A serious question about ON1 software

I recently downloaded the trial of ON1 Photo RAW 2020 and Portrait AI. I found Photo RAW unstable and inconsistent, even though it's almost 2021 and they've had plenty of time to work out bugs. As far as it being useful, I'm on the fence. And I was shocked at how basic and bare-bones Portrait AI is.

In looking at some threads about ON1 on POTN, it seems most comments are either negative or neutral. On another forum (not sure it it's okay to name it so I won't) I looked at a review of ON1's 2021 offerings and it seemed that all the comments were criticisms of ON1 and their software, rather than comments about the products being reviewed.

So here's my actual question: Does anyone here actually use and like ON1 software??? If so, what do you use it for?

I have it and rarely use it. For RAW development I use good 'ol ACR. For effects, IMHO ON1 sucks. Between what you can get out of the free NIK suite and Luminar 4 and the Topaz products, ON1 is not only not needed but offers little in comparison. I have always said, and continue to say that between Skylum (Luminar), Topaz, and ON1, ON1 will be the first to disappear. JMHO.

Edit: Now that I have made a somewhat negative post, I'll assume a lot of ON1 fanboys will show up. That's ok. We are all different and have different opinions. I suggest you compare the money you will spend on ON1 with the money you will spend on other products. Ultimately, you will need to make the decision which is best for you.

I think the general consensus on the threads about On1 and the all-in-one raw conversion environment is that it has always been slow and not particularly efficient to use. Some people like the workflow and the results, others do not.

I originally purchased and tried to use Photo 10 and the first couple of iterations of PhotoRaw (v1 and v2017). I purchased these apps because I am just the kind of person that likes to try new things and push them to their limits to try to make them fail. The software never really worked well, despite the forceful marketing push that claimed a lot of things and was aimed at people who were turned off by Adobe's move to a subscription-based model. After a couple of upgrades, which I had to pay for, and feeling like I was essentially paying to be a beta tester, I stopped wasting my time. I never really used the software because it simply did not work with my workflow and took so much longer to use (even switching between modules within the On1 environment was painfully slow). I will emphasize that I do not need a DAM for my work, and perhaps On1 have really nailed it with their DAM model, so I cannot comment on that aspect of the software. Also, I have not attempted to use it recently (in the 2020 version). I would, therefore, download a trial before making any decision about buying into the most current On1 ecosphere.

I think the not so talked about aspect of the On1 software model is the money they charge for things like a subscription (ironic) to their user forum/knowledge base, and the non-stop charges for upgrades. The nickel and diming for what seems to be a perpetually unfinished product pushed out to users to beta test for a fee might turn you off, regardless of how good the results are. However, if you are paying for admittance to this community, then that might make you feel like you have a level of exclusive access that gives you value for the money. It's really up to you.

Nowadays, these hobbyist apps are all trying to carve out their particular niches to compete - Topaz has gone all-in with AI everything, Luminar has their automated face retouching and sky replacement thing, etc. Who knows what On1 will try to do to differentiate itself - it has always been a LR clone with filters on the back end. Maybe they will find some tool or approach that will attract users amidst all of the other nurnies and farkles offered by competitors, but if their goal is to emulate and outperform LR, then they still have a lot of work to do (I do not use LR regularly, but I do use ACR occasionally and have for a long time).

Like @PictureNorthCarolina, this is just my opinion - I think if you search the previous threads about On1, you will find that both of us have expressed these sentiments in previous threads.

The TL/DR version: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Kirk

Picture North Carolina, and Kirk, I appreciate your responses. I have played with Photo RAW 2020 and tried to find some way that it would serve a purpose, and I can't; that's why I asked if anyone here actually does find it useful. (I figured there's got to be a reason why they're still in business.) Even though I don't have the experience you guys have with ON1 I've had this vague feeling about it in the back of my head that you guys pretty well summed up.
Thanks again.

My response was intended to be informative, not scare you away. Glad that you tried it for yourself. I think it has its place for the users that appreciate what it does in the context of how those users work with their image files. So, it works for some and does not work for others.

Kirk

Hi,

I use On1 RAW (updated to 2020). I primarily have it for RAW manipulation of Canon & Fuji RAW files. I have used it for HDR merges too. I don't do any primary pixel editing in it. I merely do my RAW edits here and output as a TIF for further editing later in Photoshop. So keep that in mind with respect to my use and where I'm coming from.

