Album Picks are Driving Me Insane

DLS -- no need to engage me here -- I think I caught up 🙂 .

The problem is that this behavior (making the stack pick - which is really just the first image in the stack - the album pick) only occurs if you create an album from a selection that contains a stack, if you drag a stack into an album the album pick isn't set.

Actually while playing around with this it gets a little more interesting. It is not the stack pick that is being made the album pick it is the first image in a selection in a stack that is made the album pick.

So of course if you select the whole stack, then the first image in the selection, which happens to also be the stack pick gets set as the album pick. But if you say only select the third image in the stack and than make a new album from the selection then it is this image that is made the album pick.

So this might suggest a slight change to your workflow DL, instead of selecting the whole stack and making an album from the selection select the image in the stack that you want as the album pick and make the album from that selection. The whole stack will be in the album of course (stacks always go together) but the selected image will now be the album pick. No need to go back to the album and reset the album pick.

Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano

It is not the stack pick that is being made the album pick it is the first image in a selection in a stack that is made the album pick.

Fascinating - I never had stack picks that were not also the first image in the stack 😀

Right stack picks are noting more then the first image in the stack, no need to do anything special to create a stack pick.

The album pick is different it can appear anywhere in the stack not just in the first position.

I'm guessing by the smily face you picked up something in my description that was slightly off, but I'm not sure what? 😕

I'm guessing by the smily face you picked up something in my description that was slightly off, but I'm not sure what? 😕

No, I wanted to correct my own description (Re: Album Picks are Driving Me Insane), that is contradicting yours - I guess, I should have used a 😊 instead of the the 😀!

Afaict, the _only_ time an Album Pick is _not_ set is when you drag the Stack Pick into an Album. If you drag any part of Stack that does not include the Stack Pick, the left-most Image will become the Album Pick. If you drag any part of a Stack that _includes_ the Stack Pick, no Album Pick will be created. If you create a new Album from a selection and check "Add selected items to new Album", you will always get an Album Pick for each Stack.

I am beginning to remember, why nearly I never bother with album picks. By the time I am starting to create albums from the projects, I have weeded out the projects and discarded so many images, that the stacks have been reduced to the best image and are no longer stacks.

My workflow settled in a different direction. I use Albums and Picks a lot -- but I long ago stopped using Stacks to make Picks from similar Images. One of my early confusions was between Version Stacks and "Similar Image" Stacks (I suggested to Apple that there should be two kinds of Stacks). I found out that I don't need the overhead of software or Stacks to pick the best of a group of similar exposures. (I used to spend too much time carefully Stacking Images, and then comparing Stacked Images, promoting and demoting and rating and culling. Now I simply look though all the similar Images and pick the best one, reject the bad ones, and leave alone the few I think I might actually need in the future.) Since I very much like keeping all Images based on one Original together in a Stack, this freed me from the confusion of not knowing if a Stack was of similar Images or of Versions of the same Original. Additionally, I started to use Albums as output containers, so I make separate Albums for each published photograph or group of photographs, and can, for each Album, designate a specific Album Pick: the monochrome Version, or the adjusted-for-the-Web Version, or the detail Version, or leave it as the fully-developed-for-print Version.

One of my early confusions was between Version Stacks and "Similar Image" Stacks

That is a really important point.

I usually have only one version of an image; only in rare cases, when I need an external editor, do I use version stacks.

Create a new album, open all stacks in the afflicted album and select all. Drag all to the new album, and voila problem solved.

I'snt that what I said here, DLS? Re: Album Picks are Driving Me Insane

Yes that is the concussion that DL and I came to back at the beginning of the thread here I think he was just restating it for clarification purposes.