Preferences

Open Preferences from File → Preferences…, or press ⌘, / Ctrl+,. On a Mac, it’s also under Macro Studio → Preferences….

Tab	What’s on it
General	Everyday settings, the default Look, where you finish your RAW photos, file names and language.
Keyboard Shortcuts	Change any shortcut, and set what a scroll does on each screen.
Mouse & Scrolling	Scroll direction and wheel sensitivity.
Watermarks	Build the watermark presets the Save dialog offers.
Social Post Tags	The post text and hashtags for Draft Social Post.
Advanced	The scratch folder, the Adobe DNG Converter, and troubleshooting options.

You can leave Preferences open while you try a change in the Library or Editor.

Most settings save as soon as you change them. There’s no OK button. Two exceptions:

• Language takes effect the next time you start Macro Studio.
• Watermarks and Social Post Tags have their own Save and Revert buttons. A tab with unsaved changes shows a dot, and closing Preferences asks first.

To quote a setting in a support email, drag across its name and press ⌘C / Ctrl+C.

General

Confirm before deleting source images

On by default. Asks before Macro Studio moves frames you delete from the filmstrip to the Trash (right-click → Delete from disk, or ⌘Delete / Ctrl+Delete). Ticking Don’t ask again in that dialog turns this off. Either way, ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z right afterwards puts the frames back. See Undoing a delete.

Automatically check for updates on launch

On by default. Checks for a new version once a day, when you open Macro Studio, and offers to download it. The check sends no usage data and no identifying information. With it off, check yourself with File → Check for Updates…. See Installation for how updates install.

Share anonymous performance statistics

Off by default. When it’s on, Macro Studio sends a small anonymous summary after each stack, in the background. This helps make stacking faster on computers that can’t be tested directly. The summary holds:

• the stack size, timings, memory use and which stacking features ran
• your computer’s processor, memory and graphics card model
• your language settings (the app’s language and your system’s locale)
• two numbers that measure color speckle in the finished stack, which catches a rare graphics-card fault (a measurement, not picture content)
• for a run that slows down or fails, that run’s performance log lines, with file paths and file names removed

Statistics never include your photos, file names, folder paths, or your name, email or license. An anonymous ID for this install, not linked to any account, groups the records. There’s no other identifying information. See the Privacy Policy for the full list.

While it’s off, nothing is sent. Macro Studio may offer to turn it on up to three times, after a few good stacks or when a run slows down. It asks at most once per session, and never again once you answer. A stack that fails also shows a Share statistics button on its error message, which doesn’t count toward the three.

Macro Studio keeps a small record of recent runs on your computer either way. It never leaves your computer unless you turn this on.

Show performance notices

On by default. Shows an amber notice when a stack runs slower than usual, most often the reduced-memory notice. Turn it off if you already know why your computer is slow. Stacking works the same either way, and the debug log still records performance. With it off, Macro Studio also won’t offer Share anonymous performance statistics after a slow run.

The notice’s Don’t show again button turns this off too. Turn it back on here.

Enable StackCheck (Beta)

On by default for new installs. If you installed Macro Studio before this became the default, it stays off until you tick it. This feature is a beta.

After a stack, StackCheck may show an amber notice suggesting frames to drop, with a button to stack again without them. It never deletes anything or changes your stack, and it doesn’t change how stacks are made. The notice’s Don’t show again button turns this setting off, too. If a suggestion doesn’t help, let support know.

Match camera brightness in the Editor

On by default. Opens photos and new stacks at the brightness of your camera’s in-camera JPEG, the picture your camera and the Library show you.

Turn it off to start from a flat, neutral raw brightness instead, for example if a bright subject on a dark background looks too bright. It applies to images you open or stack afterwards. To change one image only, use Exposure in Adjustments. See also Improving Your Image.

Stay in the Library after starting a stack

Off by default. Normally, pressing Stack takes you to the Editor. Turn this on to stay in the Library, at the same place in the filmstrip, so you can pick the next set of photos while the stack runs.

A green bar under the EDITOR tab shows the progress of all running stacks, and pulses when they’re done. Press E or click EDITOR to see the results. A set sent from another app, such as ON1 Photo RAW, DxO PhotoLab or Lightroom Classic, still opens in the Editor.

