OnOne Software solves your Adobe woes

OnOne Software solves your Adobe woes

I don’t think anything has caused a bigger stir in the Photography World, then Adobe’s announcement they were going to a Subscription based Licensing (Creative Cloud) instead of their long standing Perpetual Licensing.

While subscription licensing makes sense for a lot of businesses, it’s not something that either small businesses or Hobbyists are used to nor do they like.

At first the cost was prohibitive, but that’s lessened a bit, but still for a lot of people that want to buy and then hold for a few product cycles it proved to be a thorn in their side.

I’m not here (nor will I) debate that subject. Nor am I here to do a full review of onOne Perfect Suite 8, which was released yesterday. I truly believe, it doesn’t matter much what I have to say about the software, they have a 30 day free trial so you have a whole month to take it for a spin and decide for yourself.

But I am here to tell you that onOne Prefect Photo  Suite 8 IS a replacement for Photoshop/Lightroom if you so desire one and a good one at that. 

A version for everyone

First off, onOne Prefect Photo  Suite 8 is available in 3 versions at 3 Price points

• A Standalone Version for just $80, That not per year, you buy it use it as long as you want
• A Plug In for Lightroom and Aperture that also works as a Standalone Product for  $130 for those of you that have aversion of Lightroom out side of the creative cloud or those that are part of CC
• A Premium edition that functions as a Plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture and function as a standalone. It covers it all for everyone at $180.00

Upgrades are available for the Premium and Lightroom/Aperture editions for people that have previous versions at a much reduced price.

But let’s just take the Standalone version. It’s only $80 and that’s less then the list price of Photoshop Elements. So what can this product do, or really what can’t it do that Photoshop/Lightroom do. The straight answer is: There isn’t much it can’t do especially when we keep in, mind its audience and what they do in the every day.

I’ll break it down

• Image Browser: This is a pure image file browser, not a “Catalog” that quite honestly drives me nuts in Lightroom sometimes. It’s simple, navigate to the folder you want, all the image files come up choose one and go. No 6 steps to get an image onscreen and ready to edit. It does lack tagging features; I’d like to see that in the next version. But not everyone is as tag crazy as I have to be for business.
• Layers: You want layers you got layers. Any adjustments you make in other modules can be saved on its own layer. Don’t like what you did at one step, go back to that layer
• Enhance: This is where you can make all your color and density adjustments to your image; Brightness, Contrast, Vibrance, Color Temp, Detail, vignette etc. There are quick use tools and advanced sliders below
• Portrait: Enhance portrait images quickly and easily
• Effects: This is where you have a large selection of effects filters like HDR looks and a lot of  processed looks popular in things like Instagram, there are also plenty of useful presets which you can then modify to your taste
• B & W effects, one of the best Black & White conversion tools in the business. I like the True Film ones myself.
• Prefect Mask: Want to do some complex masking of layers, Got it
• Perfect Resize. Great tool especially in this age where people are making larger and larger prints. No one hangs a 8 x 10 anymore

There are a lot more things that this software has, like adjustment brushes and localized adjustments but that’s more then I can go into here and they do a much better job of showing it in the videos available at onOne’s website

And there you have it. Is there something else you need to do? Well if there is you have your answer of what you need to do. Does this cover it all, everything you would do to a Photograph? Then I think you have a solution….for $80

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