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

Thanks Eric.

Agreed.

Gerald, Francis and fellow Olympus users: shall we form a "petition" to Olympus?

I agree that it is not the user community's job to patch such disagreements or lack of collaboration. But it is often helpful for the users to tell the vendors directly how important it is to the users. Even if you often/occasionally get a negative response at first, it adds up over time in a positive way. Indeed, direct user feedback is a big contributing factor to how we were able to deliver so many complete sets of lens profiles from so many different vendors (e.g., Hasselblad, Leica, Pentax, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Zeiss).

Internally, we maintain good relationships with the vendors and we do also let them know how important this is to the users. But in the long run, it makes more sense and has broader impact for them to hear this directly from their users.

Dear Eric,

I think you have our sympathy regarding the resource constraints you're facing within the company. Who didn't/isn't dealing with similar situation at work all the time?

What the enthusiastic Olympus users here are seeking is some initial commitment by Adobe to devote additional or existing resources to this growing (and apparently pretty active) ecosystem. Since Adobe gets support for these development from most other vendors, you're already not developing settings for all vendors from scratch... I guess as very often in life one cannot (better: should not!) apply the same rule to all situations... ie, if Adobe expects all vendors to behave similarly, I could have predicted you that you'll find one or two who wouldn't cooperate - and I suppose as a company you *could* envisage a plan B..., no? I definitely agree with Gerald that it's not quite the user communities job to patch disagreements between Adobe and individual companies.

Steffen, Gerald, and team,

The unfortunate reality is that we (Adobe) do not have the resources to build lens profiles internally for all vendors. We also do not have the resources to build the so-called Camera Matching profiles for all vendors.

In the case of lenses, this is why we try to work with vendors (i.e., Adobe-vendor collaboration) to build lens profiles together. The vendors know the design and residual aberration characteristics of their lenses. Adobe has methods and tools for performing software correction based on this data. This results in a win-win situation: Photographers get better results, and this higher quality reflects nicely on the vendor.

Hi Steffen, I agree with you: the task to create lens profiles, this is NOT the job of the user community. This fact is reaosn enough to leave OLYMPUS as a platform.

I by myself have created two lens profiles for the Zuiko 7-14 and the Zuiko 150mm. They are approved and public to be used by the Adobe community. Adobe's tools to create lens profiles are a great help, the concept has depth and it works well, also for amateurs. And I have two additional profiles to be completed.

But nevertheless, it makes me laugh and cry that I am the one who delivers lens profiles to all over the world for the super high grade lens series of OLYMPUS. It is a bad joke about OLYMPUS.

Sorry for the "dubious" - not meant to be offensive in any way, "hard to understand" may fit better.

My feeling is that even if Olympus would not forward lens specific specifications, Adobe would not need this for
(A) creation of camera calibration profiles (since this is camera not lens specific) and
(B) it makes look Adobe's advise to customers to create their own lens profiles dubious - how would the amateur user be in a better position to create lens profiles than a highly talented pool of professionals at the company...?

Currently, OLYMPUS users need help from Adobe

OLYMPUS delivers its system with a piece of software, which is intended for users who do not want to spent additional money in computer based image processing, but who want to prepare their pictures for a print service. This OLYMPUS software has (besides money - the only?!) advantage, that it contains all the lens profiles of all the OLYMPUS lenses.

OLYMPUS should forward these data to Adobe so that it can be used in Lightroom, Photoshop, and ACR.

Unfortunately, there are political obstacles relating to OLYMPUS willingness to cooperate with software companies. Maybe, Adobe knows ways to open doors for new strategies?

Read this:
---------------------------------------------------------------
Mon, 26. Dec 2011 09:22:09
Dear Gerald,

Thank you for your e-mail.

We are grateful for your understanding on our policy.

In regard to your request for a thread posted on the Web, we are
sorry to say that we are not prepared to support it.

It is a fact that we have been receiving many inquiries similar to
yours from Olympus enthusiasts. But we are not ready to comply with
requests for such purposes.

We are sorry that we cannot be more helpful to this matter.

Thank you again for your understanding.

Best regards,

M. XXXX
Customer Support Center
OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. Tokyo, Japan

----------------original message----------------

Dear Sir or Madam
of the OLYMPUS customer support team!

Thank you for your response.
On the one hand I understand and respect your policy very well.
On the other hand, please could you support my thread
that I opened at Adobe's photoshop platform due to your response.

Even if you do not want to be involved as an organization,
could you nevertheless please forward this thread
and inform customers with similar requests?

Here is the link:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

Kind Regards

----------------original message----------------

Dear Gerald,

Thank you for your e-mail concerning our Four Thirds system lenses.

While appreciating your inquiry, we are sorry to inform you that we
are not thinking of making our lenses support the Adobe's software.

In regard to the compatibility of other brand's software, we would
like you to contact the software manufacturer.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,

M. XXX
Customer Support Center
OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. Tokyo, Japan

----------------original message----------------

Dear Sir or Madam,

Adobe released the Adobe Raw Converter (ACR) 6.5 update that supports three OLYMPUS camera bodies of the mFT series.

http://www.adobe.com/support/download...

I am interested in lens profiles for the OLYMPUS Four Third (super) high grade lenses. If there is no official support by Adobe, I would be very grateful if OLYMPUS supported the ACR lens profiles for these outstanding top lenses.

Thank you for your help.

Kind Regards

The E-System lenses are the foundation for both,
FourThirds (FT) & micro FourThirds (mFT).

It does not really answer, if one believes that the E-System, the high grade and super high grade lenses, are already "old", i.e. out-of-time. With the telecentric approach Olympus has chosen a next generation optical design for digital lenses, and that remains true, still today. With an adapter, all the FT lenses can be used equally well with mFT. In the development of the FT lenses, Olympus has invested much more in optical quality and perfection, as in the development of the new mFT lenses. If a photographer wants to work creatively with depth of field, if you also claim on Bokeh, then you need fast lenses, i.e. aperture 2 of the super high grade series of the E-System. Recent development on new camera bodies does not change this fact.

Cheers
Gerald

Dear Francis,

Thanks for the encouragement!

I think it would be great to get some attention from the Lightroom team, I think they have marvellous engineers, if they could just turn their attention towards the new breed of cool Olympus models!