On1 RAW as a replacement or supplement to Lightroom?

Lightroom's speed (or lack thereof) has prompted me, and I assume others here, to seek out other faster options. The other main contender is Capture One's software. I downloaded the trial version and played with it during the 30 day period. It was nice and speedy. Then, I came across the On1 RAW editor that is supposed to come out soon. It looks quite promising. Anyone have any previous experience with the company or their products? Right now the full version is discounted to $99. I'm thinking that for that price it might worth taking a shot. Anyone else thinking the same?

I've given it a shot twice but I can't seem to get along with it as an editor. I don't have any performance issues with LR so I think that's where I'll stay for now. I do really like On1 resize though.

dan.k78 wrote in post #18190775
Lightroom's speed (or lack thereof) has prompted me, and I assume others here, to seek out other faster options.

I don't understand peoples obsession with the speed of Lightroom. You move a slider and the image adjusts instantly, what more do want.

Mine is not so "instant".

dan.k78 wrote in post #18190873
Mine is not so "instant".

I've heard that the new option to work only from the smart preview (under the performance tab) is alleviating performance issues for some users. Have you given it a try?

nqjudo wrote in post #18190884
I've heard that the new option to work only from the smart preview (under the performance tab) is alleviating performance issues for some users. Have you given it a try?

It helped a bit, but I figure if there is more efficient software available out there, especially at only $99, why not give it a chance.

I've been using On1 for quite a while now, since back when it was the On1 Photo Suite, which eventually became On1 Photo 10 and now 10.5. There are a lot of things I like about it, including some fairly powerful masking tools, although some operations can be a bit slow. However, the demos I've seen of On1 Photo RAW are impressive and I've already paid for the upgrade, which is supposed to be out on the 23rd for us "early adopters. I've been watching parts of their live stream today as well as the short introductory videos they've been releasing lately. They say this is a complete redesign and re-coding of the software, with nothing left over from Photo 10.5 except the look of the user interface. I'll probably continue to use it as a plug-in to Lightroom and Photoshop rather than stand-alone at least for a while, but I think it's going to be a very good tool.

Recordings from the live stream from today should be available "soon" but meanwhile you can check out these from their YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.co​m …VWiXXggODFzHB2q​JAv9_C6GYg

Thanks for the info Rimmer!
I just did the pre-order a few minutes ago. I viewed some of the quick videos on their website and it does look to be quite impressive.

Looking forward to the new ON1 RAW myself. I pre-ordered it, and it's due out tomorrow (11/23). All the promotional crap created by ON1 over the last year has said it will circumvent LR's problems and irritations. However, now ON1 is leaning more heavily toward the product working more closely with LR. It's almost as if when ON1 RAW was first conceived, they planned on creating a giant (LR) killer but have since continuously backed away.

I recently subbed to CC, but have never cranked up LR. I've read too many horror stories about it. Mostly cataloging, now in this thread: speed.

As to the comment about Perfect Resize, you betcha'. I've compared and it is hand-down better than PS or any other product. Strange, tho. I may be under-utilizing it. I usually bump up stuff around 110% to 117%. I normally start to panic when I go over 120%, but I recently watched a tutorial video where the user enlarged 267%. 267 ! Impressive - no artifacts, no pixelation.

As to experience with ON1's products, yes. I primarily used it for resize and I use other brand products for plugins and presets, but I've been looking more closely into ON1's other options and some of the stuff looks nice.

One thing important to know about ON1 RAW (and I could be wrong about this) is that it will replace the ON1 suite. Apparently all ON1 products will be contained in the RAW product. So after ON1 RAW is released, there apparently will not be further upgrades to other ON1 Suite products. You'll have to go with ON1 RAW if you want an upgrade to Resize, Effects, or any other product. But again, not 100% sure about this.

I as well have recently subscribed to the Adobe CC Photographer's plan (couldn't pass up the Amazon $89 deal), but it was more so for Photoshop's ability to open the RAW files from my 5DIII,6D, and Fuji X-E1 than for any additional functionality over my current Lightroom 6.* version. That being said, the facial aware liquify tool in Photoshop is scary good.
Eventually I will get a new and faster computer with all the right specs, but until then finding an application that is quicker and does a good job is enough for me.
Some things I've done recently to help me a bit is to: forcibly delete 1:1 previews from old work (I had it set to delete them after 30 days, but for some reason they were all [over 15k] still there; and making my SSD my drive for cache. I've also disabled the GPU acceleration in LR as it just made the program crash every time.

