ON1 Photo RAW - How long to decipher? Day? Month? Rate it !!

lacogada wrote in post #18928318
+1

I just bought Affinity Photo book as well, big heavy full of info.

On 1 is supposed to be releasing an upgrade to their 2020 beta today I believe!

I have Adobe Photo subscription, Luminar 3 and ON1 Photo Raw 2019. I've actually gone through a few versions of each. I played with Luminar and ON1 looking for something down the road that could replace Lightroom. So far, neither cut it. Luminar's asset management is weak and has a flaw in the catalog. Replace a drive and restore from a backup and you'll learn. ON1 2019 and 2020 both fail on some HDR merges I've done. They just don't align well. Same images merge fine in LR.

However, there were several things I liked about both. ON1 puts edits in a sidecar file so as long as you keep it with the original, you can move them all over. Unlike LR where you need to manage files inside LR or plan on telling LR where you moved them. Luminar 3 does some very nice things with auto edits and some of the filters. I do use the Plugin version still. Both do layers which have definite advantages over the LR method.

I played with Affinity when it first came out. Very Photoshop like, but I'm not a Photoshop user much. Maybe 5% of my photos hit Photoshop.

So, I pay for Adobe on a yearly basis, just like I paid for Luminar for 3 years and ON1 for two. Won't upgrade Luminar 3 (might update the plug in product) nor ON1.

mdvaden wrote in post #18916627
So far I've only used Photoshop and Lightroom. I edit light-handed and use a fraction of the features in Photoshop. Lightroom does 90% for me usually. But I get really irritated about subscription stuff like Adobe has, and apparently ON1 covers what 2 or 3 other softwares do if I'm ready right.

My question -- for those who use ON1, how long do you think it would take the average person to decipher the program to be able to get going with it? I'm assuming it can import and organize files, hopefully.

On a scale of 1 through 10, what rating would you give to:

Lightroom and Photoshop

ON1 Photo RAW

It's over a month since you started this thread, but I thought I would chime in in case you are still considering ON1 as a option.. I was a very knowledgeable user of Lightroom from version 3 to version 6.14. I started to look at alternatives and tested just about everything else out there.

I eventually settled on DXO PhotoLab Elite. I chose it over the PhotoLab Essential because of its additional features and because its completely configurable whereas the Essential version is not. Given the amount of functionality in it, I still found it very easy to learn and use. It is a raw converter and processor and is not a pixel editor. If a pixel editor is what you are looking for, look elsewhere. PhotoLab is also not a file manager like Lightroom and does not require you to import images into its database.

I have also owned On1 since the 2018 version. On the surface its looks like a perfect post processing solution, and It does have some very useful tools which I use occasionally, but it runs too slowly on my computer. I also don't care for the way they implemented a number of the tools and filters, and the output is often less than ideal with a lot of pixelization when viewing at higher magnifications. I'm looking forward to what they've done in the 2020 version. Although ON1 is a raw editor, it has a lot of functionality that is usually found only in pixel editors. I still do almost all my editing in PhotoLab Elite though since the results I get are faster and better than in ON1. ON1 improves significantly from release to release and will eventually be a force to be reckoned with. Right now though all I see is terrific potential.

With regard to a learning curve, ON1 has a huge amount of features and functionality. For a complete newbie to post processing, there will be a fairly significant learning curve. For those with prior PP experience it will be far less. I'm just referring to getting up and running effectively. There is a lot to learn in this software and the learning curve to become expert in it, even for a person with post processing experience, will be extensive.