To celebrate ON1’s 21st anniversary, we’ve rounded up the best ON1 Photo RAW 2026 tutorials and reviews from our partners, covering workflow, masking, effects, and Restore AI.

Twenty-one years ago, ON1 set out to build something photographers had always wanted: one application that handles everything, without compromise or a monthly bill. ON1 Photo RAW 2026 is the latest chapter in that story, and this year, the software earned more attention from the photography community than ever. To mark our 21st anniversary, we pulled together the best tutorials, walkthroughs, and reviews that our partners and affiliates published over the past year. Whether you’re new to Photo RAW or have been editing with it for years, there’s something here worth watching or reading.

The content below spans the full 2026 cycle, from the October launch through the 2026.4 update and its Restore AI module. You’ll find complete workflow tutorials, deep dives into AI masking, a landscape effects walkthrough, an honest buyer’s review from a working photographer, and two written reviews that put Photo RAW through its paces. If you’ve ever wondered what experienced ON1 Photo RAW users actually do with the software, this is the place to start.

In This Post:

• A Complete 7-Step Editing Workflow in ON1 Photo RAW 2026
• ON1 Photo RAW 2026: What’s New and Should You Buy?
• Mastering AI Masks and Mask Layers in ON1 Photo RAW 2026
• Precision Masking with Intersect Mode in ON1 Photo RAW 2026
• ON1 Photo RAW 2026.4: The New Features You Need to See
• ON1 Photo Raw 2026 Review: Is It Worth It?
• Restore AI in ON1 Photo RAW Max 2026.4: A Real-World Test

A Complete 7-Step Editing Workflow in ON1 Photo RAW 2026

Richard from Silent Peak Photo has spent years testing and reviewing photo editing software, and his channel is one of the most thorough independent resources available for photographers weighing their software options. In this tutorial, his most-watched ON1 video to date, he walks through a structured, seven-step editing process that covers cropping and lens corrections, white balance, exposure and contrast, color correction, local adjustments and masking, stylizing with the Effects module, and sharpening. The strength of this video is its repeatability: rather than showing off one particular technique, Richard demonstrates a consistent sequence that applies to most of what photographers shoot. If you’ve been editing in ON1 Photo RAW 2026 but feel like you’re making it up as you go, watching this once should change how you approach every session afterward.

Featured Video: ON1 Photo Raw Tutorial 2026 — How To EDIT 90% OF YOUR PHOTOS using just 7 STEPS — Silent Peak Photo

ON1 Photo RAW 2026: What’s New and Should You Buy?

Austin James Jackson is a professional landscape photographer based in Southern Utah whose work takes him deep into backcountry locations across the American West. He brings a working shooter’s perspective to software evaluation, less interested in feature checklists than in whether a tool actually holds up when you’re editing a full shoot. Published within days of the 2026 launch, his video covers the masking overhaul, the upgraded Effects panel, and the integration of Resize AI into Photo RAW, then honestly addresses the “should you buy” question for both new users and existing customers considering an upgrade. It’s a practical assessment from someone who uses the software as part of a professional workflow, not a promotional walkthrough.

Featured Video: ON1 Photo RAW 2026: What’s New and Should You Buy? — Austin James Jackson

Mastering AI Masks and Mask Layers in ON1 Photo RAW 2026

Free Will Photos has been teaching ON1 Photo RAW workflows for years and publishes new tutorials weekly, making the channel one of the most consistently useful external resources for Photo RAW users. This tutorial focuses on the biggest masking update in the 2026 release: one-click Subject and Background masks, the new Mask Layers system that lets you stack and combine multiple masks per filter, and the improved AI edge detection that handles hair, branches, and other fine detail more cleanly than before. The walkthrough is step-by-step and practical, showing exactly how to put these tools to use on real photos. If you haven’t explored what the 2026 AI masking tools are capable of, this is the tutorial to start with.

