Lightroom 2 - auto stack RAW with JPEG? Propagate changes through stacK?

Eruditass · 09-16-2009, 08:44 AM

Is there any way to do this automatically? Stacking by capture time with 1s doesn't quite work all the time.

It would be really sweet to be able to do this in addition to stacking by time...

I like to shoot RAW+, with some in-camera settings that work good enough if there is easy lighting. For everything else, I like using RAW. And I don't like switching from RAW+ because of course sometimes when I review a picture later, I decide I want to do more with it and need the RAW.

Also, obviously when I view images with RAW and JPEG stacked, I like to go through them with all stacks collapsed. However, in grid mode, I go through and mark them in various ways, but it only changes the top image (JPEG). Any way to set lightroom to propagate the changes to everything in the stack?

photog · 09-16-2009, 05:23 PM

I am inclined to doubt it. An underexposed RAW file can be extensively improved. The same change applied to a JPG or TIFF for that matter would blow the highlights off the map.The same applies to almost every other setting you might want to change.
As I understand stacking it is most useful for identical or nearly identical subject matter.

Eruditass · 09-17-2009, 09:20 AM

I want an easy way to have both files in Lightroom with an easy way to tag both at the same time and remove one or the other at my disposal. I am surprised that this option doesn't seem available and if I don't check treat them as separate, I only get the significantly larger RAW.

An underexposed RAW file is what I will keep the RAW for and not save the JPG. A perfectly exposed in good lighting JPG file that needs little to no processing is what I will delete the RAW file for.

pingflood · 09-17-2009, 05:12 PM

I am still surprised that Adobe won't let you import RAW+JPEG and then toggle between the two and optionally delete either. It's been pissing me off since day one.

Eruditass · 09-17-2009, 11:06 PM

I'm getting fed up with it, I think I will just disable treat JPEG as separate file and just do RAW, waiting for them to fix it.

In the mean time, anyone have a Lightroom preset that mimics Pentax's in-camera processing?

photog · 09-20-2009, 09:59 PM

Can anyone here please tell me why on earth you would want to use Lightroom 2 to mimics Pentax's in-camera processing?

I am a LR2 addict and it enables me to reach an image quality that is far greater than an image straight off the camera in JPG can achieve.

pingflood · 09-21-2009, 05:10 AM

Originally posted by photog

Can anyone here please tell me why on earth you would want to use Lightroom 2 to mimics Pentax's in-camera processing?

I am a LR2 addict and it enables me to reach an image quality that is far greater than an image straight off the camera in JPG can achieve.

Not a Pentax user, but I would love for LR to be able to replicate what Canon's in camera or DPP software produces. The out of camera JPEGs are often near-ideal and it would be great to have them as a "starting point". I shoot a lot and would rather spend time behind a camera than at the computer post processing.

I don't think he wants it to *just* mimic the Pentax in camera processing, but rather to start out with those settings and go from there. That, I can understand perfectly.

philbaum · 09-23-2009, 11:11 AM

Originally posted by photog

Can anyone here please tell me why on earth you would want to use Lightroom 2 to mimics Pentax's in-camera processing?

I am a LR2 addict and it enables me to reach an image quality that is far greater than an image straight off the camera in JPG can achieve.

photog, i agree with you.

6 month back, i used RAW plus exclusively so I could use Windows XP thumbnails in the windows viewer. Then I decided the jpegs were just creating a huger pile of images to back up and store. I laboriously went through all my 20,000 images and deleted all the redundant jpegs. Using LR to import and manage all images made it unnecessary to have the jpegs. Then recently with a new machine and Vista, i have a Codec viewer that shows me all the thumbnails, even wtihout lightroom.

Another reason for not doing in camera sharpening and processing, is it just increases any noise until you can get it through a noise program. For low iso's, noise isn't usually problem of course, but why do things differently for jpegs and RAW. The workflow recommendations i've read indicate one should treat images for noise prior to any other processing. sharpening images in the camera just increases the initial noise level.

jpegs always seem like "concrete" to me after you've worked with RAW. But then i enjoy working with a few good images to make them special.

Eruditass · 09-23-2009, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by pingflood

Not a Pentax user, but I would love for LR to be able to replicate what Canon's in camera or DPP software produces. The out of camera JPEGs are often near-ideal and it would be great to have them as a "starting point". I shoot a lot and would rather spend time behind a camera than at the computer post processing.

I don't think he wants it to *just* mimic the Pentax in camera processing, but rather to start out with those settings and go from there. That, I can understand perfectly.

Yep, that is correct, I want the color and contrast to start out from.

