At $49 a year for an included 20GB of “Zoner Photo Cloud” capacity, less than half the price of the Adobe Photoshop annual minimum subscription rate, Zoner Photo Studio X for Windows has been given new RAW output and editing options.

Promising “flawless color management”, the fall update to “ZPS X” also brings a new export window to output images to different sizes and file types simultaneously.  With 1:1 previews of RAW files in Adobe Lightroom available for several years, ZPS X has also added 1:1 ratio previewing of RAW files and edits.

Adobe includes 20GB with their basic $9.99-a-month plans, and similarly Zoner offers 20GB at their basic rate. Like Adobe, Zoner also offers more capacity at extra charge. For Windows users looking for a no frills photo editor as well as savings, all of this might make Zoner Photo Studio X worth a look.

Case studies on the new export system would include repetititve workflow tasks like creating full resolution files at the same time as thumbnails or preview size JPEGS, or potentially batching images to different print sizes.

Presets for oft-used settings can be saved, and preloaded Fast Previews within the Zoner software will speed up photo export tremendously, as well.

For those inclined to work with metadata, Zoner Photo Studio can automatically base file names, subfolders and exports on image metadata.

The Free-form collage update looks to be based on content-aware scaling for an easy way to play with designs and layouts that adapt easily to photography dimensions. Weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly desk calendars can be created through the software, and images can also be shared to Zoner’s “Zonerama gallery.”

An annotations mode has been added to make notes on pictures with arrows, lines, shapes and text, something sorely missing from the often too complex Adobe infrastructures. 

Edits are also stored to separate files non-destructively, and Zoner promises you do not lose access to your edits or files if you stop a subscription. They also have specific color profiles for monitors and printers.

Now in their 26th year, Zoner’s previous update this last spring added a number of possibilities for portraiture, including Face-aware liquify for smooth skin based on A.I. algorithms. A new Anonymizer tool allows batch operations such as the blurring of faces automatically thanks to A.I.