It’s never been faster to get your photos from your camera into ON1 Photo RAW 2018. A new feature coming soon in the ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1 update, Import, will allow you to download, back-up, rename and add metadata and photo settings all in one step. Import will detect any camera or memory card that you have connected to your computer and allow you to copy them to your computer (import them) into ON1 Photo RAW 2018.

Keep in mind the following two important notes:

  1. The Import dialogue box will not pop-up automatically. You will need to go to File > Import to access this feature.
  2. If you dread catalogs, importing, and other related tasks and just want to browse to your photos like you always have in ON1 Photo RAW this feature does NOT change the way you want to work. We are still a fast browser and that workflow will not change. You can simply download your photos from the Finder/Explorer and just point the Browse module to the photos to start working.

We know that the word “Import” is a loaded term for many Lightroom users. Some photographers hear the word import and simply think download while others think cataloging into a database and waiting. We have struggled with the right way to talk about the Import dialog. It’s main job is to copy photos from point A to point B. Point A could be a camera, a memory card, an external drive of just a folder on your computer. Point B can be anyplace as well. Along the way you can change the names, organize them, add metadata and a preset, etc. so you don’t have to do that stuff as separate steps in Browse afterwords (but you still can of course).

Using the Smart Import dialog doesn’t automatically mean you are cataloging the photos you are copying. It can of course do that if you are copying to a Cataloged Folder. We will watch the folder and remember the photos that are there and get all the metadata and previews so that browsing there is faster in future. However if your destination is not a Cataloged Folder, that’s cool too. Everything works the same, we just don’t watch that folder in the background.

Okay, I hope that explains how Smart Import works and how it relates to Cataloged Folders versus Importing into Lightroom and other catalog-only solutions. That said, we know how loaded the term “Import” is. So please help us name this feature so that it makes the most sense to you.

More information on the ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1 release date will be coming soon. View all the new features coming soon at the ON1 Photo RAW Project Exposed.