Originally posted by philbaum

Another reason for not doing in camera sharpening and processing, is it just increases any noise until you can get it through a noise program. For low iso's, noise isn't usually problem of course, but why do things differently for jpegs and RAW. The workflow recommendations i've read indicate one should treat images for noise prior to any other processing. sharpening images in the camera just increases the initial noise level.

jpegs always seem like "concrete" to me after you've worked with RAW. But then i enjoy working with a few good images to make them special.

JPEGs for me will be the minimally processed low noise great lighting images. The workflow consists of import, crop, export. My RAW workflow is much more intricate (noise reduction first, tons of stuff in-between, sharpening last) and I prefer not to have that with those that look just fine as JPEG.

pingflood · 09-23-2009, 12:20 PM

Originally posted by philbaum

photog, i agree with you.

6 month back, i used RAW plus exclusively so I could use Windows XP thumbnails in the windows viewer. Then I decided the jpegs were just creating a huger pile of images to back up and store. I laboriously went through all my 20,000 images and deleted all the redundant jpegs. Using LR to import and manage all images made it unnecessary to have the jpegs. Then recently with a new machine and Vista, i have a Codec viewer that shows me all the thumbnails, even wtihout lightroom.

Another reason for not doing in camera sharpening and processing, is it just increases any noise until you can get it through a noise program. For low iso's, noise isn't usually problem of course, but why do things differently for jpegs and RAW. The workflow recommendations i've read indicate one should treat images for noise prior to any other processing. sharpening images in the camera just increases the initial noise level.

jpegs always seem like "concrete" to me after you've worked with RAW. But then i enjoy working with a few good images to make them special.

I think you guys are missing the point here. This isn't a RAW vs JPEG discussion, it's a "Can Lightroom have the default RAW development settings make the result look like the default in-camera JPEG?" discussion. This is exactly what I get using Canon's supplied DPP software -- the camera settings are used as the default for the RAW development and if I want I just accept that and I get an image identical to the in-camera jpeg. If I don't like it, I can tweak from that point and then develop the RAW once satisfied with those tweaks. Unfortunately DPP is pretty poor for anything other than RAW development, so I end up taking the resulting file and shoving in Lightroom for cataloging and other editing.

photog · 09-23-2009, 10:17 PM

pingflood: The actual question was, " Lightroom 2 - auto stack RAW with JPEG? Propagate changes through stacK?"
It seems to me that like myself most of the respondents do not know whether LR2 can autostack and propogate changes throughout the stack. That being the case we have taken a lesson from the polititions and answered the question we want to answer.

Eruditass · 09-23-2009, 10:48 PM

I found out the answer was no and that lightroom doesn't care about RAW+ users. So I am making the change to RAW only and want a good starting point / minimal processing for the certain shoots where I have just way too many images and the people would essentially be pretty happy with in-camera JPEGs (save a few images that I will need/want to RAW process)

emalvick · 09-24-2009, 07:31 AM

Originally posted by photog

pingflood: The actual question was, " Lightroom 2 - auto stack RAW with JPEG? Propagate changes through stacK?"
It seems to me that like myself most of the respondents do not know whether LR2 can autostack and propogate changes throughout the stack. That being the case we have taken a lesson from the polititions and answered the question we want to answer.

In my experience, it is fairly easy to have Lightroom auto-stack images. I utilize the feature based on a time stamp and a fairly short interval. It seems that 0 should work, since in theory Raw+ images are the same image thus the same Exif time stamp, but it doesn't work. I usually have to go with a time difference that is as small as allowed but greater than 0.

As for propagating changes. That doesn't really seem to be possible, at least not automatically. You can utilize features such as copying settings from one image to another and there are simpler ways than others to do that, but nothing goes as far as affecting a whole stack automatically. I've tried with respect to panoramas I've shot that I've stacked and wanted to apply one setting for the whole stack. I usually end up utilizing one of the features where you multi-select all the images in the stack and make sure the primary one you've edited is the focus and then synchronize the develop settings to the other images.

emalvick · 09-24-2009, 07:35 AM

Originally posted by Eruditass

I found out the answer was no and that lightroom doesn't care about RAW+ users. So I am making the change to RAW only and want a good starting point / minimal processing for the certain shoots where I have just way too many images and the people would essentially be pretty happy with in-camera JPEGs (save a few images that I will need/want to RAW process)

You should try some of the presets posted by Mithrandir. There are now 3 threads with some nice presets in them.

Click here for a recent thread set of presets from back in August that are nice because there is also a batch that goes step by step should the "one step" preset not work.

There are, however, two other threads that could be useful, and you can search the web for many more.

