Stacking Photos in LR??

[Kathy O]

I do not know much about stacking photos (blending multiple exposures together), but when people talk about doing it I always like the way their photo turned out. I guess my questions is, I only have Lightroom for my PP can I stack photos using lightroom?

Thank you for your help
Kathy

[russellsnr]

Kathy, there are differant meanings when it comes to the STACKING. In Lightroom you have an option to stack a set of images ie. you go out for a shoot and you take 30 images say 5 images from 6 differant locations on the day so you want to keep 6 blocks of 5 images seperate from each other so you stack 5 images in the stack and name it. The other stack is for example you have 3 images of the same scene with 3 exposures -2 0 +2 and you want to take the sky from one the foreground from another and maybe some other factor from a the third image then you would stack them in say Photoshop or similar program as layers and paint in or out what you want from each image. For Lightroom you can try http://photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php to merge images. Russ

[Manfred M]

No - Lightroom does not support layers, so you cannot stack. That's what Photoshop is all about.

As Russell as alluded to, there are certain operations like HDRI and Panoramas that normally require stacking, where Lightroom has a workaround. Other than these exceptions, you cannot stack and use layers or blending modes. There you need to software that has these capabilities. A number of editing tools other than Photoshop do support layers.

[DanK]

stacking photos (blending multiple exposures together)

As Russell said, "stacking" can mean different things. But if you mean just blending different exposures together, for example, if the dynamic range of the scene requires more than one exposure, then yes, you can easily do this in the most recent versions of Lightroom. One method is to select the images you want to blend in LR, then choose Photo, Photo Merge, HDR. Another option, which works with older versions and avoids tone mapping, is to download and install the LR plugin Russell mentioned in his post. The latter is the method I most often use for blending multiple exposures, but I have sometimes used LR's HDR merge as well.

[Geoff F]

Adobe CC has a good stacking option, Kathy, and there are other specialist software packages available either free or one off payment.

I did try the Zerene free trial before eventually deciding to sign up for CC.

[DanK]

OK, now the ambiguity has come into play. You wrote:

blending multiple exposures together

If the goal is to blend images with different exposures, then LR can handle it, as Russell and I pointed out. If the goal is to blend images with different focal points--to increase depth of field--which is called "focus stacking," then you might be out of luck. You could try using Lightroom Enfuse, setting it to stack based on contrast, but I doubt that would work well. (I haven't tried it.) For the most part, focus stacking is done either with layers in a program like Photoshop or with specialized stacking software. I have tried a few options and settled on Zerene for all of my focus stacking.