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How does Adobe Lightroom stack up against On1 Photo RAW 2024. Let’s find out in this head to head.
In this article I am going to be giving you an overview of my early interaction with Adobe Lightroom, including pros and cons, likes and dislikes and give you a real flavour of how I feel it stacks up to my usual editor, On1 Photo RAW 2024.
Let me start by saying that I’m not a big user of Adobe products. Until recently, I had never even used Lightroom. My main squeeze for photo editing has always been On1 Photo RAW although I have dabbled with a variety of other photo editors, for example Luminar Neo, Darktable and for the heavy lifting, Affinity Photo.
This situation tends to be at odds with the vast majority of my photography friends, both real and virtual, so either I am missing something or they are! The only way to find out then is to use Lightroom pretty much intensively, and see what all of the fuss is about.
This article then relates to my first seven days of interaction with Lightroom and as such my opinions may change with time and experience.
Before talking about Adobe stuff, let’s talk about On1
On1 is currently available as On1 PhotoRAW 2024 and the very latest version is 2024.5.1. There is also a MAX version which provides a number of standalone features, for example, Effects, Portraiture, NoNoise etc which can also be used as plugins to Lightroom and Photoshop. They can also be used as plugins to Affinity Photo.
On1 PhotoRAW 2024 was released in October 2023 and since then there have been several updates, including the last update which implemented some improvements in speed and performance as well as a new NoNoise model. NoNoise and Tacksharp are relatively new to On1 having been introduced in the 2023 release.
On1 PhotoRAW 2024 also included a complete re-write of the existing UI making it more intuitive and simpler to navigate. For me this has worked out well but some users feel that the interface is a little complicated. It’s not really, it’s all pretty intuitive but you do need to allow time to adapt, The best way of doing that of course is to throw yourself into the action and just get on with it.
The other area of contention has been the emphasis placed on the GPU. It seems that many users have old hardware which is not compliant with the new needs of On1. I am lucky in that I recently upgraded my hardware to the i5 13600K, 32GB RAM and RTX3060 with 12GB RAM running under Windows 11 and this it seems is perfect for On1 2024.5.1.
Some users though have experienced significant difficulties with hardware although I suspect it is often the configuration of the hardware which is at fault, particularly for Windows based platforms. For example, my 5-year old Zenbook with a 6th generation i7, just 24GB RAM and a very old GTX960M GPU will run On1 2024.5.1 albeit that some tasks do lag a little. It is however quite useable.
Where On1 beats Lightroom hands down is in the fact that it is much more like Photoshop but without the complexity. Like Photoshop it utilises layers and blend modes which are what make Photoshop such a powerful editor. Like in Photoshop you also have access to an array of useful tools and effects that are missing from Lightroom, for example textures, borders etc and you can overlay other images to build a composite using layers.
Like Lightroom, On1 is dabbling with AI. On1 masking has come on enormously in the past year or so and selective masking, implemented in On1 2024.5 can produce extremely accurate masks in a few seconds. Like Lightroom there is a vast array of masking tools including objects, selections, gradients etc. On1 also provides some mask refinement options and you can easily copy a mask to any other effect.
In addition to general usage, On1 and their partners create and offer a huge number of presets, templates, masks etc either for free or to buy. The other key area that On1 excels at is exporting which is extremely good. I am not however such a big fan of its printing module. It works but I feel it is a little clunky and less refined than Lightroom.
There are some other significant differences of course but for the time being, this is enough to set the scene. It’s now time to talk about Lightroom.
Always buy the Photography Plan on a Deal!
One of the first things I found out was that no one needs to pay full price for the Adobe Photography Plan. If you did you would be forking out around £9.95/month or close to £120/year.
My Adobe loving friends all told me to buy on an Amazon Prime deal so with a Prime Day event coming up, the opportunity to buy at a significant discount was too good to miss. I pressed the Buy Now button and bought a copy of their Photographic Plan for £71.00. That’s a saving of about £50 on the normal price so I’ve got to be happy with that!
Since this is the way to go on all future purchases, I have highlighted the Prime Days in Spring and Autumn as good times to buy extra months in my diary!
