Using Stacks to Organize Similar Photos

You've spent a day on the valley floor of Yosemite shooting picture after picture, and when you return home in the evening and download all of those photos to your Photo Browser, you realize that you have about a dozen shots of the same waterfall: some lit a little differently than others; some with different zoom settings; but all very similar just the same. Stacks serve as a convenient way to group those related photos together. They not only save valuable space in the Photo Browser, they also make assigning tags much faster, because tagging a stack automatically tags every photo in the stack. When you're ready to take a careful look at all of those waterfalls and weed out the greats from the not so greats, you simply expand the stack to view all of the stacked photos at once.

To create a stack

1.

In the Photo Browser, Ctrl+click to select the photos that you want to include in a stack.

2.

Right-click inside any of the selected photo thumbnails; then from the thumbnail pop-up menu choose Stack > Stack Selected Photos, or press Ctrl+Alt+S (Figure 13.88). Figure 13.88. Stacks are easily created from photo thumbnail pop-up menus The photos are stacked together, indicated by a Stack icon in the upper-right corner of the top photo in the stack (Figure 13.89). Figure 13.89. Photo stacks are identified by their own unique icon.

To view all photos in a stack

1.	In the Photo Browser, right-click on a stack thumbnail; then from the thumbnail pop-up menu choose Stack > Reveal Photos in Stack, or press Ctrl+Alt+R. The photos appear in their own Photos in Stack browser window (Figure 13.90). Figure 13.90. You can view all of the photos in a stack with the Reveal Photos in Stack command.
2.	To return to the main Photo Browser window, click the Back to All Photos button (Figure 13.91). Figure 13.91. Exit the Photos in Stack window with the Back to All Photos button.

Tip

• While you're in the Photos in Stack browser window you can unstuck the photos, remove specific photos from a stack, or designate a new photo to be the top photo (the photo that appears at the top of the stack in the Photo Browser). Just right-click on any photo in the Photos in Stack browser and then from the thumbnail pop-up menu, select an option from the Stack submenu.

To flatten a stack

1.	In the Photo Browser, right-click on a stack thumbnail; then from the thumbnail pop-up menu choose Stack > Flatten Stack.
2.	In the warning dialog box that appears, click OK to delete all of the photos except for the top photo in the stack (Figure 13.92). Figure 13.92. A warning box reminds you that you are about to delete all but the top photo in your stack. You can also choose to delete the same photos from your hard drive.

To unstack photos in a stack

• In the Photo Browser, right-click on a stack thumbnail; then from the thumbnail pop-up menu choose Stack > Unstack Photos.
  
  The stacked photos return to their original locations in the Photo Browser window.