Featured Video: How to Use ON1 Photo RAW 2026’s AI Masks & New Mask Layers (Tutorial) — Free Will Photos

Precision Masking in Photo RAW with Intersect Mode

Scott Davenport has been teaching landscape photography and post-processing for years, with a teaching style built around a single concept per video: no padding, no detours. In this tutorial he focuses on Intersect mode, a masking approach that reveals only the overlap between two or more selections, making it possible to build complex masks that previously required several manual steps. He walks through combining sky and luminosity masks, refining subject selections, and applying targeted adjustments to specific tonal ranges within a scene. For photographers who already have the basics down and want to work faster and more precisely, this is the kind of technique that tends to stick. You’ll find yourself reaching for Intersect mode regularly once you understand what it does.

Featured Video: Precision Masking Explained: Intersect Mode in ON1 Photo RAW 2026 — Scott Davenport

ON1 Photo RAW 2026.4: The New Features You Need to See

Anthony Morganti is one of the most recognized photography educators on YouTube, with over 400,000 subscribers and a reputation for honest, detailed walkthroughs that don’t oversell. His 2026.4 video covers every major addition in the update: the redesigned Home module, performance improvements throughout the app, and most significantly, Restore AI inside ON1 Photo RAW MAX. He tests Restore AI on real images including damaged prints, old film shots, and low-quality phone photos, and gives a straightforward assessment of where it works well and where its current limitations are, including its handling of faces. It’s the kind of review that actually helps you decide whether a feature belongs in your workflow, rather than just telling you it exists.

Featured Video: ON1 Photo RAW 2026.4: The New Features You Need to See — Anthony Morganti

ON1 Photo Raw 2026 Review: Is It Worth It?

Kieran Hayes is a professional photographer based in Ireland with over a decade of experience shooting commercially. His 2026 review, updated through March 2026 after extended real-world use, covers the software from the perspective of someone who came to it from other platforms and spent time genuinely evaluating it against them. He works through the full feature set: the Browse module’s no-import approach, the Develop controls, the AI masking improvements, the layer-based editing system, and the pricing model. His conclusion is direct: for photographers who want Lightroom and Photoshop capabilities in a single application without a subscription, Photo RAW 2026 is a compelling option. The review is long enough to be thorough and honest enough to be useful.

Featured Post: ON1 Photo Raw 2026 Review — Is It Worth It? — Kieran Hayes Photography

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Restore AI in ON1 Photo RAW Max 2026.4: A Real-World Test

Rod Lawton writes for Life After Photoshop, a long-running site dedicated to reviewing Lightroom and Photoshop alternatives with the kind of depth that comes from testing software seriously over time. He describes himself as a skeptic of AI photo enhancement tools, which is exactly why this review is worth reading. After putting Restore AI through a real-world test using a 3MP scan of a damaged postcard-size print, he came away impressed. He walks through the scratch and crease removal, the upscaling to 4K from a low-resolution original, and the colorization of black-and-white photos, showing before and after images throughout. It’s a concise, grounded assessment from someone with no stake in the outcome, published shortly after the 2026.4 release.

Featured Post: ON1 Photo RAW Max 2026.4’s Restore AI Process Is Truly Remarkable — Life After Photoshop

Try ON1 Photo RAW MAX Free for 30 Days →

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With ON1 Photo RAW 2023, we introduced several amazing new masking features integrated into most of our photo editing software, all powered by a new AI Masking technology. This new technology is integrated into the features Super Select AI, AI Adaptive Presets, Mask AI, and Quick Mask AI. Each feature is truly amazing and saves a ton of time editing your photos. You can click on an object or region to instantly apply an adjustment. Or, in the case of AI Adaptive presets and Mask AI, pick an area by name, like the sky, water, mountains, people, animals, etc, to apply a preset or filter. It is state-of-art! Try it free →

As with any new technology, especially AI technologies, there can be some areas where the AI can miss. We felt confident in the results and potential of these new AI masking features on the thousands of photos we tested internally and from feedback from our beta testers. Today many users of Photo RAW 2023 and its related plugin products, like ON1 Effects, are having a blast using these new features. They make being creative more fun by reducing the pain of complex masking. However, users have also offered feedback on areas to improve. This feedback is invaluable to ON1, and we take it seriously—our engineering team is ready to unveil some new improvements in record time.

