Merges, panoramas, and baked photographs

Merges and panoramas keep recipes referring to their source frames. You can change that recipe and develop the result. Bake creates a separate photograph from the result you see.

Bake to Image

Select one or more photographs, then choose Photo > Bake to Image… or use the thumbnail context menu. Bake works on ordinary photographs as well as merges and panoramas.

Bake renders the current edits at full resolution and creates a new file beside the original. For a merge or panorama it retains the established location beside the first source frame. The original and its recipe are untouched. A neutral merge recipe keeps the merged result; an edited recipe includes those edits too.

Choose a format:

• DNG, the default, keeps scene-linear values above white. It freezes the complete edit graph before display encoding, then opens with fresh controls and the tone profile bypassed so the look is not applied twice.
• TIFF stores 16-bit display pixels without compression loss; highlights above white clip.
• JPEG makes a smaller 8-bit display file; highlights above white clip.

The new photograph appears in the catalog and folder, with no link group and no copied edits. You can start editing it again. Existing names are never overwritten: baking IMG_1234.CR3 might create IMG_1234.dng, then IMG_1234_2.dng.

Bakes carry the source camera's EXIF, catalog stars and keywords, and an XMP origin record with the source filename and available capture time. DNG also records OriginalRawFileName. Its Metadata panel shows Baked from IMG_1234.CR3, giving you a way back to the editable original. A merge or panorama inherits camera EXIF from its first member and names its recipe as the origin.

Bake uses the same full-resolution Model denoise helper as Export. It can take time and requires enough memory for the full render. It uses the same output licence gate as Export.