Saving

To save your result, click Save… in the top-right corner of the Editor, or press ⌘S / Ctrl+S. The Save Stacked Result dialog opens.

You can pick several formats at once, and Macro Studio writes them all in one pass.

Destination and naming

Folder: where the files go. It starts at the folder your photos came from. Tick Remember this location for next time to keep the folder you chose.
Base name: the file name, without the extension. Each format adds its own.
Configure…: changes your file-name pattern, the same setting as in Preferences.

The default name

The first time you save a stack, Macro Studio builds a name from the folder, the time you stacked it and its Look:

beetles - 2026-07-19 14.32.07 Enh-60.tif

Nat means the Natural look, and Enh-60 means Enhanced at strength 60. A DNG adds its type at the end: MS for a Macro Studio DNG and Raw for a Raw DNG. That way you can save both DNGs without one replacing the other.

To name files your own way, click Configure… and build a pattern from fields like capture date, frame count and species. See Saved file names. To name just one save, type over the Base name.

Saving again

When you save a stack a second time, Macro Studio offers the name you used before, in the same folder. Saving then replaces the old file (it asks first). If you renamed the file in the Library, it uses the new name.

Reopen a DNG that Macro Studio saved, and it offers that file’s name too. Any other file you open, a TIFF included, is first offered with _edited added, so you don’t overwrite it by accident.

Very long names

If the full path is too long for your system, Macro Studio shortens the name it suggests. A name the file already has isn’t shortened. If you type a name that’s too long, it tells you how many characters to remove. This happens most often in deep cloud-sync folders on Windows.

Formats

Tick one or more formats. A short line under each one says what it’s for.

Format	Best for
TIFF	A full-quality master that opens in any editor
JPEG	Sharing online
Macro Studio DNG	Coming back later to keep editing in Macro Studio
Raw DNG	Finishing your photo in Lightroom, DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, ON1 or another raw editor

TIFF 16-bit

Full quality (16 bits per channel) with lossless compression.
All your edits are part of the pixels, so the file looks the same in every app.
Can carry a watermark.

JPEG

High quality, 8 bits per channel. It’s a lossy format, so keep a TIFF or DNG as your master.
Much smaller: about 1-3 MB, where a TIFF is 50-100 MB.
Can carry a watermark.

Macro Studio DNG

This was called the Developed DNG in earlier versions.

Reopen a Macro Studio DNG in Macro Studio and you’re back where you left off: your adjustments, masks, crop, Look and edit history, including undo.

It also opens in Lightroom, Camera Raw and Bridge with your edits showing:

Your Global adjustments arrive as Lightroom’s own sliders, which you can keep editing. Two limits: a negative Sharpness arrives as 0, and a very cool Temperature stops at Lightroom’s coolest setting.
Your masks and crop arrive as Lightroom masks and a Lightroom crop. See Masks and crop in Lightroom.
Other apps (DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, ON1) show the stack without your adjustments, masks or crop. Save a TIFF for those.

A Macro Studio DNG is a little smaller than the TIFF of the same stack. It can’t carry a watermark.

Raw DNG (camera-raw mode)

A Raw DNG is a true raw file, like the ones your camera makes. Lightroom, DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, ON1 and other raw editors develop it just like your camera’s own files. Choose it when you finish your photos in another app.

To get one, turn on Stack RAW photos in camera-raw mode in Preferences before you stack. It needs the free Adobe DNG Converter. Adobe doesn’t make the converter for Linux, so on Linux the Raw DNG row stays grayed out.

What’s in the file

Your Retouch, Spot Correct and Defringe repairs are in the pixels.
Your Look, adjustments and crop are not. You develop the file in your raw editor.
Lightroom still picks up your adjustments, masks and crop as live settings. They look a little different there, because Lightroom renders your camera its own way. The file keeps the white balance it was stacked with: changes to Macro Studio’s white balance sliders don’t carry over.
It reopens in Macro Studio looking the way it did when you saved it.

