ON1 Photo RAW 2024 adds 100 new presets

Despite its new Brilliance AI tool, AI masking, enhanced cataloging and layers features, I still think the ON1 Photo RAW 2024 presets and effects are its best feature. Better still, ON1 Photo RAW 2024 has 100 new ones, so now’s a chance to look at some of these and also check out ON1 Photo RAW 2024’s new AI Style Advisor.

ON1 Photo RAW’s editing tools can be a bit confusing because it has both a Develop and an Effects panel. It’s easiest to think of the Develop panel as a kind of pre-processing tool for optimising raw files (or JPEGs/TIFFs) if they need it, but not necessarily an essential part of the workflow. It’s the Effects panel, however, where all the main creative work goes on, and these are the tools used by the Presets in the left sidebar to create ON1 Photo RAW’s wide range of image effects.

When you select a Preset, it applies a set of effects Filters which you can then see in the right sidebar with the Effects panel selected. You can change the settings for the individual Filters, remove them and add new ones via the ‘Add Filter’ button at the top. Indeed, you can create your own presets from scratch, using just the filters you need. If you do adapt a Preset or create your own look from scratch, you can save the adjustments as a new preset.

World Traveler Presets

I haven’t figured out yet where all the new Presets are, but the World Traveler Presets category looks new. As usual with presets, you won’t find each one of them useful on every image – you do have to match the preset to the image, your shooting style and the mood you want to create.

For my main shot of the Diamond Beach in Iceland, above, I used the WT9 Preset. Over in the right sidebar I can see this uses the Photo Filter to add a blue tone, and the Tone Enhancer filter twice over. That’s what makes ON1 Photo RAW’s effects so versatile – you can have more than one instance of the same tool.

AI Style Advisor

This is also new. It’s a tool that suggests a Preset (I think) or at least an editing approach based on the image’s subject matter. The AI Style Advisor uses deep learning techniques to work out what kind of look might work, and right from the start it’s trained in the ON1 team’s editing styles. However, you can also click the My Style button to automatically suggest editing styles based on your own Preset choices – however, you have to keep doing this manually until the AI is sufficiently trained to start working out what you want.

The AI Style Advisor seems an interesting idea, but then half of the value of the ON1 Photo RAW presets lies in the little voyages of discovery you can make by just browsing the categories. This is how you get ideas for effects and treatments you might never have thought of before. It sounds as if the AI Style Advisor might just give you more of what you’ve done before, though, which may not be what you want.

The idea of AI effects has already been tried in Skylum Luminar Neo, which can also suggest preset effects based on the content of your images. I don’t think Luminar’s results are at all impressive, though, and I don’t yet know if I’m going to be using the AI Style Advisor all that much either. Nevertheless, it is an interesting use of AI.