P: Support lens profiles for Olympus ZUIKO Digital lenses (E-System)

Hi all,

yes I can take the lead and try to communicate with OLYMPUS Tokyo on willing to better cooperate with Adobe:

1.) Provide Adobe with profiles for OLYMPUS lenses
2.) Pre-sets for OLYMPUS camera bodies for Adobe Lightroom
3.) Tethered capture feature of Adobe Lightroom to control OLYMPUS cameras via PC

@Eric: As far as I know, a petition would mean to collect names and numbers of users that are supporting this petition.
Am I right? Do we have a chance to set-up such a petition on an Adobe internet platform? Any other idea?

Cheers
Gerald

Francie,

Will do!

Germany has some great corners, particularly in the South (but avoid the typical tourist places such as Heidelberg, instead go to Tübingen, Bodensee area or Allgäu - all still very touristy but not yet over-run) and Berlin as probably one of the most green and relaxed capitals.

Best wishes,

Steffen

Steffen, I do hope you get to Florida one day, we are a state of great contrast. The southern highly developed portion is probably the one most people are familiar with, here in the Northern Panhandle we still have some incredibly amazing wild areas that very dedicated groups of people are now trying to protect.
I hope to one day have the opportunity to visit Germany, my husband and I have just begun our international traveling, to Egypt and Israel in November 2010 and to England for a month this August/September.
Gerald, I will add my request to Steffen's, if there seems to be any possible benefit would you please take the lead to petition Olympus in Tokyo again.
Thank you!
Francie

Dear Francie,

Unfortunately, I've never been to Florida, only to NYC and other hubs on the East Coast or to California for meetings, vibrant country and engaging and friendly people!

I agree, my focus is science (malaria research) both in the lab and in collaboration with African colleagues in patients, so do I get around quite a bit, in fact, I've been moving 6 months/6 months between the Kenyan coast and Heidelberg for many years. So, I'm also rather a "beneficiary" of technology than a technically inclined person, most definitely, I wouldn't be able to implement Gerald's fantastic protocol!

Meanwhile I had also contacted the Olympus people in Germany but the quality of the response ranged from total misunderstanding to strangely paternalistic flavours "you can find the link to the Adobe download page here")... not very helpful I supposed.

If anything, only a petition to the Olympus masters in Tokyo makes sense.

Gerald: since you'd already been in touch with Tokyo, could you take the lead on this (again)?

Best wishes,

Steffen

Gerald, thank you, it is so great to connect with other Olympus users! You live in Germany? I live in Tallahassee, Florida, this is such a terrific use of the Internet to be able to share information in this way.
I am retired from Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, where I was a database administrator for years, and then became a webmaster in the mid-90's, which led to also becoming a graphic designer starting in 2000. I am volunteering my graphics skills at our local National Wildlife Refuge and also pursuing my interest in digital photography as an art form, and am far more conversant with that approach than digging into the technical details at a great depth. I do appreciate the level at which both you and Steffen understand this aspect of photography.
I was so hoping that Adobe could just provide the information for us in Lightroom as they provide it for other camera manufacturers.
Steffen, do you have any additional thoughts about contacting Olympus directly?
Thanks!
Francie

Hi Steffen and Francie,

I know two effective options how you can setup your individual camera profiles, right away.

Specific camera profiles are an important prerequisite for your work, and the offered correction options inside Lightroom/ACR are just to be understood as your final fine-tuning. Camera profiles are most vital for a satisfatcory color reproduction. Without specific camera profiles, I doubt that it is possible to realize a RAW workflow that works.

If you know how to do it, you are in a position to create new profiles in a few minutes. For all your cameras, you may create camera profiles as standard profiles or for indicvidual situations (forest, snow, underwater, demanding shooting, ...).

Sine camera profiles need to support situation-specific color reproduction,
since the creation of the profiles requires little work,
since Adobe leaves all "how-to-questions" to its user community and locally-based consultants,
since presets are heavily involved by "how-to-answers":
I suggest not to foster camera profiles in this thread.

Nevertheless, I want you as my friends and I have two options to your request for camera profiles:

Instead of the general approach that color management deals with ICC profiles, camera profiles are based on DNG profiles. This means, you need to shoot one or two DNGs (RAW pictures) of a not-outdated color panel. Then you need some software that creates the profile from these DNGs.

Alternative A: X-RITE ColorChecker Passport
Amazon Germany:
http://www.amazon.de/X-RITE-ColorChec...
Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pantone-X-Rit...
an easy-to-use profile creating software with color panel and tutorial

Alternative B) Adobe Labs: Camera Profiles and DNG Profile Editor
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/...
free Adobe software with more capabilities
but still, you need to obtain an extra color panel
If you speak German, then I can cecommend this training video from Make Jarsetz:
"Adobe Photoshop CS5 für digitale Fotografie", Galileo Design, ISBN 978-3-8362-1577-0
http://www.galileodesign.de/katalog/b...
Kapitel 13. Hilfreiche Profi-Tipps [00:56 Std.]
13.3 ... Kameraprofile erstellen [08:13 Min.]

Did I forget something to mention?
Cheers
Gerald

Unfortunately it would be hard to integrate it directly (i.e., a plug-in) because it would not work well in our parametric editing environment. On the other hand, I'm sure the correction data for those lenses could be easily mapped to the Adobe lens correction model.

Hi Eric,

another idea: is it possible that, let us say, PT Lens !!! gets a chance to offer their existing Photoshop plug-in capabilities inside Lightroom and ACR? That would solve the part of the lens profiles for all the Zuiko lenses.

Thanks
Gerald

Francie,
I think that things are as you describe them.

Additionally, I miss the tethered capture feature for OLYMPUS bodies in Lightroom. The OLD Olympus software "Olympus Studio" used to cover this feature, but also with its "own" (it isn't...) software Olympus seems to be in trouble. For the moment, current Olympus software does not support a camera body control via PC.

Lightroom offers a plug-in:
http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/t...

I remember a petition to Olympus dealing with the exposure bracketing feature for professional HDRs. The request was to have available a series of 5 pictures in 2 EV steps, as HDR software demands. I still miss the success of this petition. The recent update for the E-5 solves a storage problem, nothing more.

@Eric: Isn't there possible a workaround with partners? Or who could bring the stubborn donkey to move? Should we ask Sony, Panasonic? They seam to support Olympus not to disappear from the market.

Cheers
Gerald

My thanks too Eric. Steffen, yes, it appears that a petition to Olympus is possibly the most productive next step.
First though, in summary do I understand correctly from reading this thread that at issue is the fact that Olympus has not provided specifications on their lenses and cameras that would enable Adobe to develop the requested features in Lightroom? And, in contrast, Nikon, Canon, etc. are indeed providing that information, hence the number of choices available for users of those cameras?
Am I missing anything?
I am eagerly hoping for an announcement of the release of an upgrade to either the E-30 or E-5, I do hope that their resistance is not indicative of additional issues, although that is more a topic for another forum.
Francie