Lightroom Classic Plugin

The Macro Studio plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic sends selected frames to Macro Studio for stacking. When you save a result, it comes back into your catalog on its own: next to your originals, stacked with them, and added to a collection. You can keep using Lightroom while Macro Studio works.

Installing the plugin

In Macro Studio, choose Integrations → Install Lightroom Plug-in…
Restart Lightroom Classic.
Right-click a selection and choose Export → Macro Studio (RAW), or use the commands under File → Plug-in Extras.

The plugin works with Lightroom Classic only. The cloud-based Lightroom app has no plugin support. There, export your frames, stack them in Macro Studio, and add the result back to Lightroom by hand.

Keeping the plugin up to date

Macro Studio updates the plugin each time you launch a new version. When an update changes the plugin, Macro Studio asks you to restart Lightroom Classic the next time you send a stack. Your stack runs normally either way.

If the update can’t finish, the Integrations menu shows Installed plug-in is out of date. Choose Integrations → Install Lightroom Plug-in… to fix it. It’s safe to run at any time.

Stacking from Lightroom

Select the frames of one or more focus brackets in the Grid or Filmstrip. You can also select one collapsed stack to stack the whole burst. Video files are ignored.
Right-click the selection and choose Export → Macro Studio (RAW).

The stack starts right away, with no dialog, using the stack settings in Macro Studio’s Library footer. Progress shows in Lightroom’s top-left corner and in Macro Studio’s history strip. You can keep culling while it runs.

Two other routes do the same job:

File → Export…, then pick Macro Studio at the top of the dialog. You see the options first, and you can save a preset that joins the right-click menu.
File → Plug-in Extras → Stack in Macro Studio… opens the plugin’s own dialog. Only this route can split one selection into many stacks. Stack in Macro Studio with last settings repeats your last run without the dialog.

What gets sent to Macro Studio

In the right-click menu, choose Macro Studio (RAW) or Macro Studio (TIFF). In the dialogs, choose under Send to Macro Studio as.

	RAW (the default)	TIFF
What’s sent	Your camera files, untouched	A 16-bit TIFF of each frame, rendered by Lightroom with your edits
Your Lightroom edits	Most arrive on Macro Studio’s Adjustment sliders	Already in the pixels, so the sliders start at zero
Brightness	Matched to your camera’s own JPEG	Lightroom’s rendering, usually a little darker
Very saturated colors	Kept	Vivid pinks and magentas can come out paler (sRGB)
Raw DNG	Yes, when camera-raw mode is on	No
Files written to disk	None	One TIFF per frame, beside your photos

Start with RAW. Choose TIFF when you want to stack exactly what you saw in Lightroom.

Which Lightroom edits come across

When you send RAW:

On Macro Studio’s sliders: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Texture, Clarity, Vibrance, Saturation and Noise Reduction. Noise Reduction is applied to the finished stack, not to each frame.
White Balance: the frames open at the white balance you chose, and Macro Studio’s Temperature and Tint stay at zero. This needs the free Adobe DNG Converter, but not camera-raw mode. Without it, white balance stays as shot, and the Editor shows a note with a link to the converter. A Raw DNG keeps your white balance for Lightroom.
Dehaze: Macro Studio has no Dehaze slider, so you won’t see it while you edit. It’s saved in the DNG, and Lightroom shows it again. A TIFF drops it.
Left behind: Sharpening, the tone curve, HSL, color grading, crop, masks, spot removal, lens corrections and Upright. For sharpening, use Macro Studio’s Sharpness slider.

If the frames have different edits, Macro Studio uses the middle frame’s.

A raw stack looks flatter in Macro Studio than in Lightroom. Dehaze is missing, and Macro Studio shows raw files neutrally, with no camera profile or tone curve. Add the contrast you want.

Only RAW and DNG files can be sent as RAW. As soon as the job starts, Lightroom’s progress bar shows how many were left out, for example stacking 7 frames (1 left out). At the end, the plugin names each one. Send JPEGs, TIFFs and PSDs as TIFF instead. Virtual copies, and offline or missing photos, can’t be sent as RAW. Send a virtual copy as TIFF instead.

Where the exported TIFFs are kept

Only TIFF writes files. Lightroom saves them in a folder named MS-export TIFFs beside your photos, with one subfolder per run. When a stack comes back, the plugin tells you which folder it used.

They’re yours to delete. Macro Studio needs them only to reopen a DNG saved from that stack and use Retouch or change the Look. Without them, the DNG still opens and still develops in Lightroom. Sending RAW avoids this, because it writes no files.

Watch the space. Each TIFF takes about 6 MB per megapixel: about 120 MB a frame on a 20-megapixel camera.