I’m happy to announce a new update where we’ve made great strides in improving the AI Masking features. Here are some of the new improvements we’ve made in this release. Anyone who downloaded a trial version of Photo RAW 2023 in the past can download it again and try it for 14 more days.

Owners of Version 2023: To download the update for ON1 Photo RAW and to read the full list of updates, please go here. The links for the plugin updates are located below.

• Enhanced the masking results and consistency of the AI Masking features, Super Select AI, Mask AI, Quick Mask AI, and AI Adaptive Presets
• Improved the performance of the Mask Refine Brush
• The opening speed for raw files is now over 30% faster
• Improved the layout of the metadata pane, adding a roll-up for AI Keywords, and more space for description and keywords
• Added raw file support for: Fujifilm X-T5, OM Systems OM-5, Sony a7RV (ILCE-7RM5)
• Added lens profiles for: Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III, Samsung Galaxy S21 ultrawide, Canon RF 35mm F1.8 MACRO IS STM, NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S, Leica D Vario-Elmar 14-150mm f/3.5-5.6 Asph. OIS, Samyang XP 10mm f/3.5, Sony E 11mm F1.8, Sony FE 14mm F1.8 GM, Sony FE 40mm F2.5 G, Sony FE 50mm F1.2 GM, Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95 III, Voigtlander Color Skopar 20mm F3.5 SLII Aspherical
• Improved stability and several more bug fixes and enhancements
• Read the full release notes and get the update here

Masking Improvements Explained

To explain the improvements, you first need to understand how these features work under the hood. The AI Masking features use several different AI models to accomplish their work. They are broken down into two stages. The first stage is known as segmentation. That’s the step of finding and classifying the regions and objects in a photo. A photo can contain large regions like the sky, water, mountains, buildings, etc. To find these regions, we use what is called panoptic segmentation. It can identify about 50 different regions, which we group into larger categories, so you don’t have to select similar surfaces multiple times. These regions include Architecture, Man-Made Ground, Flora, Natural Ground, Water, Snow, Mountains, and Sky. When selecting a region that contains Flora, it picks all the “stuff” that fits in that category, like trees, flowers, and fruit. We then use a different type of segmentation called Instance segmentation to find individual objects such as people, animals, food, and transportation devices. Each can be selected individually with tools like Super Select AI and Quick Mask AI or as groups with Mask AI or AI Adaptive presets. It’s important to note that for a region or object, the Instance Segmentation will select the whole thing, not a portion of it. For example, if you click on a person, it will choose the whole person, not their shirt or hat where you click. You can always mask smaller regions using the other masking tools found in ON1.

Next comes the second stage, known as matting. The results from the segmentation are essentially hard-edged blobs. Imagine cutting out a subject roughly with scissors. The results of just the segmentation would not be a good enough mask. For what it’s worth, these rough segments are what you see when you mouse over the photo and select regions or objects (with Super Select AI, for example). The red and blue-tinted overlays are not the final masks, just an approximation. We take those rough segments and use another AI network that works its way along the edge to create a high-quality, feathered mask. There’s a lot of magic at work in these tools. We could all make a rough brushing of an area quickly. It’s the intricate gradients along the edges of the mask that make it look good.

The matting is where we have made the enhancements in this latest update. Some users who selected small objects in their photos could see part or all of the object removed from the mask compared to the red or blue overlay they saw when they selected it. Obviously, that was not our intention. In these cases, on small objects, the quality of the mask was not up to snuff. We have improved the fidelity of the masks and the consistency at different sizes. From our experience with Sky Swap AI, we already have an excellent AI network trained just for skies, which we now use in these other features when you pick the sky.

There are still some challenging areas, like thick hair and tree branches, that the AI can’t mask. That’s where the Mask Refine Brush comes in. We took this powerful tool and made it much faster. After using the AI Mask features, if you need to improve the mask further, just paint over the area with the Mask Refine Brush to improve it. And, of course, the masks generated by the AI Masking tools are just like any other mask in our apps. You can use the global mask options to adjust them, along with a whole fleet of other masking tools to retouch them as needed.

