a second time.

If the frames in one stack do not all share the same edits, Macro Studio uses the middle frame’s, the same frame the rest of the stack is colour-matched against.

Only RAW and DNG files can go this way. Anything else in the selection is left out, and the count appears in Lightroom’s progress bar as soon as the job starts, reading stacking 7 frames (1 left out), so you find out while you can still re-pick, not after you’ve saved. The wrap-up then names each one and why, and what to do about it: JPEGs, TIFFs and PSDs are not RAW files, and go across as Lightroom renders instead; a virtual copy has no file of its own (it’s a second set of develop settings over its master); and some photos are simply offline or missing.

Don’t select both the RAW and a converted DNG of the same shot

Lightroom reports every .dng as a DNG, whether it holds untouched sensor data or an already-developed picture, such as a DxO PureRAW output or a stack Macro Studio saved. Both kinds are accepted, because Lightroom offers no way to tell them apart.

That matters if a folder holds both P1010001.ORF and a converted P1010001.dng for the same shot and you select the pair: Macro Studio reads them differently, one as raw sensor data and one as a finished picture, so you get two tone scales blended together and each frame counted twice. Pick one or the other.

When stacking finishes

Every stack opens in Macro Studio for you to finish. Macro Studio hands each finished stack to Macro Studio’s Editor and brings the window forward with the result on screen, so you can retouch, adjust, crop and set the Look before anything is written. (The one exception: if you’re in the middle of a Retouch or Crop session on another image, Macro Studio won’t interrupt it, and the new stack waits in the history strip instead.) Nothing lands in your catalog until you save. When you do, the file appears in Lightroom on its own, stacked with your originals, without needing Synchronize Folder.

On a Lightroom renders job, Macro Studio’s Adjustment sliders start at zero, which surprises people. It’s the right reading: Lightroom applied your develop settings when it rendered the frames, so those edits are already in the picture you’re looking at. The sliders are there for what you want to add on top.

On an Original RAW files job they do not start at zero: Lightroom’s edits were never applied to the frames, so they arrive on the sliders instead, where you can still change them.

If you quit Macro Studio with results you decided not to keep, Lightroom says nothing about them. You already confirmed the discard in Macro Studio, and a run that stacked several bursts would otherwise put up one dialog per burst. Anything you did save still comes back and is still reported.

Lightroom keeps watching for your saves for about two hours, and every save resets that clock, so working steadily through a batch never runs out. If you take longer than that, close Lightroom, or come back the next day, nothing is lost: choose File → Plug-in Extras → Import finished Macro Studio stacks and everything saved since is brought in.

A fully hands-off mode, stacking in the background and importing each result without opening anything, is not offered yet. It works, but it does not behave the same as finishing in Macro Studio: your Lightroom edits would not come across and a Raw DNG could not be written. Rather than give you two modes that put different pictures in your catalog, the choice is withheld until they match.

Splitting one selection into many stacks

Turn on “Split selection into multiple stacks by capture-time gaps” to hand the plugin a whole shoot at once. It starts off every time you open the dialog, on purpose: it changes how many stacks your selection becomes, so a tick left over from last time would quietly turn one deliberate stack into several. (Stack with last settings does repeat your last choice.) With it on: select hundreds of frames, and Macro Studio groups them into separate stacks wherever the gap between consecutive shots exceeds the threshold (default 2 seconds), the same grouping Autostack uses. Runs shorter than the minimum stack size are left out, and the plugin tells you how many frames were skipped at the end.

Where results land

Each result is saved into the same folder as its source frames and imported. (When you finish in Macro Studio, the Save dialog is pointed there for you; saving somewhere else is fine, but Lightroom can only stack photos that live beside their originals. See below.)

• stacked above its first source frame: if you’d already grouped the burst with Lightroom’s Photo → Stacking → Auto-Stack by Capture Time, the result joins that stack;
• with the source frame’s rating, label, title, caption, copyright, GPS and keywords copied over;
• into a per-run collection inside a “Macro Studio” collection set, so a big batch is one click away;
• selected in the grid when the run completes.