When attempting to download and install Creative Cloud / Lightroom / Photoshop etc, use a mainstream browser such as Edge or Chrome
A Cautionary Tale
Normally, installing software is quick and easy. You just just log in to your account, be that On1, Neo, DxO etc and head to the downloads page. However, despite following the instructions provided by Adobe to the letter all I kept seeing was a page which wanted me to click a link so that I would receive am email “with a link that I needed to click to access the downloads”. Obtuse but easy eh! Err, not so easy as it turns out.
Basically I just went around in circles. Adobe says “download our software easily using this link”, which obviously I tried to do only to see the very same message “download our software easily using this link” time and time again. Even my Adobe experienced friend Stuart was perplexed by this never ending circle of confusion. Then a message popped up that said, “sorry, you can’t download and install to a mobile device” and it dawned us me that my browser, I was using Opera, must be considered by Adobe as a mobile browser. I immediately switched to MS Edge and bingo, everything worked as expected and I was able to download and install the various elements of the software I had purchased to my Windows desktop PC.
General Editing using Adobe Lightroom (and some comparisons with On1)
As to the editing features of Adobe Lightroom, everything is there. Once you understand that browsing an image means just that, i.e. limited editing features, it tends to make more sense.
In On1 it’s pretty much the same, a double click on an image opens up the develop panel and you’re good to go. However, On1 makes a big fuss of how quick opening an image is with regards ready to develop but Lightroom knocks it out of the park in this respect. It truly is instant in Lightroom whereas On1 2024.5 takes a couple of seconds, sometimes more. Not a huge difference for me but enough to annoy some users of On1 I can tell you!
Once the Develop panel is open in Lightroom, every editing function you could ever want is there. A strip along the very top top of the develop tab provides tools for image development, cropping, erasing, red-eye removal and masking. Open the development tab and there’s a whole host of tools. As I said earlier, more than enough for the most discerning of editors. In fact I’d say that overall, there’s perhaps more here than in On1 although overall, I like the Effects tab layout of On1 better.
Erasing / Removing Objects
When it comes to erasing unwanted elements from your image, both software tools do a great job. Adobe Lightroom has basically the same tools as On1 2024.5 but goes a little further in that it also offers a Gernerative AI Fill option too. That’s something that On1 2024.5 doesn’t have (yet) but I doubt it’s far off being offered.
Overall I have to give Lightroom the edge here. Erasing objects is hugely important when editing and in Lightroom, you have every tool you could ever need.
Masking in Lightroom
Editing is all about finessing your image and Lightroom offers tools for global refinement as well as more local refinement using masks. Now, masks are a key part of any editing process because you don’t always want to apply corrections to the whole image, often you want to be selective. It is rare nowadays not to find photo editing software than doesn’t employ masks and Lightroom is no exception.
My initial feeling is that Lightroom is a little heavy handed with the application of masks and while it has options such as “add, subtract and intersect” to help the user “fine tune” the final mask, I think that On1 2024.5 has the edge here. True both allow the selection of subjects and objects, both allow gradient and radial masking and both include luminescence masking. However I feel that On1 2024.5, with it’s tighter integration of Ai masking tools, allows more selective precision when it comes to creating a complex mask. That may be due to my lack of familiarity with the masking tools in Lightroom or it could be that On1 just does a better job.
The image below is an example of a like for like selection on the same image. The first image is from Lightroom. Here I selected Subject and made no adjustments to the mask i.e. no additions or subtractions. Lightroom made a mess out the hands and stick (ride side ape) but got the tail and recognised that the arm was outstretched and holding a stick. Overall though the mask is unrefined and heavy plus a part of the rock face was also included. By contrast, the On1 mask, again applied using a simple select process did manage to cleanly capture the apes, albeit that it didn’t spot the out stretched arm. It did however do a better job on fur refinement. It did manage to miss out the stick and it didn’t capture the rock as in the Lightroom example. Should it have been needed, On1 also includes a range of mask refinement tools.
In truth, both would work well but I feel that On1 2023.5.1 would give the best results overall due to the level of mesh refinement that you get “out of the box” and if mesh precision were required, I’d choose On1 at this point in time.
Lightroom plays nicely with other software
One of my most pleasing findings was that Lightroom works really well with other software and importantly for me, Lightroom works seamlessly with On1 Effects 2024. This is a standalone version of the full Effects panel included in On1 2024.5.1 which means when used as a plugin tp Lightroom. I have access to the very best of both worlds.
