How to Disable Stacking

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Today’s Question: When I send an image from Lightroom to Photoshop and save it back to Lightroom, the TIFF is always stacked with the original and I must right-click to unstack them. Since I do not like stacking at all is there a way to permanently turn it off?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can turn off automatic stacking for images sent to an external editor (such as Photoshop) by turning off the “Stack With Original” checkbox on the External Editing tab of the Preferences dialog.

More Detail: By default, when you send a photo from Lightroom to an external editor such as Photoshop, the new derivative image created in the process will be stacked with the source image used to create the derivative. So, for example, if you send a RAW capture to Photoshop, the TIFF or PSD file that results will be stacked with the RAW image.

You can turn off this feature in the Preferences dialog. Start by choosing Edit > Preferences from the menu on Windows or Lightroom > Preferences on Macintosh. Then go to the External Editing tab and turn off the “Stack With Original” checkbox toward the bottom of the dialog. From that point forward, photos you send to an external editor will not be stacked with the original.