Adobe sort of opened the door for demand of a product like OnOne Photo Raw and similar all-in-one suites that are focused on photography. The "non-destructive" raw workflow is, in theory, a terrific approach to conserving space and offering limitless variations on a theme for increasingly larger and larger file sizes from higher resolution sensor cameras. One difference between Adobe and smaller, lighter weight companies is that Adobe is a monolith that cannot innovate with its existing codebase - it just keeps kludging together more "features" into its massive and aging suite of applications. Lightroom sort of presented the opportunity for Adobe to start a fresh approach apart from Photoshop, but it does not seem as if it was able to create a truly innovative and modern product - I suppose it may be due in part to its sharing the Camera Raw engine with Photoshop. For people who use LR as a DAM, I suppose the problems with LR (like quirky GPU support, speed, etc.) are well worth the workflow advantages - the raw conversion quality of LR is similar to many other converters, so it is not a compelling reason to switch to LR, all else being equal.

The OnOne Photo Raw approach appears to cater more toward the modern photographer - speed, flexibility with cataloging and metadata, the fully non-destructive, GPU-based approach with a set of tools that provides a seamless start-to-finish workflow solution that LR has tried to provide users. I have not really seen too much from the OnOne promo materials about printing, but I would imagine that it will come in time. The other aspect of the OnOne approach that appears to be entirely different than Adobe is their attention to customer requests and feedback. Again, Adobe has little time to listen to everyone using their products whereas OnOne appears to initiate contact with customers and seek feedback and incorporate it in a timely manner. Adobe is simply too big to do this. OnOne offers their customers the ability to be truly invested in a product that they helped create.

Affinity Photo (and Designer) is another application that shares many of these attributes and their user base is growing as a result. Their response to users looking for a native PC version of the Mac-only application was incredibly fast and the beta for Windows machines was produced and made available last month in an incredibly short span of time. The public spoke and was heard - this is gratifying to users looking for alternatives to the traditional Adobe-based toolset. The fact that these small companies can achieve things that Adobe users have been asking for for years only confirms the frustration that Adobe users have had with Adobe's approach to their application development.

These more modern applications permit the user to visualize and edit in real-time, non-destructively with operations that are still pixel-based in Photoshop or that do not exist at all in Lightroom. In the end, these applications will not kill Lightroom or Photoshop, but will hopefully push Adobe to modernize their applications and innovate at levels simply unachievable by smaller operations that appear to be leading the effort to make shooting, editing and retouching a more interactive, effortless experience.

The fact that these tools are made available in a standard single-purchase model instead of a subscription will also appeal to folks who simply refuse to support the Adobe subscription model. Of course, the companies who are looking to court former Adobe users know this, but they also know that their applications must be as good, if not better than Adobe's for that user's need to keep that user.

I suppose time will tell.

I look forward to trying the new OnOne Photo Raw engine tomorrow.

kirk

Good discussion from Kirk, and that reminds me of a couple of things I forgot to mention.

I'm very happy with Lightroom's approach to digital asset management, so the thought of switching to something else is a bit scary for me. That is probably the biggest thing that will cause me to use On1 RAW as a Lightroom plugin rather than as a stand-alone. There is a downside to that, though. From experience I can say that sending a RAW file from LR to On1 as a PSD, editing, then returning the PSD to LR can create some HUGE files on the order of several hundred MB. I'm looking forward to seeing how On1 RAW handles this. Starting the editing process directly in On1 rather than starting in LR should eliminate the need to ever create that huge PSD file, which would be an advantage.

That makes me think of another issue -- now I have LR convert everything to DNG and I haven't heard anything one way or the other as to whether On1 RAW will be able to do this.

As to customer support, I've only had one occasion to need help from On1 and they were very god. I've forgotten the exact issue now, but something got messed up in the configuration and the program just would not run. I found some help on their web site but that didn't fix the issue so I sent a message via their help page and got a prompt response that got things running again. As I recall, it was just a matter of going to the right location and deleting a configuration file, starting the program again, and re-entering my license number.

