Using ON1 Cloud Sync (formerly called 360) with ON1 Photo RAW

DOWNLOAD THE QUICK START GUIDE

Using ON1 Cloud Sync with Photo RAW

ON1 Cloud Sync is an optional cloud storage service and sync technology that lets you capture, edit, and access photos seamlessly between multiple computers and mobile devices. The service is designed to share photos using ON1 Photo RAW (Windows or MacOS) and ON1 Photo RAW for Mobile (iOS and Android).

There are two storage options for accounts, 200GB and 1TB, and multiple methods for signing up. If you have purchased an ON1 Cloud Sync plan, either as part of a subscription or as an add-on, it will automatically be available in both Photo RAW or ON1 Photo RAW for Mobile after you have signed in to your ON1 account.

From ON1 Photo RAW, photos are published and synced to the ON1 Photo RAW cloud via cataloged folders or albums, and you can choose to publish photos either as editable previews or in their original format (including raw).

When you’re using the ON1 Photo RAW for Mobile app on your smartphone or tablet, all photos on that device are published to the cloud in their original format, and reside in a single folder called Local Photos. (You can also create albums with ON1 Photo RAW for Mobile.)

VIEWING YOUR ON1 CLOUD SYNC STATUS

In the lower right section of the left sidebar is the ON1 Cloud Sync status icon, which has a small colored dot that indicates the status of ON1 Cloud Sync in reference to the current computer. The indicator will be one of four colors:

• If there are no uploads or downloads in process, and the connection to the ON1 Cloud Sync is on, the dot will be green.
• When Photo RAW is in the process of uploading or downloading images or other information from the cloud, the dot will be blue.
• If there is a problem with the internet connection, you aren’t logged in, or if you are running low on available space, the dot will be red.
• It will be gray if you do not have an ON1 Cloud Sync subscription.

Clicking the status icon will bring up your ON1 Cloud Sync dashboard (shown below). This window shows the status of any current uploads, your available cloud storage, and includes links to the iOS and Android versions of the ON1 Photo Mobile app. Clicking on the Account button will take you to your account page on the ON1 website.

The Turbo button can be used to speed uploads; it will take as much of Photo RAW’s processing power as it can to sync photos, to the limit of your upload bandwidth.

VIEWING OTHER DEVICES IN BROWSE

When you have shared devices, you can see a list of them by clicking on the ON1 Clouds Sync icon in the Shortcuts bar on the top left side of the Photo RAW window.

ON1 Photo RAW will display your connected devices in the preview area as folders in Grid view. Clicking on one of those folders will open with a list of that device’s synced photos. For mobile devices, you will see a single folder, Local Photos, which contains all of the photos that are on that device. For Windows and Mac computers, you will see a list of all cataloged folders from that device.

Clicking on the ON1 Cloud Sync icon at the bottom of the Shortcuts bar on the left will display a list of your connected devices. Each device will appear as a folder. Mobile devices will display a single folder, called Local Photos, while any Mac or Windows computer will display a list of the cataloged folders synced with the ON1 Cloud Sync service.

You can view and edit any of the photos on a synced device from within ON1 Photo RAW, and you can drill down into the folders in the same manner you would for any other folder in Photo RAW. You can sort the photos, add them to new or existing albums, adjust metadata and add keywords to them.

When viewing photos in Grid view, you can tell if a photo is synced from another device by the small ON1 Cloud Sync badge in the lower right portion of the thumbnail. If the photo in question is an original — as opposed to an editable preview — there will also be a badge with the initials ‘OG.’ These badges will be displayed on all published folders, devices and albums when you are working in Grid view.

Photos synced to ON1 Cloud Sync from other devices will be displayed with a badge when you are viewing a folder or album in Browse’s Grid view. If the synced photo is an editable preview, it will have the ON1 Cloud Sync badge in the lower right corner of the thumbnail (image left, above). If it is an original image, the thumbnail will also have a badge with an ‘OG’ label (center). And, if the photo has been edited, you will also see the ‘+/-’ label badge (right).