We love the new AI Masking features, and we know the majority of Photo RAW 2023 owners do as well. If you’ve had trouble with them in the past few weeks, please give them another shot with the update. If you are a trial user and your trial has expired, we have reset it so you can give it another go. Thanks for all of your feedback, both positive and negative. It helps us build a better product for you.

• ON1 Effects 2023 Release Notes and Download
• ON1 Resize AI 2023 Release Notes and Download
• ON1 HDR 2023 Release Notes and Download
• ON1 NoNoise AI 2023 Release Notes and Download
• ON1 Portrait AI 2023 Release Notes and Download

If you have been watching our other sneak peek videos, you have probably already fallen in love with Super Select AI. Now learn about its secret twin, the new Quick Mask AI for general masking. You get the same semantic masking segmentation but can use it to create masks on layers for compositing or on existing filters.

Since we first showed the world Super Select AI, it has dramatically improved with your feedback. In this video, Dan Harlacher shows several improvements to Super Select AI, including enhanced segment collecting, improved masks, live preset previews, and more.

The new Mask AI technology we are working on can target specific regions in your photo automatically by subject type. It starts by analyzing your photo and building a map of all the regions like the sky, water, mountains, ground, architecture, people, animals, etc. Then when you add a filter, local adjustment, or mask, you can simply pick which regions you want to use, no brushing required. It will make masking effects into your photos so much easier. The results and overlays will continue to improve as well, and once they are refined we will show you the improvements in another video. This and more are coming soon to you favorite photo editing software, ON1 Photo RAW!

Imagine adding an entire preset to only certain areas of our photo, in just two clicks. The new Super Select AI masking tool can add adjustment layers, filters, and even entire presets to objects or regions in your photos in just a couple clicks, no brushing required. It will speed up your photo masking tremendously and takes the pain away from learning all of the masking tools.

In this sneak peek, take a look at this new way to interact and edit your photos without worrying about brushes, layers, masks, or any of that. Just point and click to edit regions and objects effortlessly. It will make your photo editing so much easier and faster!

Here is another new masking tool coming to ON1 Photo RAW. The Line Mask tool creates shapes with straight or curved line segments, similar to a pen or polygonal lasso tool. Each shape is totally re-editable and can be combined with all the other masking tools. It’s perfect for architecture and real estate photos.

When editing photos, masking can be a potent tool in post-processing. The ability to apply filters and adjustments selectively using masking techniques opens an entirely new world of possibilities with a photo’s look. Factor into that the tools needed to mask or brush away layers and objects, and you’re well on your way to creating a work of art with a composite of images. With an array of masking tools, ON1 Photo RAW makes selective editing with masking incredibly fun and easy. Here are some of my favorite tips and tricks for getting the most out of my masks.

In This Article:

• Use Your Brush Edge to Your Advantage When Masking Images
  • Feathering at 100
  • Feathering at 0
• Using the Perfect Brush to Refine Your Masking Edges
• Utilize Different Masking Shapes & Gradients
• Chisel Your Mask for Cleaner Looking Edges
• Use a Color Range Mask to Selectively Apply Filters or Adjustments
• Improve Your Photo Masking with ON1’s Photo RAW Software

ON1 Photo RAW gives you all the masking tools you’ll ever need to tap into your creative side. Try Photo RAW free for 30-days. It works on both Mac and Windows and will not watermark your photos during the trial period.

Improve Your Photo Masking with ON1’s Photo RAW Software

ON1 Photo RAW gives you all the masking tools you’ll ever need to tap into your creative side. Try Photo RAW free for 30-days. It works on both Mac and Windows and will not watermark your photos during the trial period.

Start Your Free 30-Day Photo RAW Trial

Once you have a solid understanding of both global and more localized adjustments, it is time to dig into some of On1 Photo RAW 2019’s more Advanced tools. In this video, I will edit two images, leveraging everything we have covered so far while also mixing in the use of luminosity masks, advanced layer blending, creative use of noise reduction and much more. This will be the final video this month with the holidays fast approaching so I hope you have some fun with it!