Lightroom can only stack photos that live in the same folder, which is why the source folder is the fixed destination. Stacks are created expanded; press S on the result to collapse one, or Photo → Stacking → Collapse All Stacks.

Look

Natural is the default here, and differs from stacking inside Macro Studio (where Enhanced is the default). That’s aimed at Lightroom renders: Lightroom has already applied its own capture sharpening by the time Macro Studio sees those frames, so Enhanced’s extra sharpening and local contrast land as a second pass on top and can read as harsh. Natural skips both.

Sending Original RAW files removes that reason: nothing has sharpened them, so Enhanced is worth trying there. The default stays Natural either way rather than changing under you when you switch what gets sent.

Enhanced is still one click away if you prefer it, and it suits softer, low-contrast subjects. Macro Studio default preference follows your Default Look on new Stacks setting instead.

Output format

You pick this in Macro Studio, not in the plugin, in its own Save dialog, at the moment you save. There is no format control in the plugin dialog because every stack is finished by hand.

• DNG: stays adjustable in Lightroom. It opens there with Macro Studio’s adjustments as a live, editable starting point rather than baked into the pixels. See Save Formats. One difference from DNGs saved inside Macro Studio: a plugin-made DNG reopens as a finished image rather than a re-editable stack project. To re-work a burst, say with a different Look or some Retouch, just re-run it from Lightroom.
• TIFF (16-bit): maximum compatibility with other editors.

Raw DNG needs two things: you sent Original RAW files, and you have camera-raw mode turned on in Preferences. Both together mean the stack ran camera-native, so there is a camera-native result to write one from, and the row appears in Macro Studio’s Save dialog like it would for any stack you ran yourself. With Lightroom renders it can never appear: a TIFF is not raw data.

Re-running a job never overwrites an earlier result: repeats get -2, -3… suffixes.

Very saturated subjects

With Lightroom renders, frames are handed over in sRGB, which is narrower than Lightroom’s own working space. Colours outside sRGB (vivid pinks and magentas especially, so flowers more than insects) are clipped by Lightroom as it exports, before Macro Studio sees them, and can come back looking paler than they did in Lightroom. Switching to Original RAW files fixes this.

Troubleshooting

• “Macro Studio could not be found”: install the app from macrostudio.pro and launch it once (the app records its location for the plugin on every launch), or use the file dialog the plugin offers to point at the app directly.
• “Macro Studio could not be started, or never picked up the job”: the app couldn’t launch or reach its queue. Launch Macro Studio manually and re-run; the job file path shown in the error is kept for diagnosis.
• Quit Macro Studio mid-stack? That is not an error and Lightroom will not report it as one. You get a plain note saying which results came back and which did not. Anything you had already saved is in the catalog; re-run the rest from Lightroom.
• “Macro Studio stopped responding mid-job”: the app crashed, or was force-quit, while stacking. (An ordinary Quit is handled above; a force-quit gives Macro Studio no chance to tell Lightroom anything, so the plugin waits out its timeout instead.) Anything you had already saved comes in with File → Plug-in Extras → Import finished Macro Studio stacks. The job folder named in the message keeps the logs to send us.
• Canceled the Lightroom progress bar? Macro Studio keeps stacking, and each result still opens there for you to finish. Save them, then choose File → Plug-in Extras → Import finished Macro Studio stacks.
• Lightroom says it imported the stack, but you can’t see it: it is in your catalog — Lightroom just hasn’t redrawn. This happens when you’re sitting in the Develop module, which doesn’t re-query its filmstrip for a photo a plugin added. Click into Library and it appears, sometimes after a few seconds. Nothing is lost and there is nothing to re-run.
• Results didn’t stack with my photos: stacking requires the result and sources to be in the same folder; if a source photo was moved or removed from the catalog mid-run, the result still imports, just unstacked.
• The menu item seems to do nothing at all: it shouldn’t any more — the plug-in now puts any unexpected error on screen instead of stopping quietly. It also keeps its own log of every run, saved alongside Macro Studio’s other logs, so Share Feedback → Send Log Files… picks it up with nothing extra for you to find. Send that if the plug-in misbehaves.