There was a live webcast yesterday with some OnOne folks talking about the product, etc. and one of the things they mentioned was integration with Lightroom. They noted that there will be (not as of yet) a Lightroom migration assistant that OnOne will provide to transition LR folks over to their product. They even mentioned that it will migrate LR presets, which I find interesting because presumably OnOne's raw engine is different than LR's. I guess the migration thing will translate the LR presets into "close enough" or maybe they have devised a way to really match the LR look. I do not know. There was no indication as to how the preset translation would work - that is, would it actually configure sliders and choices in Photo Raw based on the instructions in the LR preset or would it render the LR preset to some sort of LUT that would get applied as a non-destructive "filter" but with no control over the look once applied via a LUT-like transform.

In terms of DAM, they noted that the OnOne approach generates two sidecar files - an XML file with metadata for ratings, keywords, stars, etc. that can be read by other XML-based applications (Adobe, etc.) - they also noted that the XML-based workflow will be bidirectional - that is, if you have done all of that jazz in LR, OnOne will read that metadata in the OnOne browser. The second sidecar file is the file that contains all of the editing instructions and will not be open XML, but proprietary.

Again, I think they realize that LR/Adobe users want certain things to work like their current set up (in LR) and do not want to have to redo things, potentially thousands and thousands of images-worth of things, just to switch over to the OnOne platform. They also noted that the introductory version of the Photo Raw application will not have module-based lens corrections (another popular user request), but that is on the roadmap for future, free updates.

As advertised, it appears that flexibility is built into the OnOne approach. You can use their product in a lot of different ways, with a mixture of different software and workflows.

Should be interesting.

Kirk

Here is a post on the Affinity Forum Customer Beta thread that has announced the Release Candidate for the upcoming v1.5 release of their application. I provide it here not to promote the application, but to give you an idea of the kind of attention to user requests and feedback that AP is providing during the development of their product. I am not as knowledgable about how OnOne is going about their work, but it seems to be along similar lines.

For those of you unfamiliar with AP, if you are a paying customer (bought their app) you get access to the current beta and can download an install it alongside of the official release and test the new features, give feedback, request tweaks, etc. though direct contact with the dev on the forum.

Kirk

We are pleased to announce that Affinity Photo 1.5 has transitioned into the "Release Candidate" phase. This late stage of the beta process is used to shake out any final bugs with the new features added to 1.5. Please find a brief list of the new features below:

Focus Merge Support

Focus merging allows you to generate a detailed composite image from a number of images focussed at differing lengths. Use File -> New Focus Merge to get started.

HDR Merge Support

HDR merging lets you create a deep, unbounded 32-bit image from a number of exposure bracketed source images. Use File -> New HDR Merge to get started.

New 32bit RGB Editing Mode

Photo now offers a full compositing / editing environment for 32bit unbounded images.

OCIO (OpenColorIO) Support

Photo now support end-to-end OCIO colour workflows.

Tone Mapping Persona

Full tone mapping Persona for both HDR and LDR images. This is obviously best used with an image merged by HDR merge - although you can use it on any image.

OpenEXR / HDR (Radiance) / 32bit TIFF Import / Export

Photo can now import and export .hdr (Radiance, RGBE) and .exr (OpenEXR) images. It correctly deals with 0-alpha cases (as per the OpenEXR spec) and generally operates in linear space. It support multi-layer EXR files and offers control (through Preferences) over alpha association and premultiplication.

Macros

Using the View -> Studio -> Macro and View -> Studio -> Library menu items, you can access new panels which will allow you to record actions, save them, then play them back later. You can also store them in a handy gallery.

Batch Processing

Using File -> New Batch job, you can queue up processing on a large number of files. You can resize, convert format and apply any number of macros to each file. The batch processing happens in the background - so you can continue working whilst the jobs are processed.

Live Projections

Photo 1.5 contains a new mechanism which allows you to edit an image in different spatial domains - we currently support the “Equirectangular” domain (360 pano - Ricoh Theta, etc.). You can use all tools when editing - and you can convert back once you have edited. This is especially useful for cleaning up stitching artefacts, or artefacts at the zenith / nadir of the image. Use the options in Layer -> Live Projection to get started.

Improved Pixel Tool

The pixel tool is improved in 1.5 - you can hold shift when dragging to constrain the direction of painting (sorry we did not get this working sooner!). You can also select what happens when you hold Alt and drag - erase to transparent, erase to background colour, or erase to whatever the nominated snapshot / history location is (like in the Clone tool).

