How To Set Up Photo RAW 2022 As A Lightroom Plugin
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What Happened To My ON1 Photo RAW 2022 Plug-Ins?
Photo RAW 2022 users (myself included) were surprised that Photo RAW 2022 is not available as a plug-in to Lightroom. The only plugin provided by Photo RAW 2022 is the Lightroom Migration assistant, to move a Lightroom catalog to ON1. The other options we were used to seeing, such as Effects, Portrait, Resize, etc. are gone.
Don’t panic! You can get ON1 Photo RAW 2022 to work as a Lightroom plug-in. You can still do all the editing you are used to with Photo RAW 2021. This article explain how to set that up and well as the quirks and caveats for a roundtrip from Lightroom to Photo RAW 2022.
Why Did ON1 Change Things?
With the 2022 release, ON1 has clearly drawn a line in their product roadmap. Photo RAW, their standalone editor is distinct and separate from the ON1 plug-ins to Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One. Which product line you choose depends on where your photo workflow starts. If you have an ON1-centric workflow, Photo RAW is the choice for you. If your asset management and editing starts in another application, light Lightroom or Capture One, the plug-in products make more sense. Remember that in 2023! :)
Watch the video at the 1:31 mark for more thoughts about this.
How To Set Up Photo RAW 2022 As A Lightroom Plugin
Lightroom has long had the capability to launch an external editor and roundtrip a photo through another application. This workflow is technically different than a plug-in workflow. Yet we can use this facility to set up Photo RAW 2022 as an external editor Lightroom can recognize and make available through its Photo > Edit In menu. Here is how to set it up:
Open the Lightroom Preferences.
Go to the External Editor tab. The middle section is the area you will work in. Don’t worry about what settings and values are listed. You will set up a new external editor in the following steps.
Click the Choose button.
Find and select the Photo RAW 2022 application on your computer. Click the Choose button. The window should read “ON1 Photo RAW 2022” after the Application label.
Set PSD as the File Format.
Set the color space, bit depth, and resolution to your taste.
Open the Preset popup menu and choose Save Current Settings as New Preset.
Give the preset a name such as ON1 Photo RAW 2022 and click Create.
This sets up Photo RAW 2022 as an external editor to Lightroom.
Open the Lightroom preferences and switch to the External Editor tab
Click the Choose button and select the ON1 Photo RAW 2022 app. Set the file format and other settings.
Save the application, file format, and settings as a new external editor preset.
You now have a menu option Photo > Edit In > ON1 Photo RAW 2022 to use to send a photo to ON1 Photo RAW 2022. This will also appear when right-clicking a photo in Lightroom and opening the Edit In submenu.
Quirks And Caveats
The set up above configures Lightroom to know about an external editor, ON1 Photo RAW 2022. This is different than a plug-in workflow. Lightroom and Photo RAW do not interact or “talk” to each other as richly as a plugin workflow. That means there are some quirks to be aware of.
In ON1, after editing and saving your work, ON1 will prompt you to save and replace the photo file. Selecting Replace is fine. Under the hood, Lightroom creates a PSD file and then sends the PSD to ON1. When ON1 saves, it sees there is already a file present, and prompts for confirmation. If you save the file with a different name or location, it will not appear in your Lightroom catalog (so don’t do that!).
Watch the video at the 5:37 mark for an example roundtrip.Lightroom reports a metadata change badge on photos edited in ON1 Photo RAW 2022. When ON1 saves a nd the photo file updated, Lightroom notices the file is different (newer) than the catalog information. You can correct this by clicking on the metadata warning baadge and choosing Import From Disk.
Watch the video at the 9:45 mark for details.Smart Photo PSDs are not available. ON1 plug-ins offer a Smart Photo option that allows re-editability of PSD files. This file format is not available to ON1 when run as an external editor.
Layered workflows are possible but are clunky. You cannot select multiple photos in Lightroom and send them all to ON1 as a layered document. Lightroom will create multiple PSD files when choosing Photo > Edit In > ON1 Photo RAW 2022. However, only the most-selected photo is sent to ON1. Once in ON1, you can use the Layers interface to add other image files and create a layered document. Be aware that if the folder with your images has hundreds or thousands of photos, you have to wade through all of those. It can be a slog.
Watch the video at the 11:28 mark to see this workflow.
Summary
For single images edits, the workflow is overall smooth. You’ll have a Save and Replace click to do at the end of your ON1 edits. Layered workflows are more difficult. I do not know if ON1 will bring layered support back with their plug-ins. We are talking about Lightroom here … and the majority of Lightroom users also have Photoshop, which has layers. Time will tell…
