Bracket Studio

Why I made Bracket Studio

I often come back from a shoot with hundreds of bracketed photographs. Before I can edit them, I need to put the exposures into stacks and merge each set into an HDR.

I wrote a tutorial about doing this in Lightroom Classic. Bracket Studio grew out of the same problem. It is a Mac app and Lightroom Classic plug-in that handles the grouping, stacking and HDR merging, with a chance to check anything it is unsure about before processing.

Coming soon. I’m testing it on real shoots before making it available. There is no public download or purchase yet.

How it works

Select a shoot in Lightroom and open Bracket Studio. It looks for bracket groups and shows you the ones that need checking. Ordinary single exposures are left alone. You can show all groups whenever you want to look through the whole shoot.

If a group is wrong, you can split it, join it with the previous or next group, or leave an exposure out. You can also correct a stack in Lightroom and refresh the shoot. Once you are happy with the groups, press Start.

You can create stacks, create stacks and HDRs, or merge stacks you have already made. Lightroom does the HDR merge, so the resulting DNGs are ready to edit in your catalog.

A starting point for the edit

You can have new HDRs receive a Develop preset, Auto Settings, an Upright adjustment or a color label after merging. These are optional. Choose what suits the shoot and check the results as you would with any automatic adjustment.

When something needs checking

A real shoot can include extra exposures, missing frames and brackets that are not centered on 0 EV. Bracket Studio uses the information recorded by the camera to suggest groups. It still needs your judgment when that information does not tell the whole story.

It checks storage before each batch and keeps a report of completed and unfinished work. If processing stops, you can open the saved run and check what remains. Existing HDRs are checked before another merge is sent.

The current preview is for Mac and Lightroom Classic with English menus. Wider testing is still in progress. Pricing and a release date have not been set.

Read the guide for setup, reviewing groups and recovering an interrupted run.

Made by Zynopsis Studio.