onOne Plugin
onOne Software Review
This includes the new information for CS5 as well. A great product… still very useful and a fun addition to my set of tools!
I’ve written at length about the importance of tools nowadays. I can’t imagine being a digital photographer without using tools to shape the final image the way I want it. No matter how creative you are inside, the tools from the onOne Plugin Suite will give you a wonderful assortment of inspiration and execution.
onOne Coupon Code
The nice people at onOne Software have given my readers the best Coupon Code available for 20% off. The code is “STUCKINCUSTOMS” and it will work for everything there! You can visit the link before, or go right to the onOne Store.
onOne Plug-in Suite
This review talks about a variety of products in the Plug-in Suite. Note that you don’t have to get all of them. You can just get a few, or save a bunch of money and get all at the same time.
When you get the plugin suite installed, it dumps more toys into your Photoshop than you will know what to do with! If you are like me, it’s like Christmas and it’s all awesome! There are so many fun things to play with… I love getting in there, loading up images, and trying this stuff out.
That’s the real key here — these tools are fun! It doesn’t feel like work… the effects and results are so stunning. I feel like a kid in art class just goofing off, seeing what this little thing does and that colorful thing over there does.
If you are familiar with my other reviews, you know that I am pretty short and sweet, and I like to show by example. Below, I touch on many of the tools, but not all of them. I think you will be very happy.
onOne PhotoTools
Okay, of all the tools, I think this one is the best! I have spent hours and hours in here, and I plan on spending a lot more. If you follow my reviews, then you know that I only review things that I use. This is something that I use like a madman! Below, you can see some of the screenshots.
There are so many presets that it is amazing. I’ve only shown a few, but if you look at the bottom, you will get a hint of the THOUSANDS of things you can do.
Under the Landscape Enhance options – the “Wow Landscape” – I subtly applied it here – You can see a “Fade” value in the top right
Another Landscape Enhance tool – the “Sunglow2 A1″ filter with the “More” option
Under the Toning Treatments, here is the Wow Tint – Muted Brown option
Under Camera Tools – the Lens Zoom tool – just one of hundreds and hundreds of fun options!
The Great RC Concepcion also has some presets in there. This is his “1974″, but I removed the white borders and adjusted some of the other settings… each one of the various settings “stacks” on the right side for adjustment and tweaking. Sweet.
onOne PhotoFrame
This is a fun tool! You have seen people put nice frames around their images, right? Well this has hundreds and hundreds of options! I have only shown a VERY small sample size below… but you can do anything from traditional frames to grungy ones to birthday frames to ones that look like you are a Scrapbooking Master. There are so many options that it is scary! Scary cool!
onOne FocalPoint
Do you know those delightful photos where only one bit is in focus and everything else is blurry? That effect is really in demand and can look amazing! You can accomplish the same effect with a nice lens or in post-processing (or both!).
FocalPoint gives you some really fun tools to set that spot of perfect focus and blur everything else. It’s easy and a blast! Below are four examples. One of them is with the custom tool, and the others are with some simple presets.
Isn’t the focus always on Johnny Depp? Sure it is! You can see the little tool there on his face… it’s fun to use!
A shot from Mammoth in Yellowstone with one of the onOne presets active. You can see it makes a new layer automagically – nice!
Here is a great one from NAPP called “Bloom Bomb”. It did some nice glowy stuff on the edges.
This is one of the NAPP presets called “Glamour Blur”. I used the British spelling to make it look even more glamour-y.
onOne PhotoTune
This tool is also simple and fun to use. You can go in and quickly tweak color and detail settings on your photo. I know there are other ways to do this in Photoshop, but this one is a bit different and better in some ways.
For one thing, if you are get down one of those ratholes and forget what crazy layer-things you have done, this has a better/worse set of options to guide you to the best final photo!
onOne Genuine Fractals
Genuine Fractals is a simply amazing tool that allows you to dramatically increase the size of the image without losing quality! In fact, it’s so good, I have a whole separate Genuine Fractals Review that you may also enjoy. Here are some images of Genuine Fractals below.
onOne Mask Pro
Masking is an increasingly important (and hard!) task that requires precision work in Photoshop. Often times, you need to select some part of an image, and it can be a nearly impossible task if you have a complex edge.
