Hi Anthony--I own a few of your courses and am very appreciative of the work you do and have done to help all of us learn to use these tools better. I see that you have a new course on ON1 Photo RAW 26. I tried ON1 a long time ago and at that time didn't think it made sense for me to spend the time to learn yet another photo editor that seemed great in some regards but quite lacking in others. With all of your experience using both programs can you possibly share why I might want to choose ON1 RAW now vs LR? Or not? I realize that this is a big topic that would probably require a video to really answer, but, short of that can you give your sense of it. I really trust your opinion. And thanks again!
My experience: Lightroom since V2. ON1 a couple years ago for a year, Topaz Studio for sharpening and noise reduction as a Lightroom plug-in.
The Lightroom weaknesses that might get me to switch is the requirement to use their servers for some functions. While I currently have a 1Gb bidirectional internet connection, I'll be losing that sometime in the next 2 years.
Topaz local performance on a MacBook Pro M2 Max is faster than using their servers. But their object removal is much worse than Lightroom. Their super focus tool is mind blowing and is also faster locally.
So my only motivation to switch would be to get excellent results from generative expand and object removal without the need for a fast internet connection.
In earlier versions of On1, object removal always left ghosts behind but current demos seems to have addressed this. While back then the server results were superior to local processing, the current demos did not state which type of processing was used.
So today with Photoshop for generative expand and Topaz for sharpening, noise reduction and jpeg processing; I have no need to switch.
When I lose my high speed internet connection then I'll reevaluate On1 for disconnected quality and function. By then there will be improvements in Topaz as well.
Aside: the recent upgrade from Topaz Photo AI to Topaz Studio delivered substantial speed and quality improvements.
-Bill
Stephen,
I'm a Lightroom Classic user and many times have given thought to moving to a different software. In the end, I've stayed. Reason: There are only marginally differences between the major players and like camera equipment, having the newest equipment isn't going to make you a better photographer, knowing your tools will. Similar for software, haing the most recent software isn't going to make you a better photographer. Most if not all viewers of your work is going to notice the difference. I'm always reminded of a quote by Peter Adams (no relation to Ansel), "A camera didn't make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel." Whether LrC or ON1 isn't going to make a great photograph.
It's been my experience that most of the people I've talked to switched to On1 because they didn't like Adobe's subscription model.