ON1 Photo RAW — A New Way to Work with Presets

If you’ve used ON1 Effects (or even Lightroom®) you understand the value of presets. Presets are used all the time whether you make some for yourself or import presets from others. Presets allow you to “wrap-up” your settings so you can use them again on other photos. Today presets are created at the module level, such as presets for Effects, or Enhance or Resize. You can view and apply these presets in the modules that created them or batch process with them.

As we build ON1 Photo RAW, one of the key hallmarks is a non-destructive workflow. Each photo you edit has a set of settings describing everything you did in the modules. You can even copy and paste the settings from photo to photo. Sounds like a preset, right?
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could save a preset that contained your edits and adjustments across each module? What about the ability to browse and apply those presets anywhere, including Browse? Good news, that’s exactly what you will be able to do in ON1 Photo RAW.

You will be able to save a preset at any time, in any module and select which options you want to save into a preset. You can save all your edits and adjustments or just the ones you want (in the preset).
You will then be able to browse, search, preview and apply your presets, to one or many photos, from the preset browser in any module, including Browse. Presets for every module in Photo RAW will live together. For example, you can apply your favorite Effects preset right inside of Develop (aka Enhance). You can see which modules are used in a preset by the badges on each thumbnail. You can also filter down the presets in view to just the ones that use certain modules.
Note: You may also notice the Lightroom icon for filtering. Right after the initial release in the fall will be the ability to import and use your Lightroom presets in Photo RAW (as part of a free update).
Photo RAW will have a Photo History pane in each module. For us, figuring out the right level of history has been a challenge. One of the great things about our non-destructive workflow is the order of work doesn’t matter. You can go back and edit anything without losing the work you did after that. A normal history pane showing every single change wouldn’t be that helpful. We decided to show each re-editable tool and each module and pane/filter that you use. This makes it easy to see what you have done and to go back and re-edit an individual setting without blowing away your work. What are your thoughts? Does this all sound great?
These new presets are structured differently than our current presets (like the ones you find in ON1 Photo 10). First we will recreate all our current presets with this new format, you won’t lose anything. If you have created or imported your own presets, we will also automatically find and convert your existing Effects and Resize presets. At the moment, we do not plan to convert Enhance and Portrait presets based on feedback from our users. Both Enhance and Portrait will be changing so much the old presets just won’t be useful anymore in the new model.
Smart Photos is another area that will change in Photo RAW. Smart Photos are our current re-editing solution. They work by storing the editing instructions in our old preset format. When you open Smart Photos made with a previous generation of ON1 Photo or Perfect Photo you will have the option to use either the original photo or the edited photo, but you won’t be able to re-edit the old settings. This is a one-time change from the old method to the new method. You will still be able to open and re-edit your Smart Photos in older versions. And you will still be able to create new Smart Photos in ON1 Photo RAW through Layers and they will be re-editable going forward.
Let me know what you think.
– Dan

UPDATED

Based on feedback from you guys and from our team here as we start work on this feature we have made a couple changes and clarified a few things. First we will be changing the name of the pane to “Photo Settings” as it more accurately describes the way it works. We think if we call it History, there is too much baggage that goes with that name. There are expectations in the way history panes work, they are a step-by-step, linear list, which we are not going for. You can edit any adjustment you make without having to roll back and lose your work in-between, basically order doesn’t matter any more. We have also removed the Original from the bottom of the list for the same reason. You can still easily reset the image or toggle the results of your adjustments on and off to preview the changes.