I like On1 RAW's handling of RAW files. The shadow recovery is great, the white balance is great, all the RAW editing options work really well and it handles Fuji files out of the box (this is why I originally even got On1 RAW was for Fuji RAW files, as not much out there supported Fuji RAW back then). The latest version, 2020, is better than the previous versions for work flow. I can set several edits to convert to output as TIF after my edits and move on and not wait for it to process that, it handles it in the background. Big update in my book for editing.

My criticism of On1 RAW is that it's slow. Every version. Every release. Slow. Even on solid hardware, it's slow. Browsing RAW files is slow. The previews are slow. The editing is real time and fast, after the preview is generated. But just browsing your files and previews is slow. So if you're chewing through a few hundred photos at a time to pick the best of your session, this will get old fast. A lot of transitions from one piece of the software to the next is slow too. You'll click again thinking you didn't click it right, but did. It's just that slow. You'll find this common on all reviews. My platform is an 8 core, 16GB RAM and SSD. No matter what, it's slow. Again, the editing is real time, fast, that part is good. Exporting is fine. But just previewing your RAW files and moving between them is slow. So keep that in mind.

I think this will be the last year I use On1 RAW personally. I've been using it for about 3 years now I think through the updates. I think my next software will be Capture One Pro. I will not use Lightroom or anything Adobe (other than my old version of Photoshop CS5.1 that I own). So far, C.O.P. seems to be the next step for me at least. On1 RAW has done a good job on my RAW files (Fuji especially) but I'm tired of the laggy performance even on a good machine. Time to go with someone else I think.

Very best,

kirkt wrote in post #19131122
Topaz has gone all-in with AI everything, Luminar has their automated face retouching and sky replacement thing, etc

Slightly off topic, but for the record. Skylum (Luminar) is also joining the AI trending fad. The next version of Luminar is going to be Luminar AI, supposedly written from the ground up. Once released (latter this year) Luminar 4 will have a shelf life of something like 1 year and then it'll no longer be supported. Luminar AI

And for anyone who might be trying to make up their mind about an ON1 product, here's a little gem that I just discovered:
You can't uninstall their software by going to the Windows control panel and uninstalling it easy-peasy like you do every other piece of software that you might have installed. You have to go to their website, download a script from them, and run the script. Why? Why do they have to do this?

ncjohn wrote in post #19131779
And for anyone who might be trying to make up their mind about an ON1 product, here's a little gem that I just discovered:
You can't uninstall their software by going to the Windows control panel and uninstalling it easy-peasy like you do every other piece of software that you might have installed. You have to go to their website, download a script from them, and run the script. Why? Why do they have to do this?

Sloppy programming, that's why. Many who know how things were and how things are now understand it is not the R & D people, nor the programming staffers who run companies. It is the marketing departments. They rule the roost and whereas in the past the priority used to be to write and test a good app, the priority nowadays is to "get it out there." Programming used to tell marketing it will be ready when they are done with it. Now marketing drives the business and demands programming departments gets the product out there if it runs. Paying users end up being free beta testers.

Another app is a good example, but off topic. The game website gog.com has an app called GOG GALAXY. After you exit it, 5 processes continue to run, hogging resources.

So it all boils down to a harsh reality: marketing departments who tell programming what to do, programming departments that appease marketing department demands to put speed of development over quality, and stupid users who do not understand they are being used and abused by paying for the privilege of providing free beta testing to the companies.

Well, I was already unimpressed enough that I was uninstalling the apps, but that's kind of the final ON1 straw for me; no more ON1.

ncjohn wrote in post #19131779
And for anyone who might be trying to make up their mind about an ON1 product, here's a little gem that I just discovered:
You can't uninstall their software by going to the Windows control panel and uninstalling it easy-peasy like you do every other piece of software that you might have installed. You have to go to their website, download a script from them, and run the script. Why? Why do they have to do this?