They aren’t added to your catalog, but Lightroom’s Synchronize Folder imports them. To stop that, tick Show import dialog before importing, then untick the TIFFs.
Autostack skips this folder.

To change where they go, choose File → Plug-in Manager → Macro Studio and set Keep exported TIFFs. In a temporary folder suits photos on a slow network drive, but you lose Retouch and the Look control on DNGs you save.

When stacking finishes

Macro Studio switches to its Editor as soon as the job arrives. Each finished stack opens there for you to retouch, adjust, crop and set the Look. If you’re in Retouch or Crop on another image, Macro Studio doesn’t interrupt you. The new stack waits in the history strip.

Nothing goes into your catalog until you save. Then the file appears in Lightroom on its own, stacked with your originals.

Lightroom watches for your saves for about two hours, and each save restarts the clock. If you take longer, or close Lightroom, choose File → Plug-in Extras → Import finished Macro Studio stacks to bring in everything saved since.

StackCheck works on these stacks too. If you restack without a frame, the one you save goes back to Lightroom. The restack starts again from your Lightroom edits. Slider changes you made in Macro Studio aren’t copied.

Splitting one selection into many stacks

Only File → Plug-in Extras → Stack in Macro Studio… offers this.

Turn on Split selection into multiple stacks by capture-time gaps to send a whole shoot at once. Macro Studio starts a new stack wherever the gap between shots is longer than the threshold (2 seconds by default), like Autostack does. Runs shorter than the minimum stack size are skipped, and the plugin tells you how many frames it skipped.

The option is off each time you open the dialog. Stack in Macro Studio with last settings repeats your last choice.

Where results land

Each result goes in the same folder as its source frames. Macro Studio’s Save dialog points there for you. You can save somewhere else, but Lightroom can only stack photos in the same folder. The result is:

stacked above its first source frame. If you grouped the burst with Photo → Stacking → Auto-Stack by Capture Time, it joins that stack.
given the source frame’s rating, label, title, caption, copyright, GPS and keywords.
added to a collection for the run, inside a Macro Studio collection set.
selected in the grid when the run finishes.

Stacks open expanded. Press S on the result to collapse it, or choose Photo → Stacking → Collapse All Stacks. Running a job again never overwrites an earlier result: repeats get -2, -3 and so on.

Look

The plugin’s Look starts on Natural, not Enhanced as it does inside Macro Studio. Lightroom has already sharpened TIFF frames, so Enhanced’s extra sharpening can look harsh. With RAW, Enhanced is worth trying. It also suits softer, low-contrast subjects. Macro Studio default preference follows your Default Look on new Stacks setting.

Output format

You choose the format in Macro Studio’s Save dialog, not in the plugin. See Saving.

Tick more than one format and you get each one back, imported and stacked with your originals.
Macro Studio DNG opens in Lightroom with Macro Studio’s adjustments as live settings, and reopens in Macro Studio for more editing. If you sent TIFF, Retouch and the Look control also need the MS-export TIFFs folder.
Raw DNG needs two things: you sent RAW, and camera-raw mode is on in Preferences.

Troubleshooting

Macro Studio isn’t in my Export menu. Install the plugin from Macro Studio’s Integrations menu, then restart Lightroom Classic.
The Export dialog has almost nothing in it. That’s normal. File Settings, Image Sizing, Sharpening and Export Location don’t apply, so they’re hidden. Choose what to send under Send to Macro Studio as.
“Macro Studio could not be found.” Install the app from macrostudio.pro and open it once. Or use the file dialog the plugin offers to point to the app.
“Macro Studio could not be started, or never picked up the job.” Open Macro Studio yourself and run the job again.
You quit Macro Studio during a stack. Lightroom shows which results came back. Anything you saved is in your catalog. Run the rest again.
“Macro Studio stopped responding mid-job.” The app crashed or was force-quit. To bring in anything you saved, choose File → Plug-in Extras → Import finished Macro Studio stacks. The job folder named in the message has logs you can send.
You canceled Lightroom’s progress bar. Macro Studio keeps stacking. Save the results, then choose File → Plug-in Extras → Import finished Macro Studio stacks.
Lightroom says it imported the stack, but you can’t see it. The Develop module doesn’t redraw for photos a plugin adds. Click Library, and it appears, sometimes after a few seconds.
Results didn’t stack with my photos. The result and its sources must be in the same folder. If a source photo was moved or removed from the catalog during the run, the result imports unstacked.
The plugin misbehaves. It keeps its own log. In Macro Studio, choose Share Feedback → Send Log Files… to send it with the app’s logs.