09-16-2009, 08:44 AM	#1
Eruditass Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,207	Lightroom 2 - auto stack RAW with JPEG? Propagate changes through stacK? Is there any way to do this automatically? Stacking by capture time with 1s doesn't quite work all the time. It would be really sweet to be able to do this in addition to stacking by time... I like to shoot RAW+, with some in-camera settings that work good enough if there is easy lighting. For everything else, I like using RAW. And I don't like switching from RAW+ because of course sometimes when I review a picture later, I decide I want to do more with it and need the RAW. Also, obviously when I view images with RAW and JPEG stacked, I like to go through them with all stacks collapsed. However, in grid mode, I go through and mark them in various ways, but it only changes the top image (JPEG). Any way to set lightroom to propagate the changes to everything in the stack?

09-17-2009, 11:06 PM	#5
Eruditass Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,207 Original Poster	I'm getting fed up with it, I think I will just disable treat JPEG as separate file and just do RAW, waiting for them to fix it. In the mean time, anyone have a Lightroom preset that mimics Pentax's in-camera processing? Last edited by Eruditass; 09-17-2009 at 11:59 PM.

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09-16-2009, 05:23 PM	#2
photog Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Brisbane, Qld, Australia Posts: 165	I am inclined to doubt it. An underexposed RAW file can be extensively improved. The same change applied to a JPG or TIFF for that matter would blow the highlights off the map.The same applies to almost every other setting you might want to change. As I understand stacking it is most useful for identical or nearly identical subject matter.

09-17-2009, 09:20 AM	#3
Eruditass Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,207 Original Poster	I want an easy way to have both files in Lightroom with an easy way to tag both at the same time and remove one or the other at my disposal. I am surprised that this option doesn't seem available and if I don't check treat them as separate, I only get the significantly larger RAW. An underexposed RAW file is what I will keep the RAW for and not save the JPG. A perfectly exposed in good lighting JPG file that needs little to no processing is what I will delete the RAW file for.

09-17-2009, 05:12 PM	#4
pingflood Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Borås, Sweden Photos: Gallery Posts: 3,169	I am still surprised that Adobe won't let you import RAW+JPEG and then toggle between the two and optionally delete either. It's been pissing me off since day one.

09-20-2009, 09:59 PM	#6
photog Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Brisbane, Qld, Australia Posts: 165	Can anyone here please tell me why on earth you would want to use Lightroom 2 to mimics Pentax's in-camera processing? I am a LR2 addict and it enables me to reach an image quality that is far greater than an image straight off the camera in JPG can achieve.

09-21-2009, 05:10 AM	#7
pingflood Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Borås, Sweden Photos: Gallery Posts: 3,169	Originally posted by photog Can anyone here please tell me why on earth you would want to use Lightroom 2 to mimics Pentax's in-camera processing? I am a LR2 addict and it enables me to reach an image quality that is far greater than an image straight off the camera in JPG can achieve. Not a Pentax user, but I would love for LR to be able to replicate what Canon's in camera or DPP software produces. The out of camera JPEGs are often near-ideal and it would be great to have them as a "starting point". I shoot a lot and would rather spend time behind a camera than at the computer post processing. I don't think he wants it to just mimic the Pentax in camera processing, but rather to start out with those settings and go from there. That, I can understand perfectly.

09-23-2009, 11:11 AM	#8
philbaum Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Port Townsend, Washington State, USA Posts: 3,659	Originally posted by photog Can anyone here please tell me why on earth you would want to use Lightroom 2 to mimics Pentax's in-camera processing? I am a LR2 addict and it enables me to reach an image quality that is far greater than an image straight off the camera in JPG can achieve. photog, i agree with you. 6 month back, i used RAW plus exclusively so I could use Windows XP thumbnails in the windows viewer. Then I decided the jpegs were just creating a huger pile of images to back up and store. I laboriously went through all my 20,000 images and deleted all the redundant jpegs. Using LR to import and manage all images made it unnecessary to have the jpegs. Then recently with a new machine and Vista, i have a Codec viewer that shows me all the thumbnails, even wtihout lightroom. Another reason for not doing in camera sharpening and processing, is it just increases any noise until you can get it through a noise program. For low iso's, noise isn't usually problem of course, but why do things differently for jpegs and RAW. The workflow recommendations i've read indicate one should treat images for noise prior to any other processing. sharpening images in the camera just increases the initial noise level. jpegs always seem like "concrete" to me after you've worked with RAW. But then i enjoy working with a few good images to make them special.