That is not correct. I have owned ON1 since the 2018 and had no problems uninstalling ON1 Photo Raw 2020 a month or ago through the Control Panel. To be sure, it left a few empty and not so empty folders under the covers that I had to delete manually, but it seems as if half the software I uninstall does that

I had Photo RAW 2020 and Portrait AI both installed and there were no ON1 entries in the Windows control panel "programs and features" where you go to uninstall apps. There was also no listing for just "Photo RAW" or for "Portrait AI." I went to the ON1 facebook page and sent them a PM asking how to uninstall the software and they sent me a link to a page that contains the uninstall info. They didn't seem at all surprised that their apps didn't show up in my control panel. I also told them I was disappointed that they would create software that couldn't be uninstalled like other software and they didn't contradict me.
If it worked properly for you, that's great. But the fact that neither app showed in my control panel is just another strike against them in my book.

I owned ON1 Photo Raw 2018, 2019, and 2020 and will not upgrade to 2021 this year. In fact around a month ago I finally decided to uninstall Photo Raw 2020 from my machine. I much prefer using DXO PhotoLab Elite even though On1 has a lot more features.

The ON1 interface is convoluted and requires way to much jumping around to get things done. Performance on my machine, compared to PhotoLab was mediocre at best. ON1 has a huge number of filters but the majority of them seem to be slight variations of each other. Once familiar with PhotoLab most of those filters can be emulated from a much more compact feature set. I think all the ON1 named filters are intended to simply their choice for newbies but in the end they make the application seem bloated.

Going back and forth between the much simpler PhotoLab interface and ON1, I found very few things in ON1 that I couldn’t do better and more quickly in PhotoLab. Of course ON1 has a lot of additional features that PhotoLab does not, and a DAM that PhotoLab lacks, but after 2+ years of owning ON1, I realized that rarely or never used most of those additional features anyway.

On countless occasions I tried to get the same results in ON1 that I was able to get in PhotoLab but was consistently disappointed by ON1's output, especially with regard to the loss of fine detail.

In the comparisons below I was not attempting to match colors or white balance so there is a big difference between the two. I no longer have ON1 installed so I can't set up a closer matched comparison. The quality of the ON1 results in the comparisons below were typical of what I was able to achieve after around two years of ownership. The sky in the Photolab version was modified using local adjustments and there was no detail so there is no reason to compare the skies, The ON1 image is on the left and the PhotoLab Elite image is on the right. The image was taken in September 2018 in Nova Scotia. The output jpeg from both versions was created from the original raw file. The image was captured with the Tamron 18-400 mm lens which is a very convenient vacation lens but not a very good one optically.

I was very careful when applying adjustments in ON1. Since I owned the software I wanted it to succeed. If it had met or exceeded my expectations I might have started using ON1 as my regular raw processor due to its greater number of features when compared to PhotoLab Elite, but it was slow, and cumbersome, with an unnecessarily complex interface.

The particular image used in the comparison was edited in the Photo Raw 2019 I believe. I generally spent around 3 times as long working on the ON1 versions of my images than with the PhotoLab versions. From the beginning I struggled to get the ON1 versions to look the way I wanted them to, and with the same level of detail as PhotoLab. I almost always could not. The results I got with this image trying to retrieve fine detail in ON1 was better than I often was able to achieve, but it still did not compare well to PhotoLab. At higher magnification the ON1 image seems to lack sharpness as well as detail, but I can assure you that ample sharpness and contrast was applied. Any additional sharpness and white halos around hard edges start to become visible. Note the final image at 300%. The typical extreme loss of detail and muddiness is apparent. ON1 is definitely not the program to use if your are cropping a lot

The comparisons were done using FastStone Viewer. Note the significantly greater fine detail in the PhotoLab version. The quality of this particular ON1 jpeg taken on a bright late summer midafternoon, is actually noticeably better than the typical output I got when processing lower light images in ON1. I was so frustrated using ON1 that I deleted the majority of the images I exported during the time I spent with it. The quality of the output from the current 2020 version of ON1 is no better, which is why I recently decided to uninstall it after living unhappily with 3 versions of this software. In the end, it was just taking up disk space. I was very disappointed and kept hoping as each new version was released that they would address the performance issues and output quality. Instead they focused on adding as many new features as they could cobble together for each new release. Quantity over quality. Perhaps ON1 will improve over time.


Mark

Full Image, ON1 on left, PhotoLab on right

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Well thank you for that.
Now I have to check out DXO.

ncjohn wrote in post #19132487
Well thank you for that.
Now I have to check out DXO.

My intention was not to push using PhotoLab Elite. Its not for everyone and its somewhat limited feature set may not meet your requirements. However, comparing ON1 to it gave me the opportunity to highlight serious ON1 shortcomings.