Tired of Adobe picking your pocket on Lightroom? Possible alternative promotion.

[vindibona1]

We already had an extensive thread on substitutes for Photoshop but we didn't delve into Lightroom much. I'd like to propose an alternative to Lightroom... On1 Raw. They have just announced On1Raw 2022 which will be available at the end of the month and are providing O1R 2021 in the interim.

To be honest I hadn't used it much as I do have a subscription to Photoshop and also own Capture One Pro. But I do also have a license for On1Raw that dates back to 2018 which I've managed to upgrade because of the cool things they introduce in each version. In one of the latest versions what really impressed me is their "AI" correction capability. For the most part you click on and image, click the AI button and 90% of the time you're done unless you want to get fancy. I confess I don't use it much, but when I do it is powerful.

As an example, over the weekend I shot some panos with my M2P and tried to stitch them together with Lightroom. It was ok but was a bigger struggle than I like and less than perfect results. I then tried the same thing in On1Raw 2020 and it was easier, more straight forward and a better result. I was then able to open it directly into Photoshop and put the finishing touches on it. One of the things I've always hated about Lightroom is that you have to import images into it before you can work on them. Not so in On1Raw.

And so I decided to upgrade once again. It was going to be $80 until I found a coupon... which knocked it down to $54 plus tax (why are they taxing software now???). I don't know how or why this code applied, but it knocked 20% off the price. The code is "NIKONRUMORS".

I'm about to install the 2021 version which is available right now, but the 2022 is promised by the end of September. I think it comes with some extra plug-ins. If you don't already own On1 Raw the basic cost (but they do have a subscription) is $99. If the 20% discount works that's only $80.

Here's the splash page for On1Raw for those that want to check it out: On1 Photo Raw info

 

[CorralesDan]

ON1 Photo Raw is my main raw processor and I have been happy for years.

 

[dixter]

thanks for the discount code... worked perfect.... that code is actually better than getting it for free as they are also giving out some plug in goods worth $99... I think the software is due out in a couple of weeks now...

 

[Cymruflyer]

I've had On1 for many years along with Topaz, and NIK and they are all great.

 

[dixter]

All of the apps from Topaz are fantastic..... and now that they have the newly released On1 its a great match... life is good

 

[gothi]

Had a quick look at this in regards to lens distortion and hot pixel removal with pictures from a Mini 2.

Lens distortion: The lens profile included in the DNG file appears to be ignored and the app doesn't have a built-in profile it can use. This leaves distortion and potentially some vignetting on images.
The manual correction seems easy to use, a setting of -30ish did a reasonable job but I'd have to spend more time to fully dial-in all the settings available to get a picture looking the same as if it'd been processed with Lightroom (which does use the lens profile included in the file). If anyone has already done this and has recommended settings I'd love to try them myself.

Hot pixel removal: Does a really good job, on a particularly noisy test photo it cleared almost as many as Lightroom did (LR cleared all but 3, On1 Raw managed to clear all but 6).

All in all it's not bad! Once you've done the hard work of manually creating a lens profile you can apply to each picture you can get consistently good results. It's not enough to pull me away from LR just yet but will definitely be playing more with it over the next week. If it used the in-built profile included in the DNG file for hassle-free lens distortion correction I think that'd probably be enough to tip me over into moving across.