ON1: Edit and Convert Raw Photos into Jpeg in Batch Mode

If you have hundreds of raw photos that you want to edit and convert into jpeg, what’s the easiest way to do it? If you are using ON1 Photo Raw 2023, you can use their batch-mode feature that’s accessed through the Browser Thumbnail-View dialog.

Make sure you’re in ‘Thumbnail view’ first

Make sure you’re in ‘Browse’ mode, and NOT ‘Edit’ mode when you want to do batch-mode features. You also want to make sure that you’re viewing thumbnails of your photos, which is enabled as shown above.

The “Thumbnail View Options…” dialog will pop up after you click your right-mouse button while in the Browse mode, after multi-selecting the shots to convert. There are actually a bunch of features available in this dialog, but I want to draw your attention to just a few of them.

Rotate your photos to the proper orientation

It’s important to note that before you start any photo editing, it’s handy to make sure all of your vertical-mode shots get rotated to the correct orientation. This can be done from the ‘Browse’ module.

Start by multi-selecting the photos that need rotation in a particular direction. Next, click the right-mouse button to activate the “Thumbnail View Options…” dialog.

Rotate to the correct orientation

Near the top of the ‘Thumbnail View Options…’ dialog, you’ll see a “Rotate” option; from here you can select either ‘Rotate CW’ or ‘Rotate CCW’.

I noticed that my shots actually needed to get rotated the opposite direction of the commands (rotate clockwise to get counter-clockwise rotation). Try a single shot to make sure it rotates as expected prior to batch-rotating hundreds of them. If any shots need rotation, get this done prior to converting the raw shots into jpegs.

Batch-edit multiple files

If you have a routine set of edits that will apply to several files, then do the following after editing a sample photo (in the ‘Edit’ module).

Copy the active photo edit steps

First, copy the editing steps from the active photo in the ‘Edit’ module by selecting “Copy Settings” as shown (or else click Ctrl+Shift+C).

Second, leave the ‘Edit’ module and then multi-select the desired files in the ‘Browse’ module that you want to apply to the copied editing steps.

Paste the edit steps into selected files

Finally, as shown above ‘Paste’ the editing steps into your selected set of files (or click ‘Ctrl+Alt+V’). The selected collection of files will immediately receive the edits from the ‘Copy Settings’ step.

You can verify that your photos received the requested edits by selecting a sample photo and look at the edit settings in the “Edit” module after the batch-edit process has completed.

Batch conversion of Raw to Jpeg

Batch-convert files via the ‘Export’ option

After selecting the desired set of photos while in ‘Thumbnail view’, click the right-mouse button to see the dialog shown above.

The Export Dialog

When you click on the Export… item in the Thumbnail Options dialog, you’ll see the dialog shown above. You can export the raw shots into more formats besides jpeg. You also get to specify where you want the exported files to go; I like to place them into a sub-folder from my raw shots called “jpg”.

I noticed that the dialog “radio buttons” don’t act like radio buttons; they act like checkboxes, where you can select more than a single option. You could export to both ‘dng’ and ‘jpeg’ at once, for instance.

Progress dialog while converting selected photos

As shown above, you’ll get a progress dialog while the batch process is executing, once you click the “Export” button. This way, you’ll know how long the conversion should take. If you now discover that ON1 is doing something unexpected, you can cancel the batch process.

The ‘Export’ dialog also lets you tell ON1 what to do after finishing the batch process. I like to see the finished results in Windows Explorer, but you can also do things such as opening the shots in another editor. My version of Lightroom doesn’t understand my raw-format shots, unless I convert them into DNG; this is a handy way to get the raw (high-efficiency raw) converted into DNG and then automatically run Lightroom.

Summary

You can easily save hundreds of hours by batch-editing. It’s a fundamental skill that all photographers should get familiar with. ON1 Photo Raw 2023 provides these tools, although it's not very obvious how to use them.