Move to the next photo after rating

On by default. After you press 1-5 to give a star rating, Macro Studio moves to the next photo in the filmstrip. It stops at the last photo. Turn it off to stay on the photo you rated.

Show cursor coordinates

On by default. Shows the pixel position under your pointer in a small pill next to the zoom readout. Use it to say exactly where something is: “a color fringe at (4210,980)”.

• 0, 0 is the top-left corner, and y counts down.
• The numbers are the image’s real pixels, so they don’t change when you zoom. In the Editor, they’re measured on the cropped image.

To copy a position, right-click the picture and choose Copy coordinates. This works even with the readout off, and the same menu has this on/off switch.

The readout shows on the Library and Editor previews, their compare panels, and both Retouch panes. Retouch has no right-click menu, so turn it off there with this setting. Spot Correct, Defringe and the brush-mask editor don’t show it.

Keep the computer awake while stacking

On by default. While a stack or an Autostack batch runs, Macro Studio keeps your computer from going to sleep on its own. A batch keeps it awake for the whole run, including the time spent copying and saving.

• You can still put the computer to sleep yourself, for example by closing a laptop’s lid. This only holds off the idle timer.
• Your screen still turns off as usual on macOS and Windows. On Linux, it depends on your desktop.
• Nothing is held while Macro Studio is idle.

Turn it off if you want your power settings to always win. A stack interrupted by sleep isn’t lost: it carries on when the computer wakes. The same checkbox is on Autostack’s Confirm step.

Default Look on new Stacks

A slider with six stops: Natural, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and Enhanced. It sets the Look of every new stack. Natural adds no extra sharpening or local contrast, Enhanced (100%) adds the full amount, and the stops in between mix the two.

New installs start at 60%. If you used Macro Studio before this slider existed, you keep 100% until you change it. It only affects stacks you make afterwards. To change an existing stack, use the LOOK slider in the Editor.

Where you finish your RAW photos

Your answer to the question Macro Studio asks the first time you open it: In Macro Studio (or I usually stack JPEG or TIFF files), or In Lightroom, Photoshop, ON1, DxO, or another editor. Linux doesn’t show this setting, because the Raw DNG isn’t available there.

A change here applies right away. It sets which DNG the Save window and Autostack tick for you, and whether RAW stacks run in camera-raw mode (the checkbox under Advanced follows it). Your TIFF and JPEG choices don’t change. See Where you finish your RAW photos.

Saved file names

The pattern Macro Studio uses to name a stack when you save it. It fills in the Base name in the Save window, and it’s the caption under each stack in the Editor’s history strip. Autostack uses it too, after an Autostack 001 - prefix.

Type any text, and click Insert field to add details from the photo. The menu shows each field with an example value:

• Camera: {camera}, {make}, {model}, {lens}
• Exposure: {aperture}, {shutter}, {iso}, {focal}
• Date: {date} and {time} (when you took the photo), {stack_date} and {stack_time} (when you stacked it), {today}
• Stack: {frame_count} (“24”), {look} (Nat or Enh-60)
• File: {folder} (the folder your photos came from), {first_file} / {last_file}, {first_num} / {last_num} (the frame numbers of the first and last photo, read from the number in the file name that changes from photo to photo), {dng_type} (see below)
• Subject: {species}, {species_common}, {species_latin}, filled in once you run Species ID
• Other: {app}, {url}, {version}

{dng_type} adds MS to a Macro Studio DNG’s name and Raw to a Raw DNG’s, and nothing to a TIFF or JPEG. With it in your pattern, a DNG adds its type even to a name you type in the Save window. Without it, a DNG gets no type unless you save both DNGs at once.

The Example line shows the finished name as you type. Reset puts back the standard pattern:

{folder} - {stack_date} {stack_time} {look} {dng_type}

The Info card fields {frames}, {exposure}, {camera_line} and {copyright} aren’t offered here. For the first three, use the separate fields above.

Macro Studio tidies the name so your computer can save it:

• Characters a file name can’t hold become a hyphen: 1/200 becomes 1-200. The same goes for : * ? " < > |.
• An empty field takes its separator with it. {folder} - {species_common} - {date} with no species gives bees - 2026-06-21.
• If every field is empty, you get the standard name.

