Today, I’m covering an official update for the ON1 product roadmap. A lot has been changing in the world of photography, and not just the changes here at ON1. So, how do we see it changing? What changes will impact the way photographers work?

Photography is Changing.
If you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably haven’t noticed smartphone cameras have vastly improved over the last decade. Even photos shot with the first few iPhone generations were good enough to replace the point-and-shoot cameras we had used to take candid photos of friends and family. Only a few years ago, we found ourselves taking pictures with our phone and interchangeable cameras at the same time, one photo for sharing online and a raw photo to work on later.

So, what’s my point? Today, cameras on mobile devices are so good, and we see photography change right before our eyes. Think about this for a second. Nowadays, we are capturing high-quality photos and videos from our devices. We no longer have to lug around all that expensive extra gear. Most (not all) now have a choice in whether to lug it around or not. My point is we now have a super handy photography tool at our disposal, that we take everywhere, and capture the stories we want to tell, at any time.

Our recent market research shows over 70% of ON1 customers routinely capture photos they are proud of with their mobile phones and edit them on their computers. 47% of them have also purchased a new smartphone this year because of the on-board camera and photography features. These photos are then edited on both phones as well as desktop computers and tablets. The photos we are taking with our phones are just as important as the photos we take with our interchangeable lens cameras.

ON1 to be Synonymous with Your Photography.
Last fall, we announced development was underway on an all-new line of products. We often refer to it as the ON1 Ecosystem that extends ON1 Photo RAW on the desktop with a new mobile app to capture and edit anytime, and a new service to synchronize your photos and edits across all your computers and devices. It also adds ON1 Video for combining your photos and videos to tell stories in a new way. All of these projects are the primary focus of the development team. Soon you will start to see videos and in-depth updates of our progress on these new apps right here.

The Updates You Want.
Here is an update on the progress we are making. First, the ON1 Photo Mobile app is stood-up on both iOS and Android. The camera mode is coming along nicely. It can capture raw as well as jpg/heic. All the manual controls are there too. You can adjust the exposure, shutter speed, iso, and balance. Autofocus or manual focus? Check. You can even select which lens if you have multiple lenses. Our core raw editing is in place, as well. You can open a photo you have captured and adjust the same stuff you do in ON1 Photo RAW, like exposure, shadows, highlights, color, noise reduction, etc. We are starting work on features like the focus overlays and adding effects like BW and vignette. There is still lots of stuff to come and the progress has been great.

A photo I captured with the new ON1 Photo Mobile app.
Another photo I captured with the new ON1 Photo Mobile app.

The ON1 Sync service is even farther along. By the time you read this, some lucky customers will also have the opportunity to be testing it. ON1 Sync will break down the barriers between your computers and devices. Your photos can live on any computer you want, but be visible and editable on any other computer or mobile device. It won’t require you to store your original photos in the cloud to do this. The ON1 team has spent a ton of time over the past months talking to photographers to make sure we get this right.

Through customer feedback, we quickly learned using third-party storage providers like Google Drive and Dropbox wasn’t going to work for a majority of customers. Those services are far too slow, which makes the experience a nightmare. These performance issues led us to build our storage platform to make a fast, turn-key ON1 experience, all while maintaining your privacy. Your privacy is of the utmost importance to ON1. By using this service, we will not have permission to use your photos for image analysis or use/share your information for any sort of marketing purposes.

We will also give customers a choice in how they want to use this service. The option to store original photos in the cloud or the ability to store a smaller preview photo will be available. The smaller preview option will be more like a compressed raw file. It still has all the detail and tonal range of the original but takes up a fraction of the storage space.

Just today, I pushed thirty thousand of my photos from my desktop computer to ON1 Sync. They all show up on my laptop and my other desktop computer. I can browse them just like they are on that computer. I can search, rate, change metadata, and they all stay in-sync. The part that blows me away is that I can edit the photo, non-destructively using all of the tools in ON1 Photo RAW, and they stay in-sync. It’s practically instantaneous to update the same photo on the other two computers as well. It’s super convenient for me. I don’t have room to carry those thirty thousand photos on my laptop, but I can see and edit them now.

What about ON1 Video? This exciting new product is progressing as well. We can now assemble video clips, trim them, adjust them with the raw-processing adjustments you already know. We are currently working on timelapse and slideshow features that will seamlessly integrate with ON1 Photo RAW.

New Update for ON1 Photo RAW 2020 – Coming Soon.
All of this work means we aren’t working on Photo RAW 2020, right? Wrong. We will be releasing a free update (just around the corner), which adds an all-new algorithm for highlight recovery. It now maintains the hue in the highlights rather than just desaturating them. The results are amazing!

Original photo.
Highlight recovery in Lightroom Classic.
Highlight recovery in ON1 Photo RAW 2020.1.

This update will also include significant improvements to the new Maps view and focus stacking. We are also working on making the difference between cataloged folders and simple browsing more obvious. Searching is getting easier. We have also added a new mode for editing a single photo. Just drag and drop a photo to go straight into editing and then save out a finished file. This single image workflow will make it easier for occasional users and for integrating it with other applications and workflows. Plus, it will have the usual plethora of new cameras, lenses, and bug fixes. Again this update is free and will be available soon.

We also have some groundbreaking new features planned for the fall, but it’s a little early to share those just yet, but stay tuned. If I were a betting man, they will be super intelligent. Almost as though a machine was learning and editing for you. Maybe not that far, but hopefully, you get the joke.

I promise to keep you abreast of our progress throughout the year by sharing detailed updates and videos of the apps in action. As always, share your thoughts with us. Tell us what you look forward to and what you need these apps to do. Ask questions. Thanks for being an ON1 customer. For those of you who aren’t yet an ON1 customer, I would encourage you to come aboard now as there has never been a more exciting time. Cheers – Dano