In Lightroom how I can create a stack and a collection simultaneously?

Question

I sometimes take long sequences of time lapse photos. Usually when I import these I want to do two things:

1. Create a collection containing these images, so that I can conveniently batch-process them

2. Group them into a stack so that they don't take up a lot of space in the time line / grid view when viewing all photographs

The problem is that I can't find a non-awkward way to do both of these things. If I first create the stack it seems I can't add all the items into the collection without first expanding the stack to select all the items, then creating a collection containing them, then switching back to 'all photographs' to collapse the stack again. If I first create the collection I still have to remember switch back to 'all photographs' to create the stack (otherwise the stack will only exist inside the collection, which is pointless), then switch back to the collection to start working on them.

So I guess what I want to do is either create both the stack and the collection at the same time, or to first create the stack and then be able to create a collection containing all the photos in the stack. Is there a way to do either of those things?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, when you click a stack in Lightroom, it only selects the image at the top of the stack. Consquently, any actions such as adding flags, ratings, keywords etc will only affect this top image. I think it's a poor decision (why else would you want to use stacks...?) but it's something we're stuck with.

The best solution I know of is to Shift-Click the number badge in the corner of the image:

Shift-clicking 18 here will expand the stack, and simultaneously select everything in it. As far as I've read, there's no keyboard shortcut for this beyond Lightroom 3.

Shift-clicking 18:

With all of the images in the stack selected, you can operate on them as you normally would. i.e. drag them collectively to a collection.

Unfortunately, they don't appear as a stack in the collection!

I think there's probably nothing else we can do to make stacks less clunky. That's up to Adobe.