The pattern only sets the name the first time you save a stack. After that, Save offers the name the file already has (see Saving again). The Save window’s Configure… button opens this same setting.

The old Prepend date checkbox is gone. If you had it ticked, your pattern already starts with the matching date field.

Language

Sets the language of the app. System default uses your computer’s language if Macro Studio has it, and English if not. Or pick one:

English · Deutsch · Español · Filipino · Français · Italiano · Nederlands · Tiếng Việt · Русский · Українська

A change takes effect after you restart Macro Studio. Product names like Autostack, and format names like TIFF, DNG and RAW, stay the same in every language. Filipino keeps common photo terms in English. In Vietnamese and Filipino, a few standard menus, like Cut/Copy/Paste in text fields, stay in English. The translations come with the app, and the language is chosen on your computer.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Change any command’s shortcut: click a field and press the keys you want. It works right away. If another shortcut already uses those keys, Macro Studio refuses them and tells you.

Use the search box to filter by action, section or key, and click a section heading to fold it. Each row has its own Reset link, and Reset All to Defaults restores everything. See Keyboard shortcuts for every action, its default, and how Reset works.

The Mouse gestures section uses menus instead of key fields:

• For each screen, choose what a scroll does: Zoom, Brush size, Brush feather, Brush strength or Step frames. Picking a gesture another action uses swaps the two, on that screen only. See Wheel gestures, per screen.
• All editors: Hold to pan the canvas, the last row, sets the key that turns a left-drag into a pan in the Retouch, Brush, Spot Correct and Defringe editors. Spacebar is the default. ⌥ / Alt, Shift and ⌘ / Ctrl are the other choices. Right-drag and middle-drag always pan.

If you make Shift your pan key, Shift keeps its painting jobs on the pane you paint on: flipping add/erase in the mask Brush, and drawing a straight line in Retouch. Pan there with right-drag.

Mouse & Scrolling

These settings apply everywhere.

• Scroll direction for navigation: which way a scroll counts as forward when you step through frames, history and brush sizes. Automatic (the default) follows your system’s scroll setting. If that feels backwards, pick Standard (traditional mouse wheel) or Inverted (natural scrolling / trackpad). Canvas zoom always follows your system setting.
• Scroll sensitivity: how far you scroll to move one frame or brush step. Set automatically for this mouse is on by default and right for most people. Macro Studio measures your wheel so one click moves one step, smooth-scrolling wheels included. Turn it off to set the slider yourself.
• The strip under the slider steps like the filmstrip, so you can try a setting. Scrolling over it also measures your mouse. After about six clicks, the status line shows what it found. A new mouse is measured the same way.

On a Mac, trackpads and Apple mice ignore the sensitivity setting. If you scroll the strip with one, an amber note says so.

On Windows, a touchpad is treated like a mouse wheel. If scrolling ever feels off, six clicks of a real mouse wheel fix it. With no mouse attached, restart the app, or turn off Set automatically and leave the slider on 120.

Watermarks

Build the watermark presets you pick from in the Save dialog. A preset can be text, an image, or an Info card that fills in each photo’s details (see Info card watermarks). Set its position (any corner, top or bottom center, or center), opacity, font, color, size and padding. To start a variant, select a preset and click the duplicate button beside + and −.

This tab keeps your edits until you click Save. Revert throws them away. If the presets change elsewhere while the tab is open (from Configure Watermarks… in the Save dialog, or the Share panel’s gear), the tab reloads them, and asks first if you have unsaved edits.

Social Post Tags

The settings for Draft Social Post. The gear icon in the draft dialog opens the same editor.

• Add hashtags: off at first, and while it’s off, posts get no hashtags. It’s the same setting as the checkbox in the draft dialog.
• The post body: a caption template with {fields} that fill in from each photo. Insert field lists every field, and the preview shows the finished post.
• Hashtags in four groups: universal ones for every post, plus insect, plant and mushroom ones used only when the subject matches.
• A limit on how many hashtags one post gets.

You can edit the tag lists while Add hashtags is off. Like Watermarks, this tab has its own Save and Revert buttons, and reloads changes made elsewhere (from the Share panel’s gear or the species panel’s) the same way.

