I moved from Lightroom 6 to On1 over ten years ago for a couple of reasons. Lightroom Classic 6 database was unstable causing corruptions way too often. They were recoverable but.. On1 lets your use both a browser (like Bridge and the new version of Lightroom (the cloud version that runs on the desktop) or a database (catalog). It also had layers, did a decent job of raw processing and a lot of other features. I teach Lightroom and Photoshop at the college level so that was a pretty big move for me. Each update (twice a year) has added features. Only one time did they do a release which was basically a beta. But they owned up to and quickly fixed it. So where are we at in 2024. On1 is still a great product with both the Data Asset Management , browser and lots of great features but… it doesn’t match up the masking in Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw and it is having a major problem with PhotoRaw images (apple’s DNG format for the 43MP images it can do now since iPhone 14). They are working on it but right now I am processing those images in Lightroom Classic by using On1 feature then processing the Lightroom Classic version in On1 for the effects etc. I hope they fix it soon. The masking isn’t a surprise since no other competitive product does masking as well as Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw. Right now I am in a huge project using Peakto to cull the over 500k images I’ve shot in the last 50 years to a subset for my family so that when I am gone they will have those images.

So On1 is definitely worth the price (you can get discounts by watching the various YouTube people like Jim Nix, Anthony Morganti and others. If I was starting out I would probably use Lightroom Classic but with plugins to On1.

I left Adobe four or five years ago and replaced it with ON1. Compared to my experience with Adobe, it's a no brainer; ON1 provides a better overall experience. While ON1 is not without its issues, I would rate it an 8 out of 10. Overall, I am very happy with the program, and it certainly improves with the annual releases. There are countless YouTube resources, many of which are very good. Scott Davenport also publishes an ON1 book that he updates regularly, which is available in PDF and bound formats. You can even hire Scott for one-on-one Zoom training sessions, which IMHO, is money well spent, particularly if your time is worth more than your money. Also, one other thing to consider... I am a Windows user, so many of the most significant problems I have had involve compatibility issues. There are both Windows and Apple versions of ON1, but ON1 is optimized for Apple. When I fully retire, I will probably switch to a high-end Windows laptop, because most of my computer use will be for photo processing, not business applications.

I made the jump to ON1 PR in 2017 and have upgraded every year since. Honestly, every upgrade whether the annual or an interim have annoyed me for one reason or another. I often felt the release simply wasn’t ready for prime time and crashes were frequent. That is … until the 2024 version, which has been very stable and certainly a lot faster than previous versions. I’m not a fan of the ON1 videos because in my opinion, they only address the mechanics of editing and not why and the logic of tool selection.