Photo by Hudson Henry.
Welcome to the February edition of ON1 Insider, the place to learn about what’s going on behind the scenes, gain perspective for ON1 happenings, and not the place for leaving feature requests. 🙂 We’ll discuss feature requests further down. This year is flying by; I can’t believe we’re almost half way through February. It’s sure to be an exciting year at ON1 with our pace and what we have in store for this year. The ON1 plugins for Capture One are here, and I know many Capture One customers are ecstatic. My first topic for this edition of ON1 Insider is all about plugins. Let’s get started.
We’ve been developing and selling plugins for Photoshop and plugins for Lightroom for 15+years at ON1 (or onOne back in the day). Back then, it was all about time-saving products like PhotoTools, PhotoFrame, Mask Pro, Genuine Fractals, and many others. The goal was to give photographers the results they needed in a short amount of time. Photoshop was very complicated, and Lightroom was relatively new. Our plugins were the perfect fit for photographers looking to speed up their workflow. Plugins were the secret sauce photographers used to make their photos stand out and gave results not easily achievable in the Photoshop and Lightroom worlds.
Then there were two significant shifts in the market. Any guesses? March 2013, almost eight years ago, Adobe went subscription only for Lightroom and Photoshop. Many of our current customers made the switch to ON1 at the time and never looked back. They do not want to subscribe to their photo editing software and likely never will. With ON1, they could own their software and a major reason why ON1 will always offer a perpetual license for the software. Now that’s out of the way, let’s continue.
The next major shift came in March 2016. Google, owners of the Nik Collection, decided to make Nik Software plugins completely free for anyone. This left a vacuum in the plugin space nobody saw coming. A short time later, we made our big shift and began focusing almost entirely on ON1 Photo RAW. Dubbed the future of raw photo editing and our main focus to this day. Plugins then became an afterthought for ON1 until recently.
ON1 Plugins have come full circle. Their popularity has grown recently, and our plans are to inject our new technologies and time-saving features into plugins once again. Some plugins today solve more complex tasks efficiently (culling, for example), can produce better results than their host application (noise, portrait retouching), or complement existing workflows (secret sauce, effects, sky replacement). As we state on our plugins page, “Every photographer wants the best in class editing software for their workflow. ON1 plugins work with YOUR specific software of choice at a level of integration no other plugin does.” Deeper integrations will include keeping photos re-editable, working with multiple photos between the plugin and host app, and more.
ON1 Photo RAW is firmly in its place as the best all-in-one photo editor, and without it, there is no ON1. ON1 Photo RAW delivers way above-average editing tools and value for the price. A little over 85% of Photo RAW owners are using the app as a standalone workflow, not as a plugin, and that number grows every year. It will continue to be our primary focus. We need to expand our product offerings, and if you’re using Photo RAW as your primary photo editing application, not much changes. There are way more photographers out there than ON1 Photo RAW owners and we want to be able to serve them regardless of the workflow they’ve chosen. The biggest opportunity for ON1 is to bring our technologies into these other workflows through plugins. If you use other applications (such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity Photo, or Capture One) as your primary photo editor, strongly consider choosing the ON1 Professional plugins.
If you are new to ON1 and want a say in our software applications development, check out the Photo RAW Project. It’s our customer-driven community feedback site. Dan Harlacher, our VP of Product, asked that I add some clarity on how the Photo RAW Project works.
- Each idea must go through an approval process before it appears on the page. For example, if Nathan fills out the form with all the required details, his idea will not appear until approved (by Dan). If Nathan’s idea was already previously submitted by Jonny, it would not appear because it’s a duplicate. We get A LOT of duplicates.
- Use the search field and type in keywords to see if your idea already exists. If the search results contain your keyword, the results will include every single submission with that keyword.
- Not every submission will get put into development. This is where community involvement is essential. There is more to it than the approval of an idea. ON1 customers must rate the idea and leave their comments. More ratings and feedback on the idea will lead to deeper investigation from our product team. I read complaints in the comments about the feature requests not being released in the product. I’m sorry, but it’s going to take more than ten votes and a few comments for us to take it seriously. Share ideas, gather support, and we will listen.
Dan asked me to solicit some feedback from you fine people for specific submissions to the Photo RAW Project.
- The first one is about importing photos from your device automatically. Is there enough interest for us to add this as a preference?
- The second one is about plugins, but using ON1 Photo RAW as the host application for other plugins and not the opposite.
and this one. - Leave your votes and comments on those pages and not here please!
Lastly, I need to admit something. It’s a painful admission, but I’m ready. ON1 360 was an awful name for a product. I’ve read every one of the online comments regarding this topic. I take it back, and I promise it won’t happen again. ON1 360 was never the product, but merely the cloud syncing feature of Photo RAW. So what happened to it? Nothing. It’s still there but is going through a rebrand. ON1 360 will now appear as the Cloud Sync feature we include with a subscription to ON1 Photo RAW. Cloud Sync will allow subscribers to sync photo organization, edits, and eventually presets and extras from computer to computer and computers to mobile devices. We will keep it priced as it is today and continue making it part of Photo RAW for those who choose to subscribe. Keep in mind the cloud syncing has always been a subscription offer. Anyone subscribing to any ON1 360 plan will have no interruption. It’s only a rebrand. Thank you.