The image here is an example of applying a preset, texture and border in On1 Effects 2024 to an image sent from Lightroom. Snazzy eh!
On1 Effects 2024 can be used as a plugin to Lightroom and Photoshop to add stuff like textures, overlays, borders etc
Lightroom also also scans your PC, finding other software to work with. For example, I have some very old versions of the original Google Nik Efex software which I absolutely adore. Why pay tons of money too DxO when these old versions are still available to download! One of my all time favourites is Nik Silver Efex and lo and behold, there it is in the “Edit in” panel waiting to be called. Check out this image originally edited as a virtual copy in Lightroom and then sent to Nik Silver Efex for treatment.
In addition to On1 Effects 2024 and the Nik Efex collection, other software found by Adobe include Topaz Studio Classic, Topaz Studio 2 and Luminar Neo. I have tested them all and all work flawlessly with Lightroom. This too me makes Lightroom extremely valuable as I really like to process my images in imaginative ways. Here’s am example of Lightroom working with Nik Color Efex Pro 4
Exporting your processed images
Exporting images to your hard drive works well from Lightroom. There’s plenty of options available. However, if you look at what is available in On1 I suspect that you will lust after their approach to exporting. That being said, I didn’t have any real issues with exporting the finished images to a folder on my hard drive using Lightroom.
Printing your images
Working with RAW images & correcting colour
Having spent some time with Lightroom I felt that it was time to take a look at Photoshop. For this I decided to use it to process some professional RAW images that I have recently taken, and in particular to test it’s capabilities with regards colour management. This is not something that many users of Lightroom will ever need to do, changing White Balance is after all, straightforward. However, in the professional world, colour management is extremely important especially if you are comparing images taken at different times and in different lighting conditions.
Colour management starts in the studio and in the camera. Firstly, it is wise to set up a custom WB in camera and since I use a Nikon, this is simply a matter of choosing the Custom WB option and shooting a grey card under the lighting being used. It’s then simply a matter of shooting a calibration card, something like the Spyder Datacolour 24, again under the lighting being used so that the colours in the image can be “normalised”. I use the RAW option for all my professional shoots so everything captured is in RAW.
Since On1 2024.5 offers no professional colour management options, although it is suggested that “it will be included in a future update”, I have tended to use DxO PhotoLab 7 in the past for this task. However DxO software is extremely expensive when compared even to Adobe so with the purchase of the Adobe Photography Plan I have been able to wean myself off of DxO PhotoLab since Photoshop provides for colour management via Camera RAW.
Opening a RAW image kicks Camera RAW into action
Opening RAW images in Photoshop opens Camera RAW. This is where all the heavy lifting is done in preparing your image for print etc. Camera RAW provides a number of RAW processing features for colour management, white balance, optics, exposure etc and can work on one image or a batch of images. Since I tend to have several hundred images from a professional shoot, I use the batch editing and exporting options.
Suffice to say, Camera RAW excels in this process and in combination with the Spyder calibration software which generates an xmp file that can be used by Camera RAW, it creates fully colour compliant images in just a few seconds, even when you are working with 200 or 300 images at a time.
All this being said, I don’t want to make a big thing of this feature because most reading this will never use it. In fact if you never process RAW images you will never see Camera RAW let alone use it.
Missing Features in Lightroom as compared to On1
One big difference between Lightroom and On1 is that On1 offers you a layers option which Lightroom does not. Personally layers and blend modes are ideal for complex editing but Adobe obviously feels that this is best done using Photoshop. Being used to using On1 and the “all in one” approach they offer their users, I feel a little disappointed that Adobe make me use two pieces of software when one will suffice.
Other areas that I miss in Lightroom are features like textures and borders. These are a key feature of On1 but missing from Lightroom. Other areas with more limited scope in Lightroom when compared with On1 are noise reduction and sharpening. Lightroom has both but I don’t feel that the results are as good as the latest noise and sharpening in On1 2024.5.1. That being said, nine times out of ten I am only really using light touches with regards sharpening and I generally shoot at low ISO so noise isn’t an issue I tend to face.
Final Summary
After 7 days of using Lightroom extensively I now feel that I know it well enough to be dangerous.
The interface is busy, the buttons are small, even on my 27″ screen and there’s a lot going on with the various windows etc. It also took some time to get my head around the catalogue system which is somewhat different to that on On1 although I understand the basics now and it’s working well.
