The first beta release of the new ON1 Photo RAW 2018 was just over a week ago, and we’re overwhelmed by the excitement and feedback we’ve received from the ON1 community. The response from customers and new faces has been very positive.
We are on the right track to provide everyone with the tools and features they have been asking for, and we will be releasing a second beta version in the coming days that will make Photo RAW 2018 even better. Here is a quick sampling of the feedback we have heard so far:
“Fantastic. All of these new mask options are such great time savers! The more I see what’s new in 2018, the more I realize what a big upgrade it is.” – Steven Dempsey
“Amazing. You guys just keep making this software better and better. THANKS!” – Mary Hulett
“Great stuff – the exact features I was looking for – really enjoyed the live tutorials” – IshaRa Deborah Coulthard
Our team has been working feverishly to catalog over 1,000 feedback notes left by our customers. Many of these are well wishes like the comments above. We’ve also received many requests for improvements and specific bug reports. Believe me when I say every one of these issues is being investigated. Here are some key pieces we are working on that I wanted to share with you today.
- Pink Results from HDR — We tracked this down to an issue with Fuji XTrans cameras. We have fixed this and will be providing a new beta build in the coming days.
- Unable to Merge in HDR — Originally we had pretty tight restrictions on photos to merge in HDR. They needed to come from the same camera, be the same size and orientation, the same focal length, ISO and aperture. This helps weed-out bad input. In hindsight, these were too strict. We will be scaling these requirements back to allow more photos to be merged.
- Exposure Variance in Panorama — Up until now we made no adjustments for photos that vary in exposure in a panorama sequence. Keep in mind, that if you want a great looking panorama there is a particular camera setting we highly recommend. It is best practice when capturing panoramas to shoot in manual mode so the exposures do not vary across the scene.
- However, we’ve had a lot of feedback that users are shooting in Auto. So we are working on compensating for the exposure changes for these types of photos.
We’re also working to improve the initial results in HDR, increasing the size of icons, buttons and fonts, improving highlight recovery, adding support for new cameras, and fixing other reported bugs. The second beta release coming next week will address many of the issues.
We really value everyone’s feedback up to this point, and we’re making great progress. We are committed to fixing each of the issues reported by the community before the final release goes out our doors. This is what helps us to make a great product, so keep sending us your feedback.
On October 12, 2017 at 5:33 pm Manuel Lopez wrote:
Great job. Call me crazy, but I am using ON1 PR 2018 Beta to process my production images (been using 2017). Of course with multiple backups.
On October 12, 2017 at 11:05 pm Carsten Rasmussen replied:
I agree. I just edited an entire wedding for a customer. I also used 2017 but had to go back to LR and PS because it had to many issues. The new release is looking awesome so far, so my workflow is now all in ON1 2018. Some small bugs encountered, but it’s beta so I expected it. Can’t wait till final release :)
On October 13, 2017 at 12:25 am David Price wrote:
When Photo Raw 2017 launched, I could see the potential but it did not feel like a fully developed product. As 2017A.D. progressed, Photo Raw 2017 was fettled into a much more powerful and note worthy package. The final versions of Photo Raw 2017 were very impressive. But, the Beta for Raw 2018 is a step change from Raw 2017.
I agree with Manual and Carsten, the Beta performs better than 2017.5. But then, photography is my hobby, not my living. So, I can afford to take more risks with my photos.
I look forward to the HDR merge improvement, yes I too often forget to select the best camera settings. But perhaps, as well as allowing less than technically perfect photos to merge. You should pop up a small textbox, (when imperfect photos are selected), to politely remind customers that the ‘best HDR results come from using photos with the same apperture and ISO?’ Such a prompt would fit with your ‘coaching ethos’, and it is all too easy to let the auto setting become the default camera setting.
On October 13, 2017 at 5:38 am Sunny Archibald replied:
Oh, so true. When I read the info on the dumbing down of the HDR merge, I was amazed. Camera settings should be considered first and foremost when bracketing.
On October 13, 2017 at 3:14 am Chris K. wrote:
Great as always 2018 is much better than 2017 and also love the new interface and features, Keep up the great work;)
On October 13, 2017 at 5:57 am Mark Allen wrote:
This is all good news. I’m glad my pink HDR’s have been sorted. I really love the new Colour Masks and the changes to the controls of Luminosity Masks.
On October 13, 2017 at 12:38 pm rdbimages53@gmail.com wrote:
Please, please have you done anything with memory usage in 2018? Ever since 2017.6 I have experienced memory crashes when processing images. My PC has 16MB of RAM and 2GB on the video card. I love all of the new features, but feel the bones need some work. Thanks.
On October 13, 2017 at 4:54 pm Sandra Chung wrote:
I go full manual, tripod mounted, on a pano head on a half ball leveler, when doing panoramas, to make sure the exposure is the same (typically it’s an shutter speed adjustment). But even when using those images, there was highly visible variances in the Pano merge. Even images I had taken at night, with the only light source was sodium vapor street lights, 25% overlap on the images, had variances.
On October 13, 2017 at 5:12 pm Sandra Chung wrote:
Regardless about the panorama issues, I have to say that v2018 seems to have addressed some of the major problems I had been having with v2017. The massive memory leak, 27gigs of 32gigs of ram being used, and having to do a hard reboot if I used more than 4 adjustment layers, or if the image was large (a dng pano made in Photoshop, or even the dng pano saved as a jpg) would cause a hard lock during the “rendering” of the image to open it in Photoshop/Corel/Affinity. (I tried different photo editing programs to see if the issue was with it instead of On1)
v2018 loads, scans new images quicker than v2017. When I export as a JPG, v2018 is faster.
On October 14, 2017 at 10:08 am Vinny Giannino wrote:
I think ON1 has the best concept in manipulating photos. Everything is easy to do, the amount of editing that can be done non destructively is outstanding and the added features coming in 2018 really adds to the value of the product.
But with that said I have to say that I am a little disheartened to see that something as simple (in my mind) as a portrait oriented photo coming out as landscape isn’t corrected and should have been corrected in 2017. I stopped using 2017 and ON1 was great with how they treated me as a customer but a little glitch like I mentioned (there were others as well) seeing how it wasn’t corrected makes me shake my head a little.
I am testing 2018, haven’t fully tested it in the glitches I had in 2017 and am happy to be a beta tester for your product. I have reported whatever glitches I have and your staff is trying to solve them. I am hoping that all glitches from the 2017 release and now 2018 get resolved and I can enjoy using your program again.