ON1 Cloud SYNC FILE FORMATS

With ON1 Photo RAW, you have the option of publishing photos to ON1 in one of two formats, the original photo, or an editable preview, which uses a proprietary compressed-raw file format developed by ON1. This editable preview can be up to 75% smaller than the original raw file, while preserving the original’s tone and color fidelity. Using this option lets you keep more of your photos in the cloud, and, with either format, you can still edit a photo on one device, and your edits will be synced back to the originating computer, so that your original file is updated with those edits (and any other metadata changes you might have made).

As noted, the savings in storage space can be quite great. Use these basic guidelines for photo storage options:

• With a camera that creates 30MB raw files, you should be able to store more than 5,500 raw originals in the cloud with a 200GB ON1 360 service plan, and more than 27,000 photos with the 1TB plan.
• If you are shooting JPGs with that same camera, we estimate that you would be able to store more than 20,000 JPG originals with the 200GB plan, and more than 100,000 photos on the 1TB plan.
• If you chose to upload editable preview files instead of originals, you should be able to store more than 33,000 photos in the cloud with the 200GB plan, and more than 160,000 with the 1TB storage plan.

Remember, while you can store photos in the ON1 Cloud Sync using either format, and in any combination, your originals are always stored securely on the device that created or imported them.

NOTE: Photos taken or imported with the ON1 Photo Mobile app are always uploaded in their original format.

When to Choose One Sync Format Over Another

In most cases, if you are working on two computers (a desktop and laptop, for example), working with editable previews should be more than sufficient for most workflow requirements. You can edit and update any metadata, including ratings, keywords and more, and work within all of the tabs in the Edit module. The fidelity and tonal range of the preview files is excellent, and all of your edits will be applied to the originals on the other device.

You should folders and albums as originals when you want to work with an original photo on another ON1 computer. There are four primary reasons for this: you wish to create layered files; build HDR, panorama or focus-stacked composites; resize a photo with the Resize module; or you wish to print a photo at the highest-possible quality.

In these instances, if you have an original photo on another ON1 device, you can download a copy of that original from the cloud to your current computer by right-clicking on the photo in Browse and choosing Download Original from the pop-up menu. If the original version is in the cloud, you will be prompted to save the copy in a location on your computer. Depending upon your intent, you can delete this copy later, or save it back to a published folder or album. 

Managing Sync Options in Photo RAW

Photos published to ON1 Cloud Sync are managed in ON1 Photo RAW at the folder or album level. What this means is that you can set up different folders or albums to sync as editable previews or originals, and you can change this option at any time by right-clicking on the folder or album and choosing the Sync Options item from the pop-up menu.

It is worth noting that you cannot change the sync option for individual photos: it can only be done at the album or folder level. You can however, selectively change the sync option for the subfolders in a cataloged folder.

To change the publishing status of an album or folder, right-click on the item and choose the appropriate format from the Sync Options pop-up menu.

BASIC ON1 Cloud Sync WORKFLOW WITHIN ON1 PHOTO RAW

When creating an album or cataloged folder, you have the option to publish and sync those photos as either originals or previews, or you can wait until a later time and publish them by selecting the item and choosing Publish to ON1 Cloud Sync from the pop-up menu. By default, when you publish via the pop-up, Photo RAW will upload editable previews to the cloud, but you can change this via the Sync Options menu item, as described in the previous section.

You can publish (or unpublish) an album or cataloged folder at any time by right-clicking on the item name and choosing Publish/Unpublish to ON1 360 from the menu.

When you’re working with any photos that are based on a remote Cloud Sync device, regardless of whether it was created on a computer with Photo RAW or on a mobile device with ON1 Photo Mobile, you will be able to perform any changes to metadata, or make any edits in the Edit module, and those changes will be synced back to the original file on the original device. This doesn’t matter if the file in the cloud is an editable preview or an original.

ON1 Cloud Sync, PHOTO RAW AND ON1 PHOTO MOBILE

On mobile devices, which includes both smartphones and tablets, the ON1 Photo Mobile app acts as a camera — with full raw-capture support — and an import device, which can add your photos immediately to ON1 Cloud Sync cloud. ON1 Photo Mobile also has a subset of the Photo RAW Edit module built into it. You can shoot photos with your phone, edit them using ON1 Photo Mobile, add them to existing 360 albums and they will automatically be shared to the ON1 Cloud Sync cloud for viewing and editing.

