Free soft...

[Nick D.]

ON1 Presets - ON1 Effects available for free till Jan 31.

[PapaTango]

This thread was also crossposted to FotoFora.  Below is the initial response to the conversation:

I just saw this today, because as we know the text forums are a bit slow... 

My first thoughts on seeing the post went three ways.

• One, an account had been hacked and spammers were among us.
• Two, Nick was a paid shill for ON1.
• Three, this might be worth looking at.

As all are exciting possibilities, I decided to act on the third one--mostly because it was the last thing I thought about before clicking on the link. Life in the fast lane, you know? 

Here is what the deal is, and it is fooking brilliant! Often 'free' means crippleware or trialware. I tend to shy away from such as it ends up cluttering computer memory for something fairly useless and then needing to be cleaned up after. But this is the legit deal and so smart. ON1 just rolled out their 2024 version of the app/plugin. For the entire month of January, they are giving away the 2023 version! Full 'lifetime' license, all features active--and runs standalone, or through Lightroom or Capture One--which automatically installs itself in any application that it recognizes it can run in.

There is one proviso. One must create an account at ON1 to activate the license. No deep personal or financial information is requested. Registration is not a big deal because I think that there will be an update or two coming down the line for 2023 users in the future.

My post-process digital darkroom consists of Adobe Photoshop 25 (beta), Capture One 2023, and sometimes Lightroom. It depends on the image. In PS, I have used Nik Collection (currently v5) ever since PS 5 or 6--back when Google gave it away. I have looked at updating to v6 of Nik, but there is nothing that attractive or compelling about it. Over the years, I have built a handful of filters and built custom presets--and rarely venture from these. Some of a single effect, others stacked with two or three filters. Much fine-tuning has gone into the adjustments. 

I have to admit after installing ON1 I was blown away. It does not replace Nik, as that does still other useful things--and contains those custom formulas.

It becomes cognitive dissonance when exploring ON1 when one finds a stock filter that perfectly mimics that Nik creation you were so proud of. Or in an instance or so I played with--got even better as stock--before any tweaking... 

I find that it has all of the fine BW and other image adjustments that I have been favoring CapOne for. Given that, it is preferable to be able to work with these as an additional layer, rather than an imported image. Using ON1, one finds that the interfaces are rich, intuitive, and consistent. One UI to rule them all, and that sort of stuff... 

Not much time has been spent yet--mostly learning the interface and modifying it to my preference. As the first trial, I took what I call a "shitshot" which is a less than admirable image of a series. The pre-handling vision was a conversion to Monochrome. It first needed a bit of help (AI denoise and conversion to DNG in Adobe Camera Raw--then was loaded into PS.

Shown below is the original image, and the final result as a PNG save from the ON1 layer:

Fujifilm X-T5; |Fringer FR-FTX| NIKKOR AF-S DX 18-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR

Three successive images were recorded. This was the first, and frankly--it sucks.  That is why I chose it to see what could be possible...

And this is the result:

 

My workflow was as follows:

• Adobe Camera RAW
• AI denoise in ACR, and conversion to DNG
• Open DNG in PS 25 beta
• Duplicate original layer
• Distracting content in the upper left corner was replaced via Generative Fill
• The image was opened in ON1
• Filter set B&W Modern was selected
• Filter B8 was selected, and numerous adjustments were made to B&W color sensitivity effects and Tone
• Merged original background copy with ON1 layer
• Did a bunch of dodging and burning about the range and details of the image
• Committed it all to PDF and export the PNG file shown here

From a reject image to an interesting composition in about an hour and a half.

This application software is a keeper. I know that at some point, the purpose of this "free" offering will be realized. I will buy the upgrade, if it offers more than now. And by that, I don't mean simply other bells and whistles... 

If I don't get too distracted by other things, like the daily presentation of life--I will post back on my further experiences with ON1. My profound thanks to @Nick D. for bringing this opportunity to our attention.

Hurry, hurry now! Step right up! This is a limited-time genuine offer, and is only good until the end of January 2024! Whaddya got to lose, except a little cleanup if you don't like it. And tell me what's not to like?

Simultaneous Conversation at FotoFora (click here)