My final thought – I hope to see each of you in ON1 Plus this year, Dylan, Nathan, Hudson, and the entire crew have some great stuff in the plans.
Patrick is the VP of Marketing at ON1 and has over 17 years of experience in the industry. He’s also an all-around good guy.
13 comments on “ON1 Insider – Plugins, Photo RAW Project, and ON1 360”
On February 13, 2021 at 1:50 am David Price wrote:
Thank you for keeping us aware of what ON1 has planned for the immediate future.
Also, thanks for all of the work that has been put into upgrading the photo raw project, so as to make it both easier to navigate and easier to use.
I don’t use 360, or what ever it is called today. Not because I object to it, but only because it does not fit into the way that I use my PCs. (Essentially, my view is why pay for something that I am not going to be able to use?)
But, I don’t understand why you felt the need to apologise for calling it 360. [Although in Amateur Photographer Magazine in the UK, ON1’s software is no longer classified as subscription free software, because of the optional subscription. sigh. ].
I am very much looking forward to the hinted at improvements to sharpening and noise control, as well as to whatever clever and new ideas, will eventually appear in PR 2022.
Best wishes David Price
On February 16, 2021 at 6:57 pm Patrick Smith replied:
Thanks David, I was apologizing to those who hated the product name. 🙂 Tha name may have been confusing for some and then again, maybe I will never know. 🙂 Looking forward to getting all the new stuff into the hands of customers. Take care!
On February 13, 2021 at 10:13 am Michael Anderson wrote:
Very glad to see renewed interest in the plugins. They allow for those with YEARS of money and time invested in using other editing apps to use On1 plugging as part of the workflow without having to purchase Photo Raw that has Browse and Develop modules they will not use. Doing the plugin integration for C1P was a very good move.
On February 16, 2021 at 6:55 pm Patrick Smith replied:
Thanks Michael. We agree and you should look forward to what we have in store.
On February 22, 2021 at 1:46 am Brian Gooch wrote:
I had noticed that the option the separately subscribe to 360/cloud sync was no longer available. Does that mean that going forward for those with a perpetual licence for PhotoRaw 202x there won’t be a separate option to subscribe for cloud sync, the only way to get access to cloud sync will be by subscribing to PhotoRaw?
On February 22, 2021 at 7:59 am Patrick Smith replied:
Yes, that is correct. I am sure we can arrange a subscription the the service only if you want it though.
On February 22, 2021 at 6:19 am Patosan wrote:
I was wondering what happened to the Photo Critique?
On February 22, 2021 at 7:57 am Patrick Smith replied:
Critiques are done through ON1 Plus and are usually posted here on the blog and you will receive a notification about them in your account as well.
On February 22, 2021 at 6:23 am Grzegorz Pietkiewicz wrote:
Will On1 Photo Raw 2021 be able to work as a plugin for Capture One?
I bought the update from the 2020 version mainly due to the mention that Capture One will be supported as a plugin. Descriptions on the blog announcing the 2021 version suggested that such functionality would be available later in the standalone version, i.e. On1 Photo Raw 2021. Unfortunately, on the technical support page I read the following information: “Capture One plugin integration is only available within the Professional Plugin Bundle and is not included in ON1 PHOTO RAW 2021. “
On February 22, 2021 at 7:56 am Patrick Smith replied:
Reach out to our support team and they can provide any plugins you need.
On February 22, 2021 at 8:54 am Sherry Saudi wrote:
I prefer to use On1 Photo Raw 2021 as my main editor. When I’m doing food and product photography I need live view as in CP1.
I would love to see that in O1R. That would allow me to stay mainly in one software.Hope to see that feature in the future.
On February 22, 2021 at 8:02 pm J Michaud wrote:
Does this mean I have access to cloud sync because I own the latest version of On 1 Raw?
On March 3, 2021 at 6:05 am Iliyan Georgiev wrote:
I just want to say that after doing extensive research I ended up purchasing Photo RAW recently as your product was a good fit for my needs. Specifically, I like to use Apple Photos for storage and synching but the built-in editor is too basic. I like how Photo RAW integrates as an extension that allows me to apply some pretty advanced non-destructive manipulation to RAW/JPEG files that are editable at any time. This is godsent!
But I also use Photo RAW as a standalone browser, again because Apple Photos is quite limited, especially the separation of RAWs and JPEGs. So I use Photo RAW to cull my photos and choose for each whether I want to preserve the RAW or the JPEG file, and only then I import stuff into Photos and use the extension for editing. So, I’m very happy at the moment, got exactly what I needed.
So my only real complaint are the occasional performance issues, especially when using brushes and local adjustments. Fingers crossed future development efforts will focus on fixing these. Keep up the fantastic work guys!
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