When it comes down to photo editing, most of the applications out there are very similar to PhotoShop, and the same can be said for ON1 Effects on Windows PC. It’s a powerful program that’s available as a free and a paid service. However, we’re going to talk about the free version today in a bid to see if it can walk with the big boys.
Here’s the thing, ON1 Effects share a lot with PhotoShop, but that doesn’t mean it’s a carbon copy. After all, most image editors today can’t help but sharing similarities with the Adobe product, and that’s not a problem from our point of view.
On1 Effects Photo Editor
When the user fires up ON1 Effects, it has a basic design, which could trick some users into believing it’s unable to do much. But that is not the case as it works well as a standalone program or a plug-in for PhotoShop and LightRoom.
Folks who are looking to quickly add effects to their images among other things without much of the complexity will likely find On1 Effects as very pleasing to use. Bear in mind, this is a product that cost $60 at one point, but now it’s free, so there’s a lot of value to be found here.
Before getting started, we should point out the download size for the program is little over 400MB. If you have a fast connection, getting it on your computer shouldn’t take very long.
Now, once we kick the software into gear, the first thing to come up on screen is a basic display. It says, “ .” The user can drag, or click on the “Open” button to locate the correct the image. After adding the image, a box will pop up with several options.
Here you can edit a copy of the image, or edit the original. Keep in mind that editing the original means whenever the work is saved, the edited work will overwrite the original file.
This is what it looks like when we’ve added our image
The user interface looks great, right? We agree. Now, we can see from the left pane that there are several presets for editing images with different effects. Click on the preferred effect and the changes happen right away. The same can be done with Filters, so there’s no steep learning curve.
If you want more tools, they are on the far-left along with the option to access the Settings window. There’s not much to do via the settings are; therefore, we’re not going to talk much of it.
Once all the filters have been added, hit the Save button via the right-pane at the bottom, and voila, a new image is born. If you want, click the Reset button to set the picture back to its default state.
The program is a bit slow
The primary issue with On1 Effects is its slow performance., especially on older hardware. It’s not as feature rich as Photoshop, yet the Adobe software seems to perform much better. Hopefully, the developers find a way to get around this long running issue. You can download it from here. Make sure you download the free version. Scroll down to the end of the web page, and you will see the download link there.
