wapiti Loc: round rock, texas

I have ON1 2022, 2001, and years previous. I seldom use it and don't believe that I will extend after this year. I have no doubt that it is great software, but Lightroom and Photoshop are my go-to software along with Topaz.

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

With a good NVIDIA GPU, it's very fast!!! (I had to make a change.)

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

shackcf

Funny you should ask. I have just upgraded my ON1 RAW 2018 to 2022.1 recently. I also have DXO Photolab 4 Elite. As well as NIK collection from DXO. I tried DXO 5 but they still do not support Nikon's A1000 model. My lady bought one for travel. I have contacted DXO on that issue and the reply was less than satisfactory. I gave up on Adobe over a year ago after an update screwed up both LRC and PS for the third time. I switched to DXO and Affinity Photo.

After using DXO for a year I find that ON1 RAW 2022 is easier to use now. Their workflows are similar and the ON1 processing (export) is much faster. Plus it does process Nikon A1000 NRW files.

Do download the trial ON1 to be sure it will run. My laptop will not run it due to its graphic chip. It's 8 years old so I was not surprised. I did have to upgrade my desktop in 2018 to run ON1. But I got a deal for the app at Shutterfest.

ON1 also has a decent Metadata editor where DXO 4 does not but DXO 5 does. I use Nikon's NX studio and transfer apps as well for file renaming and metadata edits. Been using that since 2009 with my first digital camera.

I have never had the use for LRC catalog system and found it annoying at times. ON1 browser is all I need. It does have a catlog of sorts that you can use to point to favorites and DXO has projects that you can build. My achiving system moves my files between 3 different devices. I offload images from my desktop to a NAS and other external devices to freeup space. That broke LRC catalog. Granted there are ways to use LRC to do that but I am a retired IT pro and I do the file management. I have had apps that have deleted files in the past.

Good luck. Happy Holidays to you.

wapiti Loc: round rock, texas

"As far as your objection to software subscription - if I may be blunt - it is a ridiculous reason to reject otherwise perfectly good software because you don't like "how" you pay for the license to use it. You do realize you own NOTHING when you buy a license, other than the permission to use someone's software - regardless of whether you pay a lump sum up front for a software application's license, or you pay on a monthly basis - which turns out to be cheaper in the long run if you keep your software up to date."
Gene hit the nail on the head here. LR and PS are, in my opinion, the gold standard of image post-processing. The objection of paying a SMALL monthly fee, makes no sense to me. We think nothing of paying 6-8 dollars for a cup of fancy coffee or 10-12 dollars for a burger, yet balk at $10/mo for the best in post processing.

jsfphotos Loc: New York, NY

I know Photoshop is incredibly powerful but it is also incredibly complex and totally unintuitive. In fact it was only in response to Apple’s Aperture software that Adobe came up with LR as a data manager but if you wanted to do something more complicated, you had to make basic adjustments in LR and then take it into PS. For my money, ON1 does it all—you can Browse photos from ANY photo repository—Hard drive, desktop, External drive, Dropbox etc instead of making a “Catalog within LR”. The editing capabilities are on a par with LR; the Effects and Portrait AI modules are exceptionally good. And you can do composite work in Layers instead of taking your image out of LR and moving to PS. Finally, as someone who has been using Topaz software, On1’s NoNoise AI is the best on the market. I probably don’t know how to take advantage of all it’s capabilities, but I believe ON1 is just getting better and better and better.

david vt Loc: Vermont

Gene51, as usual, has given a thorough and thoughtful reply.

As for subscription model, I also agree with his comments. While ON1 (and several others) promote that you own the software, ON1 (and others) come out with a major upgrade with new features every year. Yes, you do get to control the timing of the spending, and if you don’t want the new features (and not talking bug fixes, but really enhancements), you can always wait, but if you do want it, it is about 120 (maybe less with discount) and, look at that, about $10 per month. With LR/PS subscription, you get these new features as they roll them out.

Personally, I do like ON1. It is my primary RAW editor. I also use Apply Photos for “quick cleanups” of jpegs (I shoot HS sports (RAW plus jpeg) as I can whip through it faster and get out to the school website. Any more serious work, including anything I want to print, goes through ON1. I also like that ON1 allows me to use the native file/folder structure and just pointing the software at this “root” gets me everything in it, but I am not limited to making every move from within ON1, the way LR does.

So, definitely worth downloading the trial version when you have time to learn and put it through its paces. Then you will know if it is right for you.

Happy Holidays

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

Little clarification.... updates are free for the version you purchased, not for major version updates like 2021 to 2022. Updates for one licensed major version to another is $70-$80 depending on your timing.

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

However, you are not stuck with a monthly charge (paid yearly!) whether you want the upgrade or not!!! I have, though, found the upgrades to be of such magnitude that I have not balked on any so far.

I think this has been mentioned in passing, but I will repeat it, as it's most important - ON1 solicits specific comments as to upgrades and/or enhancements desired, and follows through on providing most of them -- very responsive!!! They really are committed to making ON1 the best, and in most respects have done so, I believe!!!

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

djlouden Loc: Ocala, Florida

On 1 has become my go to for processing. I have a Plus subscription primarily for the added access to the training videos. On1 seems to be working hard to continually update and improve as well as provide great video training.

Try before you buy.

