ON1 Photo Raw 2025 Review - Poor First Impressions - Outstanding Value

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Table of Contents
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00:00 - Start
00:07 - What is ON1 Photo Raw 2025
00:19 - ON1 Photo Raw vs ON1 Photo Raw Max 2025
01:31 - What does ON1 Photo Raw 2025 do
01:37 - Photo Management in ON1 Photo Raw 2025
01:58 - Geo tagging
02:08 - Keyword AI
02:37 - ON1 Cloud Sync
03:12 - New Photo Management Features in ON1 Photo Raw 2025
03:54 - Editing Photos in ON1 Photo Raw 2025
03:58 - Presets
04:35 - Brilliance AI
05:12 - Develop Mode
05:43 - Local Adjustments
06:14 - Masking in ON1 Photo Raw 2025
06:18 - Super Select AI
06:46 - Depth Masking
07:10 - Effects Layers
08:01 - Sky Swap AI
08:58 - Portrait AI
09:20 - ON1 NoNoise AI
09:31 - Tack Sharp AI
09:47 - Resize AI
10:08 - Other Features
10:28 - New ON1 Photo Raw Features
10:31 - Generative Erase
11:23 - Generative Crop
12:15 - What is missing from ON1 Photo Raw 2025
13:05 - Is ON1 Photo Raw good to use
15:34 - Alternatives to ON1 Photo Raw 2025
15:43 - ON1 Photo Raw vs Lightroom
16:52 - ON1 Photo Raw vs ACDSee Ultimate
17:45 - Is ON1 Photo Raw any good

[ianyorke]

Excellent and balanced review.
All programs have their individual underlying philosophy which impacts how they function. In ON1's case their approach is very different in that virtually every other program has a menued set of controls that are presented to you and you work your way down the stack (or tabs) as you edit your photo. The Develop module in ON1 being the closest to this model.
ON1 adopts a totally different model where you choose what you want to do from the "local", "effects" etc modules and this brings up the relevant set of menu controls to accomplish this task.
This approach is so different that it does put people off from using ON1 however, it does have several advantages to the traditional approach in that a user only has a relatively few controls to use at any one time, you are focused on what you want to accomplish at that stage of editing and are able to decide, through the layers capabilities, which parts of the photo should be impacted by the edits you are currently performing.
Although my main editor is Capture One, with DXO-Photolab providing noise reduction/lens corrections where needed, I think ON1 is a very capable and certainly the most cost effective photo editor available and certainly worth the time and effort to overcome the initial "different philosophy" that ON1 bring to the table.

[RetrieverTrainingAlone]

I am a wildlife photographer. I love ON1 Photo Raw 2025 for No Noise AI, AI-based subject masking, depth masks, custom vignettes, HDR effects, sunshine effects, and luminosity masks.

[stevejacob]

Thank you for a very comprehensive review of ON1 Photo RAW. I must agree with you that upon opening the program it is very overwhelming but it does not take long to get used to it.

[InArcadiaSum]

I bought the 2023 version to run on a machine with 32gb memory, i7 processor and a reasonable 3gb Nvidia graphics card. It has some good points, but I find that using it on a machine with other day-to-day applications, it is excruciatingly slow to load and then run. I now use the latest DxO Photolab to process RAW, and then Affinity if I need to do further PP. I detest the ON1 upgrade nag screen as well.

[sounderdavis]

Excellent overview. I too found an earlier edition of ON1 Photo Raw to have a steep learning curve. Joining ON1's Plus program (included in Everything, or available separately) can be worth it in getting the most out of ON1 and very helpful in getting over the learning curve. Plus includes lots of editing demonstration videos and a customer forum. ON1's new AI features will be a bit glitchy, as you showed. It will be a work in progress, as it has at Adobe, which has a two-year head start.