Below is an excellent example of how Mask Pro works. It’s so simple. First, you use one eye-dropper tool to select the “parts you wanna keep”, and then use another one to select the “parts you wanna drop”. As you can see, I wanted to keep all those millions of bits of fur in her hood, but drop out the background, the horse, etc. Mask Pro makes this very easy!
You can see the parts of Natalia’s furry hood that I wanted to keep and what I wanted to drop
Another VERY nice feature of the onOne software is it has these little windows that pop up and tell you how to use the tools! This is valuable to me because sometimes I forget!
Conclusion
I love it! As you can see, the tools are incredibly robust and there is something in there for everyone. If you get it, be sure to use the onOne Coupon Code to save 20% with the code “STUCKINCUSTOMS”. Then they will know who sent ya!
Well, I hope you enjoyed the onOne Software Review. I’ll keep playing with all these great tools and bring the best ones to you. Feel free to stop by and read some of the other reviews on the site!
Any questions about the nature of these reviews? Visit my Ethics Statement. It’s all quite simple!
I’ve been digging this set of tools, too! But I always love reading your take on things. Thanks, Trey!
-Aaron
http://blog.aaronbrownphotos.com
I’ve only used Genuine Fractals and it’s freaking AMAZING!!! Had one of the owners of my company bring me a 72dpi 3×5 photo wanting it printed 8×10. Thanks to Genuine Fractals I was able to give them something that didn’t suck! And what’s even more cool to me is they are an Oregon company, only like 10 minutes away from me.
Awesome, Trey. How you get the time to do all this while launching your book AND still work is way beyond me. I guess some people thrive on two hours of sleep. Thanks for the review.
Super review Trey!
I’ve been using FocalPoint1 since it first came out, I just love it!
Already 1/3 of the way through your book. Fabulous job, it rocks!
- Mike (aka Dudewithacamera)
This was super helpful. Thanks for taking the time. I have the suite, and just did not realize all the cool features.
It’s a shame that they feel they have to charge so much for the software. IMHO (and I own a software company) they would sell much more that five times the licenses if they made their prices one fifth of what they currently are. Imagine of the whole suite were only $100, it would pretty much be standard fare for many many photographers. But price it at $500 and it’s going to put off a lot of people, me included.
Compare Photomatix; do you think it would have become as popular if it cost $500? I would not say that On-One is 5 times more powerful than Photomatix..
Hi Trey,
Great review, gives a great overview of these apps, but as beautox say’s, the price (even with your very generous discount) is a little too steep for me, maybe oneday.
All the best
Mike
I purchased Mask Pro several months ago and spent a few weeks trying to master it. I found it to be very frustrating to use and I couldn’t get quality results. So, I asked OnOne for a refund.
Trey, I would have liked to see the results of your masking the girl with the hood.
Modules crashed deep and repeatedly after a no-exceptions installation on an XP machine with huge memory. Nothing this bad since Corel many years back. Uninstalled immediately through control panel. Never again.
Gary,
I agree with you. I tried the demo (before the new version came out in November) and couldn’t get a single image to mask well. I even watched the tutorials. Sometimes I find these plugins fun but usually never satisfied with the results.
But Trey, I do appreciate the review and now that the whole Suite 5 is out I’m going to try it out again.
Trey,
Thanks for the review. It makes me really interested in the tools. But I’m a Lightroom 2 user who hasn’t seen the need to reinstall his old copy of CS2 on his new machine. And I don’t plan to get a newer version as LR really does a lot of what I need.
So my question is: Can I still use and get the most of the On One tools in that case? Do they integrate with LR or require Photoshop?
Any advice on which, if any, of the tools apply to me would be much appreciated.