New “Pixel Art” Document Resizing

Photo now contains an alternative way to resize a document - using well known pixel-art resampling algorithms. If you work with pixel art and want to use this feature, it’s located under the Document menu.

New “Accumulation” Brush Dynamics

Many users have asked for “Opacity Jitter”. For us, opacity is a constant thing and will remain constant. However, we have added a new property to brushes - “Accumulation” - which should allow you to get what you need

Text Styles

Affinity Photo now has the same Text Styles support as Designer - it’s all shared code so it should work right out of the box

New Marquee Modes (Polygonal, Magnetic)

Photo now has 3 modes for the freehand selection tool - Freehand, Polygonal and Magnetic.

Even more RAW cameras supported

Over 70 new RAW cameras are supported.

Improved Metadata Mining

Our detection of RAW / JPEG / etc. metadata has been upgraded and some serious bugs have been fixed.

Massive Improvements to Export Persona

Our Export Persona has seen huge upgrades in this cycle - you now have total control of exactly what resolution sets get exported. You can also use our handy batch export builders to quickly generate content for external consumption - ie. Xcode .assets - even Spline compatible metadata can be generated!

Layered TIFF Interop

Users have constantly asked us to support “Layered TIFF”. Layered TIFF is not a thing. TIFF with embedded data is a thing - and I’m happy to report that we now import embedded PSD / Affinity data and can write TIFF with embedded Affinity data.

Halftone Filter

We have a marvellous new halftone pattern filter in 1.5 - it can approximate monochrome, colour, circular and line halftones.

Improved Apply Image Filter

Users can how use the current layer as the source for Apply Image - or drag any layer from the layers tab into the dialog to use that as thr source. We also offer handy equations in the filter to control how channels are transferred - in an arbitrary colour source.

Equations Filter

A new Equations Distortion filter allows users to create custom spatial filters.

Dust & Scratches Filter

Many user have asked us for a “Dust & Scratches” filter - so we have made one. It’s extremely useful for removing sporadic small defects in images. Please let us know if it works for you.

“Edit in Affinity Photo” Photos extension

This is something which we didn’t think we could do - a Photos extension for Mac OS 10.9 and above which simply allows you to use the full Photo app to edit your images - and stores the changes you have made as a layered document.

New Colour Picker Tool

After literally thousands of requests, we have implemented a dedicated picker tool for colours.

New Clone Sources Panel

We now have a new studio panel which allows you to store up an unlimited number of global sources for the Clone / Healing brush - it even works across multiple documents.

Direct PSD Write-Back

One of the most requested features - direct write-back to PSD. A number of 3rd party DAM applications will happily deal in PSD - but until now, Photo required you to File -> Export for PSD. No longer! You can now just hit File -> Save! You will need to turn this on - in File -> Preferences - please read the warning there carefully!

No Thumbnails Option

This is more a Designer feature, but I promised it some time ago so here it is - you can choose (in Preferences) not to write out a thumbnail with your documents. This has the advantage of making your documents use less space - but obviously you won’t get Finder thumbnails, etc.

Improved Vectorscope

Our old HSL vectorscope is no more - replaced by a vastly more appropriate Rec.709 YUV scope with an improved graticule

Improved Photoshop Plugin Support

We have found a significant bug with our plugin code - it has been fixed That said - please don’t expect all your plugins to now work. This fix primarily puts us in a position to work properly with plugin makers to move forward. That said, some plugins will now spring into life - “Focus Magic” being a notable example.

Multi-monitor Colour Profile Support

Sorry it took so long to get this fixed - we now can profile different on different monitors.

Adjustment Performance Improvements

Found and fixed a simple issue which made changing adjustment parameters appear to be slow. Fixed.

This update also includes literally hundreds of fixes and small improvements, some of which are listed below:

- User control over two pass rendering on Retina devices.
- PSD import / export improvements.
- PDF import / export improvements.
- Snapping improvements - candidate-free snapping, gaps-and-spans (Alt key in Move Tool), so much more!
- Performance and stability improvements for macOS Sierra.

Thanks again for taking the time to use this beta!

Affinity Photo Team h34r:

dan.k78 wrote in post #18191473
...Eventually I will get a new and faster computer with all the right specs...

So don't you think that that might be the reason that LR is slow in operation and not actually due to LR itself.