On1 Photo Raw Preferences

Setting your preferences in Photo Raw from On1 is important and somewhat subjective.

Let’s take a look at what you can do and what my typical preferences are in Photo RAW.

General

Use whatever working space you’re comfortable with. I know some photographers swear by ProPhoto, others sRGB, and yet others Adobe RGB. This is like a Coke vs Pepsi or Mac vs PC argument in my opinion and I typically either use ProPhoto or Adobe RGB.

I’d suggest starting in the Browse module as this just makes sense as a starting point.

Warnings are always a good thing in my opinion so keep that layer warning box checked.

Files

My favorite file format for saved photos is PSD as it saves all the information from all the layers in an image file.

While for final image uses 16-bit files using trillions (yes, trillions) of colors is overkill, editing in 16 bit is the ideal way to go since it can help solve issues like banding. I typically save my PSD files as 16 bit and my flattened TIFF files as 8 bit.

If you are saving for web use 72 PPI, for most printing use 300 PPI.

Plug-Ins

I would choose to save the Photoshop files as Smart Photos since that preserves the layers in your edits.

Working on a copy is always a good idea instead of working on the current layer itself.

Always save your sidecar files! Otherwise, you’ll lose all your edits and added metadata.

System

If your computer has a lot of hard drive space and RAM then crank these top settings up. VRAM is really just for slower machines with less physical RAM.

For most people the default location is fine for the scratch disk but if you’re using a computer with little hard drive space, you may want to plug in and external drive and use it as a scratch disk.

For your cache size, again, faster computers with more RAM can handle a larger cache.

Services

If you want to work across several computers or share images in the cloud with several users, On1 allow you to sync with several different cloud-based solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive.

Photo Via

If you are an iOS user, Photo Via allows you to share images to your iPhone.
Sorry Android people, hopefully, On1 will add support in a future version!

This is the just way that I set On1 Photo Raw Preferences and I hope it helps you out but it doesn’t mean that you should copy everything blindly. Everyone has their own way to set these things up and has a unique workflow. In the comments, let me know what you do differently and why.