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I LOVE ONONE and NIK. I was a student last year and took advantage of that and bought NIK SUITE for 600$ and bought ONONE for next to nothing. Thank God for student discounts and thank YOU Trey for almost a 1/4 off list price for those who can’t afford the regular price. OnOne is awesome. I could NEVER do any of it using Photo Shop. Photo Shop has soooo many steps and forumulas to remember. There are just too many variables involved.
Since there are 300 ways to skin a cat, I like to skin all my cats using NIK and / or ONONE or both. I have NEVER had NIK crash anything or make CS4 crash.
I have NEVER had ONONE crash or make CS4 crash with the exception of using Genuine Fractals. And it was because ( I believe) I had a ton of stuff open and the image had a bagillion layers on/in it and I don’t think I flattened the image.
For the gentleman whos machine crashed, I guarantee it WASN’T ONONE software that did it. I have NEVER read an ill review of their products with the acception of folks not liking the price. It is a shame you didn’t try it again. You are missing out!
Everything is pretty easy to use with the exception of Masking. It is very difficult to use the first several times. There is a learning curve and all you can do is practice practice. Watch the video tutorials!!!
Onones customer service is some of the best. Sometimes there can be a little bit of a wait, at one point I was on hold for 11 minutes and less than that a few times. You know how difficult it is to expalin yourself to Adobes customer service because they are over-seas. Something ALWAYS gets lost in translation, then you get hung up on after being called sir, when clearly you are a woman.. LOL Onone is the complete opposite. Their customer service force was funny, kind, and very helpful and encouraged me to call with any further questions or problems AND I HAVE VISTA, so that should tell you right there that I allready come to the table with problems, when I really dont have any problems!!
Photomatix – 99$, expensive? are you KIDDING ME? What do you want, do you want it for FREE? some folks are so ungrateful. It is one of the best ones out there, AND it’s easy to use AND their customer service is double decent. As far as ‘involved’ software is concerned, Photomatix is very specialized. There is however, a serious lag when emailing your problems. We are lucky its ONLY $99. And not 299$. These people spend countless days and hours working on these programs for us, and Photomatix, as far as I am concerned should/could be charging more…
As far as Adobe software? What a joke. I bought CS4 for 399$ with my student discount. Regular price is 1899$, now, talk about a RIP OFF. And on top of that, they don’t include any classes, or a manual. I ended up buying 5 CS4 books, a Camera Raw book, A Layers book, and since I have Lightroom 2 (which is worth the 200$ pricetag too) I got Martin Evenings Lightroom 2 book as well.
and, to think, I STILL dont know what I am doing.
with thanks to Trey – my HDR is getting better. I just need a ball head and some legs. Right now I can only do the 1 image deal beacause I can never straighten out my 3,4,5 images for a true HDR experience. Talk about expensive. Really Right Stuff ball and legs together is around 900$!! (for the set I want) and can not afford. Now, that is a travesty!
Just my 3 pennies worth.
thanks for everything Trey! We have such a great community. thanks to everyone else who contributes to make this place that much better!!!
Hi Trey,
I’ve heard that noise removal software can soften an imafe, however, can software such as Lucis add sharpeness back to an image?
Awesome work you do. I am impressed, and about to embark on doing HDR in my portrait work.
I agree that it’s a great set of software and I use it all the time. I see that you have shown a bunch of NAPP presets and wondered where you got them. I’m a NAPP member and have never seen them. Thanks!
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Sorry to say… i tried the demo and everytime i use the MASK PRO it crashes every single time and makes photoshop CS4 crash on my MACbook.
i will not recommend Mask pro… the rest of the plugins i didn’t have the time to try them and i will not have a chance on doing it cause i decided after 25 times of crash to remove the plugin!
William!
[...] für eine ganze Weile, bis ich mich schließlich entschlossen, meine Tat zusammen und schreiben ein Vollständige Rezension .Menschen schlossen sich, dass die Facebook Fan Page eine Sneak Preview von dieser Überprüfung, [...]