Bournemouth — Dec 17th 2019
Tony Still gave a presentation and demonstration of ON1 Photo Raw, a photograph organisation and manipulation application.
There followed an extensive question and answer session.
ON1 presentation
Background
Lightroom V6 was sold with a perpetual licence which unfortunately Adobe has superseded with a subscription only version.
This, coupled with concerns about 32bit components not working in Catalina and the inevitable lack of support for future formats, has prompted Tony to look for alternatives.
Tony explained that ON1 can be purchased with a perpetual licence and works fully with Catalina. It therefore can be seen as an alternative to Lightroom. Upgrades can optionally be purchased annually to keep it up to date.
Scope
ON1 is a:
* photo organiser
* Raw processor
* Non destructive editor
It can be purchased as a plug-in for other photo applications.
Raw processing
Tony explained that there are many Raw formats, usually created to suit specific cameras or families of cameras. The closest to a standard is Adobe’s DNG (Digital Negative) format. This can be considered to be a superset of other Raw formats allowing problem-free conversion to it.
Demonstration and Q&A
Key points:
ON1 uses the same keyboard shortcuts as Lightroom, easing the learning curve. (Even if they do not match the ON1 function names!).
Tony demonstrated the range of photo adjustments available, including:
* The same basic ‘photography’ functions as Lightroom
* Transformations, eg keystone correction
* Presets (or effects) eg simulating photographic film characteristics
* So-called Filters - preset processes such as ‘colour pop’
Histograms prompted much discussion, the consensus was that they provide a graph of light/colour quantity (y-axis) against a x-axis of brightness. This allows the presence of each colour to be analysed across the whole dynamic range. This gives a more objective view of the photo, for example showing when a photo is ‘flat’ (low contrast) or over/under exposed.
Migration to ON1
Tony explained the migration feature in ON1. This allows the edit history from Lightroom to be retained, allowing reversion or further editing in ON1.
The process does not carry over the edits directly, as the edits do not necessarily work the same way between applications. Instead ON1 takes the original and the final Lightroom edited version, then uses its own effects/filters etc to generate an equivalent ON1 final version. Tony showed that although this works well for simple functions, some edits were not recreated successfully.
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Roy Rainford said…
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