Happy shooting

josquin1 Loc: Massachusetts

I've been using ON1 for a few years now and am quite happy with it. I was using Lightroom but just didn't like it so I switched and am very satisfied. I was having an issue with the color on the 2021 version and I wrote them and they corrected it incredibly quickly. It works very well. Am resisting upgrading to the 2022 versions as I'm very satisfied with the 2021.

strawberry36 Loc: San Jose, CA

I used ON! but have given it up. The videos are hard for me to understand (they all talk too fast, which makes it difficult for a man of 85 to translate) and the only book of instruction available is TERRIBLE.
It does have some very nice features (filters) and I occasionally use them.
I've returned to Photoshop Elements and find it easy to use and the accompanying books make very good references.
If you can manage to dig into the details of ON1, more power to you. It seems like a good program, but I'm always frustrated when I work with it.
Bob

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

On1 has been my primary Data Asset Management and raw processor since I left Adobe when they went to SaaS pricing. The feature that I liked from the beginning is I could use a browse method rather than a catalog (or database). My experience with Lightroom is it was easily corrupted back then and I had always felt PhotoShop was too complex to use unless you used it everyday. On1 just keeps getting better and they have produced solid updates and releases for my Macs. The effects it has available are great especially the new NoNoise feature which is better in my opinion than Topaz DeNoise or Lightroom/PS which I both own. When I need to do something that On1 doesn’t do like artistic features I can use a plugin to Topaz Studio 2 to easy do that and bring it back as a layer.

It has a few cons - one is they haven’t updated some of the prime functions like resize in a while but it is due for an update in early 2022. Which by the way when On1 says they are going to do something, they do and it works. The other con would be it doesn’t have the masking features PhotoShop and Lightroom have especially of late. So no problem I just push the image out them doing the masking, etc and push it back to On1.

I would give 3 1/2 stars out of 4. And its customer support is about the same rating.

It is certainly worth a look at a trial.

ORpilot Loc: Prineville, Or

I have a 2019 MacBook and a 2015 iMac I was able to down load On1 2022 on both machines. They have been upgraded to Monterey.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Some people lease a car. Other people buy one.

Some people rent a home. Other people buy one.

Some people rent tools. Other people buy them.

There are times when buying makes sense and is more practical. But there are also times when renting is the better approach. It depends upon individual situations.

Having used LR and PS for many years (PS since mid-1990s and LR from about a year after introduction), I worked out that doing periodic upgrades to a newer version, though sometimes skipping a version, on average was costing me $325 to $350 every three years. So for me there's very little difference in cost between the perpetual license and the $120 a year subscription.

Back when it was perpetually licensed, PS upgrades were pretty affordable. Usually around $200 to $250. The biggest hit with PS was the initial purchase. It was upwards of $500 for the "full version". The final version (CS6) might have been upwards of $600. You didn't need to buy every version to get the upgrade price.... though in later years upgrades were limited to just the previous two versions.

It was different with LR. It's six versions were only ever offered at a full version price of about $130, except for a well hidden $90 or $100 upgrade to LR6 that LR5 owners could get, if they bought directly from Adobe and knew to look for it. I know I used at least four versions of LR, possibly five. There was at least one, maybe two I skipped.

But my experience is far different than other people's. Someone who previously bought every upgrade would see considerably lower cost now with the subscription model. On the other hand, someone who rarely upgraded previously might find the cost greater now with the subscription. This would especially apply to users of other software, such as Adobe's own Elements. We see it all the time here on UHH, where someone is still using a 5, 6 or 7 year old version of Elements, which cost them $100 and now has averaged out to $20 or less per year. For them, the subscription would be considerably more expensive.

Switching to the subscription model has made Adobe stinking rich, thanks to hordes of new users. Where it was cost-prohibitive to many people to buy and use Photoshop in the past, they now can get it for an initial cost of only $120. Of course, I bet many subscribers end up only using LR, which is much simpler to learn to use... more intuitive... and simply faster to work with. It doesn't have some of the capabilities of PS, but a lot of folks find LR sufficient for their needs.

At some point Adobe's customer base will stop expanding and they won't see the same year-over-year increase in profits, which will make their board of directors and investors unhappy. It will be interesting to see what happens then. Will they increase the cost of subscription? Keep in mind that initially Adobe wanted $30 a month for PS subscription alone. And that was a "special discount price" for the faithful already using CS6. I forget what the "regular" price was, that they cited in their emails trying to sell me on the subscription. Of course I didn't think that a very good deal, and apparently no one else did either. So Adobe lowered the subscription price to $20 a month, yet no one found that price palatable either. Finally they ended up with the $10 a month, and threw in LR to boot, so long as you pre-paid a year's subscription. That's when things really took off.

All good things come to an end. I don't know when or how much, but sooner or later I bet the LR/PS subscription cost will increase. I have to give Adobe props though, for not having done so already. They've resisted getting greedy and it's paid off with record profits. So far.

Adobe LR and PS are tools. I would prefer to have a choice whether to rent or buy, like I do with other things. Then I could opt for the plan that works best for me.

Note: Since almost all software today is being delivered by download, there would be virtually no difference in cost for Adobe. They no longer have the expense of burning a bunch of DVDs, packaging them and putting them into the retailer supply chain.

Boone Loc: Groundhog Town USA

I love it more each day! I also use Affinity & PSE.

The Tether Feature, and the De-Noise are super.

Don't hesitate... just get it. Easy to learn, and lots of support. Had ON1 since 2019, now using 2022.1.

The new features like "Dust Visualization & the De-Noise" are awesome.

Thanks,
Boone.