Who works with stacks?

[sinus]

Since I did never create a poll, I want to try this. 

And I could imagine, if  a lot of users are working with stacks, that I could post some feature requests.  (also good things can be mostly better)

I personally work a lot with stacks. Why must I have cluttered my monitor with 387 images from the same event?
Better have 15 images on screen with 15 different events and I can remember, when I see one image per event, a lot of shoots, what I have done.
So I can "remember-see" with one view tousends of images and if I want see the 387 images for real, I can simply unstacking them.

For me stacking is something from the best possibility from IMatch.

[Mees Dekker]

I work with version stacks a lot (all the time). Would you also consider them as "automatic stacks" or is that just the stacks that are in the manual as "automatic stacks"?

[sinus]

I work with version stacks a lot (all the time). Would you also consider them as "automatic stacks" or is that just the stacks that are in the manual as "automatic stacks"?

Thanks, Mees,

Sorry for not beeing clear.

I mean manual stacks this:

"Creating a stack is easy: Just select two or more files and press Shift+S to combine these files into a stack. The focused file (usually the file which you have selected last) will become the top of the stack."

and b]automatic stacks[/b] this:

"In addition to stacking files manually, you can let IMatch stack your files automatically. To do this, run Commands > Relations > Auto-stack Files or from the context menu in the file window. If you use the command from the Commands menu, IMatch will automatically stack all files in the currently selected folder, category, collection or time line. To auto-stack selected files in the file window, use the command from the context menu of the file window."

So "versions stacks" is something else.
This is when a master has a version, so this kind of stacking depends on the relation rules.

Stacking, what I do mean, is this, when you stack  independent images together, and this you can do manually or automatically.

In the help-file it is titled so:

File Relations: Stacking
Stacking images is a great way to reduce the number of images you have to look at in file windows. Just stack related images to clean up the file window.

Stacking
The stacking feature in IMatch allows you to group similar images together and choose one of the images as the pick or stack top image. When you collapse the stack, IMatch hides all images in the stack except the top image. This allows you to fold series of images together, cleaning up the file window by showing only the best shot of each series.

You can manually combine files into stacks directly in the file window via the context menu. And you can use the Auto-Stacking feature in IMatch to stack images based on their EXIF or GPS timestamp, GPS coordinates and other criteria.

[Carlo Didier]

I manually stack all my stitched or somehow assembled/blended (HDR, focus stacking, ...) images with the final image as the top and the others stacked behind that.

[rainforest1155]

I just started using manual stacks to combine the different parts of my panorama shots into one. I also have a few HDR bursts that I'll likely start stacking as well.

[Ted]

ALL of my photos are stacked:
1) 99.99% are stacked simply as the raw (NEF) and finished (JPG) form of a photo - and include any working image (PSD) that I chose to keep for the photo.
2) Panoramas are stacked with all photos that make up the finished photo.
3) If I have several similar images, I will sometimes group them together into one stack.

I am always fearful of losing information, so on my panorama stacks I put all photos for one pano into a unique category, usually 'Panorama.{name of first photo}'.  I wrote a script to combine all images with a that unique name together into one stack.

[Nytewulf]

Without stacks, life is not possible ...

[sinus]

I am always fearful of losing information, so on my panorama stacks I put all photos for one pano into a unique category, usually 'Panorama.{name of first photo}'.  I wrote a script to combine all images with a that unique name together into one stack.

That is why I use automatic stacks. To use this I put the same line for stacking (for example 20061011-s-gou-spita_stacked) in a metadata-field and give the same line to all members of a stack.

This works really great. And against my fear:  because this information is in every file, I could easy recreate a stack, just in case...

[sinus]

Without stacks, life is not possible ...

                               

[BanjoTom]

The collective response to this question has proved to be highly educational for me.   
Thanks for all the insights about stacks and stacking . . .  As with everything IMatch, I suspect that many workflow uses for stacking
that I haven't ever envisioned are out there, just waiting to be discovered and shared... 

[Frank]

Currently I use manually stacks for DVD only. There I See only one file. All other ways sounds fine.
Frank

[Mario]

I use all kinds of stacks and I have designed, implemented and documented them. Beat that! 

[jch2103]

I use all kinds of stacks and I have designed, implemented and documented them. Beat that! 

...I don't think anyone can beat you, Mario!