I miss the ability to use textures, borders, layers etc as I do with On1 2024.5.1 but thankfully I have On1 Effects 2024 to fall back on for that element of my editing work. Of course I could also use Photoshop for this job.
With regards editing, there’s not much else that I miss in On1 2024.5.1. I think that the masking is less precise than that in On1 and dare. It’s good but maybe On1 is just a little better in this respect. For example, I can’t seem to find any significant mask refinement tools. That being said, my edits all tend to look good so I can understand why most users of Lightroom don’t feel that they are missing out.
I find that the lack of a midtone slider somewhat of a drop off as I use this a lot and while you can do practically the same thing using curves, it’s just easier with a slider. I also find that working with the blacks and shadows in an image has very little effect. On1 2024.5.1 is much better in this respect.
The general layout of the develop screen is pretty good, everything you need to access is there. The retouching tools are pretty much par for the course and very reminiscent of On1. I like the Generative fill option but I haven’t had much opportunity to use it as yet although the image I did use it on did seem to work OK.
The presets supplied in Lightroom are useable and I particularly like some of the Adaptive Portrait presets. These seem to work well and are pretty quick to apply. On1 2024.5.1 has a similar array of presets albeit that the effects are more visible in the thumbnail of the preset.
I absolutely love the fact that when installed, Adobe finds all of my favourite software and makes this available as plugins to Lightroom. This includes all my old Nik Efexs software, One1 Effects, Luminar Neo and Topaz Studio. What can I say, I am more than happy with this! This image is a return trip to Topaz Studio from Lightroom.
Printing from Lightroom is also more intuitive and dare I say, more precise. I feel more at home when printing form Lightroom than I do when using On1 2024.5.1
Camera RAW is the star of the show in that this is the perfect start point for RAW editing especially if you are working with colour management. On1 at this point in time has no professional colour management tools or options so I would need to buy DxO PhotoLab7 if not using Camera RAW which is several hundred pounds of additional layout.
Photoshop gives more advanced users all of the tools necessary to create composites and to do more complex editing. It’s pretty easy to get to grips with although I can’t say that i have used it extensively. This is because I have On1 Effects 2024 which does a lot of the same job and works seamlessly as a plugin to Lightroom. Where I have used Photoshop, I have found it very similar to Affinity Photo so much of that knowledge has been helpful.
Would I swap from On1 to Adobe in the longer term?
I have been using On1 since 2018 so to me it is a natural extension to my photography. Every year, it has improved and with the 2024 release, it has become more powerful still. In some ways it is better than Lightroom and Photoshop combined. However, when I use Lr/Ps I feel like I am using a slick, well coded piece of software. Affinity Photo is another example of beautifully coded software. That’s not how I feel when I am using On1.On1 feels more clunky and somewhat less refined and I put this down to the underlying coding which I think still needs work. It’s better than earlier generations, but it’s not there yet!
I feel that the masking in On1 2024.5.1, especially with the Select Ai tool edges that provided in Lightroom. I also like the mask refinement options offered in On1. That being said, I get great results from both so it’s hard to choose an outright winner.
Cataloguing is pretty easy in either software. However, I feel that the edge here goes to On1 for data management. It just feels a lot easier to add meta data, keywords etc although both have a huge number of options for maintaining meta data. However, that may be just down to a lack of hands on experience at this point in time.
The $64,000 question – which one and why?
Basing a decision on a week of activity is not ideal, nor sensible. My outlay on the Adobe Photographic Plan has been just £72 GBP whereas maintaining On1 has cost me a little more, around £100 for 2024. However, if I don’t pay a penny more to On1 I still get to use the software indefinitely whereas if I stop paying the subscription for Adobe, I have nothing.
If my On1 software disappeared tomorrow I could easily just use Lr/Ps, either separately or together especially as it works seamlessly with all my favourite software as plugins.
If my Adobe subscription disappeared, I would cry as Camera RAW really dovetails in perfectly with my professional work and without it, I would have to buy DxO PhotoLab7 and that would really hurt my pocket. The good news is though that On1 has everything I need, except professional colour management so I would be able to get on and edit as i have always done.
In truth, and at this moment in time, I am leaning towards Lightroom and Photoshop and I didn’t think I would ever hear myself saying that. Go figure!
Edited in Lightroom, finished in On1 Effects[/caption
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