Which stacks can make one

Every photo must be a RAW file from the same camera. A DNG from your camera works, and so does a denoised DNG from DxO PhotoLab. A Macro Studio DNG, or a finished export from another app, doesn’t.
Fujifilm cameras and Apple ProRAW aren’t supported yet.
If Macro Studio can’t read your camera’s files on its own (Nikon High Efficiency★ RAW, for example), turn on Use Adobe DNG Converter for files not natively supported in Preferences → Advanced.
When a stack can’t make one, it stacks the normal way and the Raw DNG row is grayed out. The line under the row, and the Camera-raw mode row in the Editor’s Info panel, say why. If it could make one in camera-raw mode, and your photos are still where they were, the row offers Stack again in camera-raw mode.
Macro Studio keeps the raw data for your most recent camera-raw stacks only. An older stack can’t make a Raw DNG until you stack it again. You can reopen a Raw DNG you saved and save it as a Raw DNG again.

When you save

Your photos need to be on disk. Saving a Raw DNG from a new stack reads one of your original photos. If you’ve moved them, Macro Studio asks you to find the folder. Re-saving a Raw DNG you reopened doesn’t need them.
Some cloned strokes are left out. Retouch strokes cloned from another Editor image are included only if that image is a camera-raw stack from the same camera, made in this session. Your TIFF and Macro Studio DNG still have them. If none of your repairs can be included, Macro Studio tells you after the save.
You can still undo. After you save over a Raw DNG, you can undo repairs and save again, until you close the image.

DxO DeepPRIME

DxO PhotoLab opens a Raw DNG, but its DeepPRIME denoising isn’t available for it, or for any stacked file. To use DeepPRIME, denoise your RAW photos in PhotoLab first, then stack the DNGs it writes. You still get a Raw DNG. See DxO PhotoLab.

Masks and crop in Lightroom

Both kinds of DNG bring your masks and crop into Lightroom (and Camera Raw in Photoshop and Bridge), where you can keep editing them:

Subject and Background masks arrive as brush masks that trace your mask’s shape. Very soft edges, like fine hair tips, come out a little firmer.
Radial and Linear masks arrive as Lightroom’s own radial and linear gradients. Brush masks arrive as brushes.
Mask sliders look close to Macro Studio’s, but not identical. Lightroom masks have no Vibrance, so a Vibrance change on a mask stays in Macro Studio.
The crop arrives with its rotation, up to Lightroom’s limit of 45°.
Lightroom reads these settings when you import the file. If you save over a file that’s already in your catalog, choose Metadata → Read Metadata from Files in Lightroom.

What travels with the file

	TIFF	JPEG	Macro Studio DNG	Raw DNG
Adjustments in the pixels	Yes	Yes	No, saved as editable settings	No, saved as editable settings
Mask adjustments in other apps	Yes	Yes	In Lightroom, as masks	In Lightroom, as masks
Crop in other apps	Yes	Yes	In Lightroom (rotation up to 45°)	In Lightroom (rotation up to 45°)
Edits still adjustable when you reopen it in Macro Studio	No, they’re part of the pixels	No, they’re part of the pixels	Yes	Yes
Undo pixel edits after reopening	No	No	Yes, while your photos are on disk	No
Watermark	Yes	Yes	No	No
File size	Large	Small	A little smaller than TIFF	About the same as TIFF

Metadata

TIFF and DNG files keep your camera’s details: ISO, capture date and time, exposure, flash, focal length, and GPS location if your camera recorded it. Lightroom and other photo apps show them as usual.

Macro Studio reads these details when the stack starts. Once the stack has finished, you can move your photos and still save with full metadata. (A Raw DNG from a new stack still needs your photos, as described above.)

A very large TIFF is saved in an extended format that leaves these details out.

Watermarks

Tick Add watermark to add a watermark to your TIFF or JPEG. You then get these controls:

Configure Watermarks…: opens the watermark editor, where you make watermark presets.
Watermark: picks which preset to use.
Apply to: picks which formats get it, TIFF and/or JPEG. DNG files can’t carry a watermark.
Size, H Offset and V Offset: change the size and position for this save only. Offsets go from 0 to 100. H = 50, V = 50 is the center, and H = 95, V = 95 is the bottom-right corner.

