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photo elements vs On 1 for layers?

charles kasler
Hi - C 1 is my main image editor but I'd like to do more with layers & merging 2 images...looking at the new version of On 1 (which gets good reviews), vs photo elements. I did the PE trial a while back & wasn't impressed & it was slow on my computer, but I know I only scratched the surface. I'll do the On 1 trial but just seeking any other opinions first. thanks!
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Comments

12 comments

Date Votes
  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    I'm not qualified to comment on the relative advantages of On 1 and Elements, but have you also considered Affinity Photo?

    Ian
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  • charles kasler
    No I haven't Ian but I will take a look since you suggested it.
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  • charles kasler
    Ian - Affinity looks impressive & I will do the trial. It also looks intimidating, if they compare it to Photoshop. I'm just an amateur & from what I read I couldn't learn Photoshop by myself. I'm comfortable with C1 but I bought the book & that helped. How hard was the learning curve? I just want to use it as a plugin from C1 & don't expect to be a power user. I feel limited with some of the C1 features & want to expand a little. Thanks!
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  • Graham Smith
    Pareshk wrote:
    No I haven't Ian but I will take a look since you suggested it.


    Just to add that you can set up the preferences in Affinity Photo to save over PSDs if the original file is a PSD so the "Open With" using PSD from C1 seems to work exactly the same way in Affinity Photo as it does with Photoshop. At least it appears to me it does, but I have only limited experience with Photoshop.

    Cheers,
    Graham
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  • charles kasler
    Thanks Graham. I've never used PS - that's why I'm a little nervous about Affinity - I wd just use Tiff for round trips
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  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    I use a TIFF for round trips with Affinity.

    Ian
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  • Graham Smith
    Pareshk wrote:
    Thanks Graham. I've never used PS - that's why I'm a little nervous about Affinity - I wd just use Tiff for round trips


    No reason not to use Tiffs (as Ian says in his post) as far as I am aware, but I assume there are some advantages to using PSDs as Phase have been promoting PSD round tripping recently. I really mentioned it because you need to change the preferences, if you don't, Affinity tries to save the PSD file as an Affinity Photo File.

    I rarely use PS or Affinity, as for me nearly everything I want to do I can do in C1, but Affinity seems to have become a fairly popular companion to C1, and it has some very good tutorials. I've also found that a lot of the Photoshop tutorials are fairly easily translated into Affinity speak. And its a good way of running photoshop plugins even if not all of them work in Affinity.

    I really don't think getting started in Affinity or PS, is all that difficult, but you do need to spend a bit of time working through some tutorials. I recently, for the first time, created two images in C1, one set up for the highlights and the other for the shadows, and blended them in PS and Affinity ( I am learning them both at the moment) and just followed some youtube tutorials.

    Cheers,

    Graham
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  • charles kasler
    Thanks Graham. I thought they were just promoting PSD file recognition as a new feature. I like the idea of doing as much as I can at the raw stage but haven't found C 1 styles to be very useful. However I do like the color editor presets.
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  • Graham Smith
    Pareshk wrote:
    Thanks Graham. I thought they were just promoting PSD file recognition as a new feature. I like the idea of doing as much as I can at the raw stage but haven't found C 1 styles to be very useful. However I do like the color editor presets.


    I am using PSD just to differentiate between where files have been. I sometimes use DXO for noise reduction and they go out of C1 as Raw files and come back as DNGs, I sometimes edit with a PlugIn directly from C1 and they go out as Tiffs, and I sometimes send to PS or Affinity and they go out as PSDs.

    My learning of Post Processing has come in small chunks spread far apart in time, and I have bought NIk (when you had to pay for it), All the Topaz plugins, ON1 10 suite, all the MacPhun Plugins, Noiseware, Piccure_+, Neat Image, and with the exceptions of the Noise reduction tools, I have found all the Plugins to be over the top, and once dialed back to being acceptable, don't give results as pleasing to my eye as just using C1.

    However, seeing how the different effects altered my image did help, and still help, in the learning process. But I have also bought some C1 styles and downloaded some free ones, which again I find useful to see what might be done. I like the new C1 styles (from the sample pack) but they seem very expensive to me, and still contemplating spending the money. Its not helped that Phase don't illustrate what the styles do, so you are buying blind.
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  • charles kasler
    Wow that's a lot of apps! My workflow keeps evolving...I always want to go back & improve old photos but I just have to let it go & move on as I improve.
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  • Graham Smith
    Pareshk wrote:
    Wow that's a lot of apps! My workflow keeps evolving...I always want to go back & improve old photos but I just have to let it go & move on as I improve.

    Yes, far too many, but collected over many years.
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  • charles kasler
    still doing research before dnloading a trial. It looks like Affinity requires the aero theme in Win 7 & I don't think I have it. Instructions sound complicated. Anyone know more about this? thanks!
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