Finally Cut The Adobe Cord - ON1 Photo Raw + Davinci Resolve Studio

[herein2021]

Like the title says, yesterday I finally cut the Adobe cord. It is a weird feeling like finally paying off a car or some other large debt that you thought would always be there. I have looked for Adobe alternatives off and on for years. In 2019 I ditched Premier for video editing and learned the basics of Davinci Resolve Studio within 1 week; it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Yes, even to this day Davinci Resolve has some limitations such as lack of templates especially for motion graphics, but I have managed to deliver what my clients ask for across hundreds of paying projects year after year and it gets better with every release. By switching to Davinci Resolve my Adobe subscription went from $80/mo to $10/mo, but Adobe still got $600 of my money from 2019-2024.

After a lot of research, I decided I had to make the leap once and for all and yesterday I went with ON1 Photo Raw. ON1 Photo Raw 2024.5 is definitely not perfect, but it looks like it will meet my needs for now. One of the biggest downsides to switching is that once LR is deactivated, you will lose access to all of your original edits for photos; for me that's over 15yrs worth of projects. Even to this day I will have a customer randomly ask me to resend them images from 5+ years ago.

Most people agree that ON1 Photo Raw is not a Photoshop replacement, but I very rarely use Photoshop these days. I mostly shoot video these days and for photography its mostly portrait and event work which I don't need Photoshop for. The finalists for me when trying to decide on a LR replacement was: ON1 Photo Raw, DXO Photolabs, and Luminar Neo. ON1 Photo Raw seemed to have the best mix of generative AI features, batch processing, presets, and portrait tools when compared to the others.

Davinci Resolve Studio of course needs no introduction and is hands down better than Premier in every way.

 

[rudyespinosa]

Wow
I did exactly the same. Still trying to learn Davinci as it not very user friendly.

I also tested luninar neo and their support team spun me in circles as I had to prove that it cannot handle Autel dng files while they failed to understand or put any effort to replicate it after several tickets with multiple people including developers

neo always undoes distortion on those files
The only workaround was converting them with gimp first to .tiff which is counterintuitive to editing in neo

On1raw is best alternative in my opinion

 

[herein2021]

Wow
I did exactly the same. Still trying to learn Davinci as it not very user friendly.

I also tested luninar neo and their support team spun me in circles as I had to prove that it cannot handle Autel dng files while they failed to understand or put any effort to replicate it after several tickets with multiple people including developers

neo always undoes distortion on those files
The only workaround was converting them with gimp first to .tiff which is counterintuitive to editing in neo

On1raw is best alternative in my opinion

You will get the hang of DR just hang in there, it is excellent once you get used to it, each version is getting more user friendly.

ON1 RAW is definitely a learning curve for me, it has some of the same layouts as LR but just enough differences to slow down my workflow for now until I figure out how to do the same thing in ON1. My biggest problem is that I cannot import my LR presets into ON1, I have specific looks for specific types of projects as my starting point and they are all LR presets.

ON1 Raw 2025 looks like its going to pull ahead of LR with its generative AI features. Even in the current version, I was surprised at how easy it was to replace the sky. In LR I would have had to roundtrip the image through PS and find my own sky or use one of their few options. ON1 literally has over 100 to pick from and replacing the sky is practically a one click process.

 

[GLEvideo]

I’ve retired from television production several years ago but was getting into Davinci Resolve. Our studio used Avid as well as Final Cut Pro but I preferred Davinci. There are so many tutorials on YouTube for various versions of DR and even Black Magic puts out some good learning tools. As far as your quest for motion graphics I think you will find there are several YouTubers that demonstrate DR will also make available some of their own recipes which they used to create some incredible effects, motion graphics, etc. Some are give always and others are pay a small fee. As with most of these high end editing platforms (which I consider DR to be one) they are all so complex that video editing with them is a very perishable skill. If you don’t keep up with it every day or at least every week, you will soon forget your way around. For me, haven’t edited in a couple years, I’ll need to start over from scratch to even learn how to import footage and start basic cutting. According to what computer and peripherals you are using there are a myriad of settings in DR that will play an important part in your performance. Don’t overlook that. Some YouTube tutorials will guide you through that. Good luck. You made a good decision.

 

[herein2021]

I’ve retired from television production several years ago but was getting into Davinci Resolve. Our studio used Avid as well as Final Cut Pro but I preferred Davinci. There are so many tutorials on YouTube for various versions of DR and even Black Magic puts out some good learning tools. As far as your quest for motion graphics I think you will find there are several YouTubers that demonstrate DR will also make available some of their own recipes which they used to create some incredible effects, motion graphics, etc. Some are give always and others are pay a small fee. As with most of these high end editing platforms (which I consider DR to be one) they are all so complex that video editing with them is a very perishable skill. If you don’t keep up with it every day or at least every week, you will soon forget your way around. For me, haven’t edited in a couple years, I’ll need to start over from scratch to even learn how to import footage and start basic cutting. According to what computer and peripherals you are using there are a myriad of settings in DR that will play an important part in your performance. Don’t overlook that. Some YouTube tutorials will guide you through that. Good luck. You made a good decision.

One thing that is great about Davinci Resolve is they have an extensive library of tutorials. I didn't have the time to sit through most of it, but I did watch some of the introductory videos when I switched. DaVinci Resolve 19 – Training | Blackmagic Design

Motion VFX is where I get most of my DR assets, they have the best plugins available for DR: DaVinci Resolve — MotionVFX

 

[herein2021]

Well I think I celebrated too soon, it looks like I will have to renew LR/PS for another year. ON1 Raw does not support the raw files out of my newest camera at all (R5II) and its raw processor just isn't as good as LR. It loses detail and adds color noise to the images. I still think its great if you are a hobbyist or just need social media quality content, but the difference is very noticeable if you have clients that need wall sized prints.

Below is a good example shot of a construction site, in the ON1 RAW image you can see major color noise and grain which leads to detail lost when compared to LR on the right. I may still buy ON1 RAW just because of its excellent sky replacement and other AI features, but for me its not quite ready to replace LR.