The ON1 Photo Mobile app, available for both iOS and Android phones and tablets, is designed to share and edit your mobile photos, and access and edit photos on your other ON1 360 devices. The app has four tabs, a Local Photos container (above left), which is where your photos from that mobile device reside; ON1 360 (center left), which lets you access the photos from other shared devices; Albums (center right), which displays existing ON1 360 albums (and lets you create new albums); and Camera (left), which is a full-featured smartphone camera capable of capturing raw photos.

All of the photos shot and imported onto a mobile device with ON1 Photo Mobile are captured to a location on the device called Local Photos, which is what you see when you look at a mobile device in the ON1 Cloud Sync pane in ON1 Photo RAW.

There are four main tabs in the ON1 Photo Mobile app:

• Local Photos, which displays the photos on that device;
• ON1 Cloud Sync, which displays your synced devices, and lets you drill down into them to view the photos on those devices;
• Albums, which displays synced ON1 Cloud Sync albums, and lets you create your own synced albums directly from your mobile device; and
• Camera, a full-featured, pro-level camera capable of capturing raw images and syncing them immediately to the ON1 Cloud Sync cloud.

ON1 Photo Mobile uses the same RAW processing engine developed for ON1 Photo RAW, and has a non-destructive raw editor built into the app. The basic editing controls are similar to those found in the Develop tab of Photo RAW’s Edit module: there are adjustments for Exposure, Contrast, Shadows, Midtones, Highlights, Whites, Blacks, White Balance, Noise, and Sharpening. The app also includes five filters from the Edit module’s Effects tab.

Viewing Photos in ON1 Photo Mobile

You can view all of your photos — local or synced from the cloud — in ON1 Photo Mobile via standard gestures and taps. Tapping on an album, for example, will display a grid of that album, and you can pinch two fingers together and apart to change the grid size. Tap on a photo to view it in Detail view, and pinch to zoom in.

Photo Management and Editing with ON1 Photo Mobile

When you wish to share or edit a photo with ON1 Photo Mobile, tap on it from any Grid view screen. This will display the photo in Detail view with the photo’s name, and three icons at the bottom of the screen: one for sharing the photo, one for editing, and the other to delete the current photo (this only applies to photos that reside in that device’s Local Photos folder).

Sharing options include saving a copy of the photo to your camera roll, or to be shared via your device’s social media sharing options. The sharing window includes sizing options (medium, large, and full-size) for your exported photo.

Editing photos with the app is similar to editing photos in ON1 Photo RAW, although ON1 Photo Mobile doesn’t have all of the tools and filters found in the desktop app. Tapping the Edit icon at the bottom center of the screen will display six editing functions underneath the photo:

• Crop: resizes and levels your photo.
• Tone: for adjusting exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, midtones, white and black points, and for adding structure or applying dehaze.
• Color: lets you adjust the color balance of the photo.
• AI Auto: performs an automatic tone adjustment on your photo using a proprietary ON1 algorithm.
• Details: for applying sharpening and noise reduction.
• Effects: lets you apply five of Photo RAW’s Effects filters — Vignette, Split Tone, Film Grain, Black & White, and Color Adjustment — to your photo.

Each icon at the bottom of the ON1 Photo Mobile Edit window contains an adjustment category that is based on the Photo RAW editing engine.

Mobile Editing Limitations with Synced Photos

While ON1 Cloud Sync and ON1 Photo Mobile have been designed to provide a seamless editing experience between desktop and mobile devices, there are two instances where you might run into a situation where you can view, but not edit a synced file inside ON1 Photo Mobile:

• When you’ve edited a synced photo with Photo RAW using any Effects filter that is not present in ON1 Photo Mobile.
• Any .onphoto file cannot be edited in ON1 Photo Mobile. This includes HDR, panorama and focus-stacked composites, as well as layered files.

Any photo synced with ON1 that has not had editing adjustments made to it can be edited with any ON1 Photo RAW or ON1 Photo Mobile device, whether the photo in question is an original or an editable preview. And all synced photos will be visible on all ON1 devices, regardless of their originating format.