The PREVIEW pane shows what will be saved. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, and double-click to reset. It shows the watermark only when a ticked format will get one.

Building watermark presets

In the watermark editor, a preset sets the text or image, font, color, opacity, position and size. Set it up once and reuse it. To make a variant, such as a black version of a white watermark, select the preset and click the duplicate button beside + and −.

A preset’s Type is plain text, an image (such as a logo), or an Info card.

Info card watermarks

An Info card fills itself in from each photo’s details, such as camera, lens, exposure, frame count and species. Use one preset for a whole shoot, and each card shows that photo’s own details.

Template and fields. Type any text you like, and click Insert field to add details. The menu shows each field next to its value for the current photo:

Camera: {camera}, {make}, {model}, {lens}
Exposure: {aperture}, {shutter}, {iso}, {focal}, and {exposure} (aperture, shutter and ISO on one line)
Stack: {frames} (“24 frames”), {frame_count} (“24”), {stack_line} (“24 images stacked and edited”)
Subject: {species}, {species_common}, {species_latin}, {species_emoji}, filled in once you’ve run Species ID
Date: {date}
Other: {copyright}, {camera_line} (the full camera summary on one line), {app}, {url}
Logo: {logo} (see below), plus optional Emoji icons

A field with no value is left out, and a line that ends up empty is dropped. So one template works for photos with and without a species, for example. The starting template prints something like:

Olympus OM-1
M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro
f/8 | 1/200 | ISO 200
24 frames

Formatting. Each line can have its own size, bold, italic, alignment and color. Click in a line and use the formatting bar, or click Apply this style to all lines. The template box always shows text in white at one size, so check sizes and colors in the preview.

Logo. Choose an image with the Logo control, then type {logo} on its own line where you want it. It follows that line’s alignment.

Panel. The text sits on a rounded background panel so it’s easy to read. Turn off Show background panel for text only, or change its color, opacity, corner radius and padding.

Size, position and opacity work like any other watermark, and the whole card fades together.

What gets saved

Every file shows the Editor’s current result, with:

All adjustments, on all masks.
The Look and its strength.
Your crop.
Your Retouch, Spot Correct and Defringe work.
The watermark, if you turned it on for that format.

A Macro Studio DNG also saves your edit history, so you can keep undoing after you reopen it.

Saving never changes your original photos. Each result in the Editor’s history strip needs its own save.

Saving runs in the background. The button reads Saving… until it’s done, and you can keep working.

Common choices

A master and a copy to share: tick TIFF and JPEG. Add a watermark and apply it to the JPEG only.
Just for social media: tick JPEG and add a watermark.
Finishing in Lightroom: tick Raw DNG (needs camera-raw mode). It matches your other raw files in Lightroom, and your adjustments, masks and crop come along as live settings. To keep Macro Studio’s own look, tick Macro Studio DNG instead. If you use Lightroom’s AI Denoise, use the Raw DNG: AI Denoise can shift very saturated colors on a Macro Studio DNG (see the FAQ).
For a print lab: tick TIFF only, with no watermark.

Where you finish your RAW photos

The first time you open Macro Studio, it asks What’s your preferred workflow? Your answer picks which DNG is ticked for you:

I plan to do all my edits in Macro Studio, or I only stack JPEG or TIFF files: ticks the Macro Studio DNG and turns camera-raw mode off.
I plan to use Macro Studio for stacking only, and do everything else in an external editor: ticks the Raw DNG and turns camera-raw mode on. Until you install the Adobe DNG Converter, the Raw DNG row stays grayed out, so save a TIFF for now.

Autostack uses the same answer. Decide later asks again next time. Your TIFF and JPEG choices don’t change, and you can tick any format when you save. To change your answer, go to Preferences.

On Linux, Macro Studio doesn’t ask. The Raw DNG isn’t available there, so there’s only one DNG to choose.

Tips

Check the size. A cropped result saves at the cropped size.
JPEG quality is fixed at a high setting. For other settings, save a TIFF and convert it in another app.
The Save dialog remembers your last folder and formats.