Advanced

Scratch folder for stacking

By default, stacking writes its temporary files (often several gigabytes) to your system drive. If that drive is small, choose a roomier one.

• Choose…: pick a folder. If Macro Studio can’t write there, it warns you and doesn’t use it. On Linux, the picker has a Show hidden folders checkbox.
• Use default: go back to the system’s temporary folder.

Choose a fast local drive, not a network drive or removable media. The change applies to stacks you start afterwards. If stacking fails with a disk-space error, change this setting. See System requirements for how much space you need.

Don’t delete the macrostack-… folders there while Macro Studio is open, because it may be using them. You don’t need to clean them up. Macro Studio removes them itself, and clears any left by a crash the next time it starts.

Adobe DNG Converter

Adobe’s DNG Converter is free. If you install it, Macro Studio uses it to open RAW files from cameras too new for its built-in decoder, and to add the color profile to a Raw DNG. Macro Studio never downloads, installs or bundles the converter. It only runs a copy you installed yourself.

The status line says whether the converter was found and which version it is, and links to Adobe’s download page if not. The checkboxes appear once it’s found. Adobe doesn’t make the converter for Linux. On Linux, the status line says so, and Macro Studio opens RAW files with its own decoder. You don’t need to restart after installing it. A stack that’s already running finishes without it, and Preferences shows the converter as not found until that stack ends.

• Use Adobe DNG Converter for files not natively supported: on by default. It only matters for files Macro Studio can’t open on its own, so it costs nothing for supported cameras. Turn it off and those files fall back to their embedded JPEG preview, or fail to open. See Cameras too new to decode.

  Camera-raw mode uses the converter even with this box off. But for photos only the converter can read (from a camera too new for the built-in decoder, or a format such as Nikon’s High Efficiency★ RAW), camera-raw mode needs this box on. If it’s off, camera-raw mode doesn’t run for them, and the Editor’s Info panel tells you to turn it on.

• Stack RAW photos in camera-raw mode: off by default, and turned on when you tell Macro Studio you finish your photos in another editor. RAW stacks then run in the camera’s own color space, and can also be saved as a Raw DNG for Lightroom, DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, ON1 and other raw editors. Leave it off unless you want those raw files. With it on, every stack takes a little longer, and results differ slightly from normal mode.

• Locate…: point Macro Studio at a converter installed somewhere unusual. On macOS you can pick the .app itself. Macro Studio refuses anything that isn’t the Adobe DNG Converter.

Disable GPU acceleration

Off by default, and best left off. Macro Studio uses your graphics card for parts of stacking, which makes it much faster. Tick this to do that work on the main processor instead. Everything still works, but stacking gets slower, and so do Source Cloning and the Subject mask.

Use it to find out whether the graphics card is to blame. If a stack shows streaks, blocks of noise, wrong colors or other damage that doesn’t look like a focus problem, stack it again with this ticked. If the problem goes away, it’s the graphics driver, and you can leave the box ticked until the driver is updated.

The change applies to the next stack, with no restart. On an Intel Mac, Macro Studio already stacks without the graphics card, so this only changes how the Subject mask runs.

If you turn this on, mention it when you contact support, and say whether it helped.

Reset Welcome Tour

Brings back the Welcome card and tour the next time you load a folder. It also asks again how you plan to work, which picks your default DNG, starting on your last answer.

Reset Announcement Banner

Brings back an announcement you closed with its ✕ (the thin strip that sometimes appears under the mode tabs). It comes back the next time you start Macro Studio, on this computer only. If it doesn’t, that message has ended or wasn’t meant for your version, system, license type or settings.

Reveal Debug Log in Finder… (or in File Explorer…)

Opens the folder with Macro Studio’s debug logs. Share Feedback → Send Log Files… is usually easier, because it uploads them for you. See Getting Help.

Version footer

The bottom-left corner shows the version number and build. Include them when you contact support.

Missing a setting?

Macro Studio aims for one good answer instead of lots of switches. If you need a setting that isn’t here, email support.

See also

• Look: what the Default Look slider controls.
• System requirements: how much scratch space and memory a stack needs.
• Keyboard shortcuts: every shortcut, and which ones you can change.
• Saving: where watermark presets are used.
• Species ID and social posts: where social post tags are used.
• Getting Help: sending log files to support.