09-23-2009, 11:38 AM	#9
Eruditass Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,207 Original Poster	Originally posted by pingflood Not a Pentax user, but I would love for LR to be able to replicate what Canon's in camera or DPP software produces. The out of camera JPEGs are often near-ideal and it would be great to have them as a "starting point". I shoot a lot and would rather spend time behind a camera than at the computer post processing. I don't think he wants it to just mimic the Pentax in camera processing, but rather to start out with those settings and go from there. That, I can understand perfectly. Yep, that is correct, I want the color and contrast to start out from. Originally posted by philbaum Another reason for not doing in camera sharpening and processing, is it just increases any noise until you can get it through a noise program. For low iso's, noise isn't usually problem of course, but why do things differently for jpegs and RAW. The workflow recommendations i've read indicate one should treat images for noise prior to any other processing. sharpening images in the camera just increases the initial noise level. jpegs always seem like "concrete" to me after you've worked with RAW. But then i enjoy working with a few good images to make them special. JPEGs for me will be the minimally processed low noise great lighting images. The workflow consists of import, crop, export. My RAW workflow is much more intricate (noise reduction first, tons of stuff in-between, sharpening last) and I prefer not to have that with those that look just fine as JPEG.

09-23-2009, 12:20 PM	#10
pingflood Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Borås, Sweden Photos: Gallery Posts: 3,169	Originally posted by philbaum photog, i agree with you. 6 month back, i used RAW plus exclusively so I could use Windows XP thumbnails in the windows viewer. Then I decided the jpegs were just creating a huger pile of images to back up and store. I laboriously went through all my 20,000 images and deleted all the redundant jpegs. Using LR to import and manage all images made it unnecessary to have the jpegs. Then recently with a new machine and Vista, i have a Codec viewer that shows me all the thumbnails, even wtihout lightroom. Another reason for not doing in camera sharpening and processing, is it just increases any noise until you can get it through a noise program. For low iso's, noise isn't usually problem of course, but why do things differently for jpegs and RAW. The workflow recommendations i've read indicate one should treat images for noise prior to any other processing. sharpening images in the camera just increases the initial noise level. jpegs always seem like "concrete" to me after you've worked with RAW. But then i enjoy working with a few good images to make them special. I think you guys are missing the point here. This isn't a RAW vs JPEG discussion, it's a "Can Lightroom have the default RAW development settings make the result look like the default in-camera JPEG?" discussion. This is exactly what I get using Canon's supplied DPP software -- the camera settings are used as the default for the RAW development and if I want I just accept that and I get an image identical to the in-camera jpeg. If I don't like it, I can tweak from that point and then develop the RAW once satisfied with those tweaks. Unfortunately DPP is pretty poor for anything other than RAW development, so I end up taking the resulting file and shoving in Lightroom for cataloging and other editing.

09-23-2009, 10:17 PM	#11
photog Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Brisbane, Qld, Australia Posts: 165	pingflood: The actual question was, " Lightroom 2 - auto stack RAW with JPEG? Propagate changes through stacK?" It seems to me that like myself most of the respondents do not know whether LR2 can autostack and propogate changes throughout the stack. That being the case we have taken a lesson from the polititions and answered the question we want to answer.

09-23-2009, 10:48 PM	#12
Eruditass Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,207 Original Poster	I found out the answer was no and that lightroom doesn't care about RAW+ users. So I am making the change to RAW only and want a good starting point / minimal processing for the certain shoots where I have just way too many images and the people would essentially be pretty happy with in-camera JPEGs (save a few images that I will need/want to RAW process)

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09-24-2009, 07:31 AM	#13
emalvick Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Davis, CA Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,642	Originally posted by photog pingflood: The actual question was, " Lightroom 2 - auto stack RAW with JPEG? Propagate changes through stacK?" It seems to me that like myself most of the respondents do not know whether LR2 can autostack and propogate changes throughout the stack. That being the case we have taken a lesson from the polititions and answered the question we want to answer. In my experience, it is fairly easy to have Lightroom auto-stack images. I utilize the feature based on a time stamp and a fairly short interval. It seems that 0 should work, since in theory Raw+ images are the same image thus the same Exif time stamp, but it doesn't work. I usually have to go with a time difference that is as small as allowed but greater than 0. As for propagating changes. That doesn't really seem to be possible, at least not automatically. You can utilize features such as copying settings from one image to another and there are simpler ways than others to do that, but nothing goes as far as affecting a whole stack automatically. I've tried with respect to panoramas I've shot that I've stacked and wanted to apply one setting for the whole stack. I usually end up utilizing one of the features where you multi-select all the images in the stack and make sure the primary one you've edited is the focus and then synchronize the develop settings to the other images.

09-24-2009, 07:35 AM	#14
emalvick Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Davis, CA Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,642	Originally posted by Eruditass I found out the answer was no and that lightroom doesn't care about RAW+ users. So I am making the change to RAW only and want a good starting point / minimal processing for the certain shoots where I have just way too many images and the people would essentially be pretty happy with in-camera JPEGs (save a few images that I will need/want to RAW process) You should try some of the presets posted by Mithrandir. There are now 3 threads with some nice presets in them. Click here for a recent thread set of presets from back in August that are nice because there is also a batch that goes step by step should the "one step" preset not work. There are, however, two other threads that could be useful, and you can search the web for many more.