[PeterMcDadeArtist]

Brilliant overview. I agree. The initial interface is confusing. Sort of 'where do i start'. Interesting what you say about ACD See. I am trying to leave Lightroom. Looked at Excire for photo browsing, but it is way too expensive. Could I run ACDSee as a browser and ON1 as an editor?

[blackislepeastoo]

I'd say the biggest issue with ON1 is that potential users expect it to look and use terminology like Photoshop, as most other processing applications do, BUT IMHO, IF you put in the effort to LEARN how to use it, it is well worth it. Its' biggest drawback AFAIC is that it lacks the equivalent of Photoshop's ACTIONS and SCRIPTS.

[colinbourne]

Very thorough and well presented. Thanks!

[bigpebble]

On1 was a good PS alternative when it came out years ago, but nothing has really been improved in so long I stopped upgrading after the 2020 version. Topaz is so much better, so staying there. Surprised the company On1 hasn't died yet.

[kenemmens]

Excellent review Richard, thanks! I've been using On1 Photo Raw for four years now so am familiar with all the tools and features it has, but I recently trialled ACDSee Photo Studio 2025 and found that confusing and unintuitive to use, so any new program obviously takes a little time to learn. In saying that though, On1 has a wealth of features and there's not a lot that it cannot do. The biggest disappointment with On1 2025 is, for me, the very poor performance of the Generative Eraser tool which often replaces a selection with something else, totally unrelated to the subject in the photo. Unfortunately, On1 over-promised and under-delivered massively with that feature. I can understand them hyping a new feature, but promoting Generative Eraser as a game-changer was deceptive marketing in my view. I'll finish by saying I loved seeing all your lovely New Zealand photographs!

[givengiven]

Hi Richard, what a review for on1 photo raw 2025.
So, is the regular version good enough for photo editing?
Or do we need to buy the MAX version of it?

Please advise

[simonworledge]

It has some great features, but it’s just touch-and-go as to whether they’ll run on your computer (and mines an M3 Max machine!). I certainly won’t be bothering with any future versions.

[Jokemeister]

The biggest problem I have with ON1 is they don't fix their bugs until the next major version effectively making the user pay to fix the issues by upgrade.

[ThePNWRiderWA]

I agree completely about the interface. The last time I used it was in 2023 and I found the interface did not have a true workflow, making it difficult to do things with while editing

[grybukaras]

I have mixed feelings about on1. While I like the workflow, variety of features and noise reduction is one of the best. However, I wish they put more effort on the quality of already existing features instead of releasing new half baked ai gimmicks with overpromising marketing. Here are some of the annoying issues:
- It seems very inefficient and sucking resources of a cpu/gpu, RAM, generating huge hidden mask cache files that take GBs of storage without you even knowing it (clearing cache doesn’t clean them).
- Light control was always a mystery, eg increasing shadows increases basically whole range shadows, mids and lights (compared to Lightroom where one can pinpoint control the range of light),
- color correction is also subpar with presets lacking in variety
- some specific older camera raw files are not supported
- duplicate find is basically not working or misleading. Spot removal and retouching is rather weak
- Overall more often than not it takes more effort to achieve a desired result as compared to LR.

[eddu]

Great 1st impression. If you take the time to go to the nuts and bolts

[DefenceLabDeutschland]

On1 is only minimal better than 2024.5. Its nowhere really fast. AI Tools lack.. All the hype is over the Top. Many Bugs. Such as, stopping the program from trying to update on every start. You have that option, but the program simply ignores. Sometimes the in ON1 edited photo comes out very over saturated, when exportet. Or it turned 180°, The Geotagging Map is not that clear .its simply not a substitude for LR or PS

[mordavian]

Can not compete with Adobe Camera RAW and Capture One Pro. I used demo version while ago, it was so slow.

[MrTriumphST]

At 35 sec there is a stament that the Max verison is for 3 computers but is for 5 computers

[pixelartes]

The Generative AI feature is very poor not at all like in their demo videos. I wish I could get my money back.