Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Path and Light

This photo was taken as a bracketed set of three exposures at 3pm on the 19th October 2024 and later developed as a HDR blend with On1 Photo RAW 2025.

Yes, I’m back using On1 Photo RAW after a six-month hiatus!

Location

Gill and I were at Lady Margaret’s Park Caravan Club site near Chirk in North Wales on our last proper caravanning holiday of the year. And I was nursing a bad back and still recovering from a dose of Covid.

The area around Chirk has a canal network, a railway and some great associated engineering architecture.

With a walking stick, I’d managed to hobble around the canal tow paths and the Chirk Aqueduct (with parallel railway viaduct), but I saved what I thought might be the best photography venue for the day with the best weather.

The Photo

The Trevor Basin has some great photography opportunities, and I may publish more from my photo walk (hobble) on this day.

At the forefront of my mind, however, was what I could capture from the footpath underneath of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. I took few different shots – vantage points and angles – but the featured image here proved to have the most potential.

I’d took similar shots before, of course, but many years (perhaps decades!) ago.

Development

I’d started to develop this image with Pixelmator Pro (which I’d been using since May), but I struggled.

Pixelmator Problems

I’d conceded to a single exposure rather than trying to manually blend exposures, but this was only part of the problem.

Although I’ve enjoyed the speed and pragmatic simplicity of its workflow, one consistent issue has been what I saw in the output file compared to what I saw in the application. Whether I chose to set the application’s preview to so called “HDR” or not and export accordingly, I always seemed to be struggling to squeeze the exposure and colours I’d developed for the image into a decent output file.

And it doesn’t ever manage the fine detail and crispness of Photo RAW’s output

On1 Photo RAW 2025

Having had the output problems with Pixelmator Pro, and YouTuber’s I follow telling me about On1 Photo RAW 2025, I had to take a look.

I thought I had to trial it. And the featured image is the result!

Cautious Return to Photo RAW

Having had the tedious masking problems earlier this year, I am still cautious about returning to what has been my favourite RAW editing software. But so far, I haven’t had any problems, apart for the application’s enthusiasm for memory!

Difficult Task but Much Better Results!

The dynamic range of the scene for this image was much bigger than I’d thought. I blended the three exposures into a Photo Raw HDR file, but there were still issues with the highlights in the brightly-lit bushes.

I usually meter to check highlights will not be compromised with the -2EV bracket. Perhaps I rushed and neglected to do so in this case.

Thankfully, with Photo RAW’s Replace Colour and new Edit Colour tools, I was able to fix the blown highlights on the leaves. I’m not sure I would have been able to do so with PP.

I love the colour and crisp detail too.

Conclusion

On1 Photo RAW is a very comprehensive and capable application with excellent tools and masking capability. Photo RAW 2025 runs smoothly but seems use much more memory (courtesy of swap files) than previous versions.

I really hope that Photo RAW will work for me. I’ve missed it!