Support for Olympus E-M5 Mark II

[Gina543]

‌Lightroom 5.7 isn't recognising RAW files from the new Olympus E-M5 Mark II. Has anyone found a solution please?

GIna

[chrisp95318450]

I went ahead and bought it. Its too good of a great camera and I could not wait.  I will shoot both JPEG and RAW and  hope that Adobe Lightroom adds the RAW support for this camera very soon.

Thanks everyone for the very helpful information on this issue.  Looking forward to the next update of Lightroom in a hurry.

[tom299]

Try MacPhun's Affinity Photo. Its in bets but free & it loads ALL Orf files. Its an interesting editor too.

[DdeGannes]

Olympus Viewer 3 which is free from your camera manufacturer will process the raw files just fine. Its user interface is not as easy to use as Lightroom but it will give excellent results. It will also match 100% your in camera settings.

[PIRose]

DdeGannes wrote:

Olympus Viewer 3 which is free from your camera manufacturer will process the raw files just fine. Its user interface is not as easy to use as Lightroom but it will give excellent results. It will also match 100% your in camera settings.

Indeed, and worth restating! I had already suggested that (Olympus Viewer) option several days ago, but it evidently failed to interest those intent on denouncing the inability of Lightroom to provide instant gratification. Evidently a better alternative is to experiment with some 3rd-party beta software?

" Mar 11, 2015 7:38 PM (in response to tom299)

the E-M5 II, which (while it waits for Lightroom support) performs perfectly fine when producing jpeg files and even can manage to function by having the ORF files processed in Oly Viewer (provided gratis by Oly)."

[srvman]

I am sorry to say that Olympus has some blame as well, particularly in the light of the "GM Truck" example.

Their viewer/editor does not even support the Hi-Res raw mode of the EM5 MkII I find that even sillier.

To stay on the GM Truck metaphor,  "This truck has a wonderful and revolutionary sixth gear, but no control as the stick shift does not support it"

(Europeans still predominantly use stick shift, sorry for that example)

[tom299]

Time for me to sign off this posting. To everyone who were courteous enough to take my comments at face value & not a rant but a criticism of Olympus, thanks.

To all the others, who reminded me of the Apple vs Windows war, you don't have the best just because you use it. I happen to have 'collected' just about every make of camera in the past 40 years & still have most of them. I also take an interest in the now essential software available. I do not however make offensive criticism when someone has an opinion even if it is misguided. Its their opinion. Snide remarks have no place in forums but I have yet to find one where thats the norm.

To those that made condescending & contrite replies let me tell you I was a semi-pro for many years & worked in the industry so not exactly a beginner.

Finally to anyone who thinks software vendors have to buy a camera to reverse engineer for updates. Its not what happens. It would not even be legal. They are among the first, along with the press, to not only get their hands on the product & software but pre-release announcements.

BTW I'm sure you all know that you better have 64 bit gear if you want to use LR6. It will ONLY work with 64 bit OS.

[ssprengel]

Adobe needs an RTM camera to profile.  This is not reverse-engineering, merely taking raw photos with the camera and doing math on the pixel values to create a camera profile to use with the raw conversion software.  I have seen raw conversions on DPReview that were done with a private beta camera raw plug-in from a beta camera 10 months before the camera was sold, but the conversions at that time were terrible, and it would have done Adobe no good to release those profiles before they got their hands on the final camera.

Adobe is also constrained by not releasing support for a camera that isn't publically available and if the camera is being released in different parts of the world at different times, but the US isn't one of those areas of the world, Adobe likely cannot release their software

The problem with the OM E-M5 II is one of timing.   I'm sure Adobe had camera support some time ago, and is merely waiting for the Camera Raw plug-in 9 or Lightroom 6 to be ready so we can see it.  Basically bad luck that the release to include this camera is a major release not a dot release.

Since you have had many models of many cameras over the years, is there something unusual going on this time that you can point to?

[DdeGannes]

@ssprengel thanks for this additional info, I guess things will happen when its ready.

[chrisp95318450]

Thanks for the additional info.  I will continue to wait and shoot JPEG only or switch to some other processing software. 

[DdeGannes]

Have you tried using your Camera Manufacturers software Olympus Viewer 3.?

Does not have the bells and frills and file management options of Lightroom but does provide an excellent rendition of the raw files.

[chrisp95318450]

Not yet, but I will if I don't see an upgrade to support this camera from Adobe soon.  I have a few other cameras and like to use the same workflow and not have to have another piece of software for each camera.  I am surprised it is taking this long when this camera has been out in the U.S for a number of months now.  C'est la vie!  Thanks for your help.

[ssprengel]

It’s been almost exactly 3 months since the last LR update, so I’d give them another week or two before calling it late, but it’s presumably taking this long because LR 6 is not ready.

[PIRose]

chrisp95318450 wrote:

this camera has been out in the U.S for a number of months now.

I know it must seem that long-- with all the chatter there was (in anticipation)-- but you may not be aware that the E-M5 II was announced officially in early February. So, right now it can't be more than about 4 weeks since the very earliest of birds received theirs (in USA).

[ssprengel]

Usually Adobe says nothing, but Adobe Camera Raw Engineer Eric Chan did post a hint a few days ago on the feedback.photoshop.com forum about when LR will get support for a couple new cameras:

[46915379]

Yes, the only way is to get the Olympus high res plug-in for Photoshop 5 or 6 from the Olympus website and to import it then into Photoshop.

[srvman]

Yes, but I am still on CS4 as I do not use Photoshop that often. My raw editor is DXO Optics pro 10. The latter also does not support the EM5II. I agree with the early bird argument, however after all these years of digital photography and a myriad of manufacturers and cameras I do not understand why the RAW I/F to programs is still a custom job every time. I would have expected a universal standard by now.

Anyway thats just me.

[46915379]

This is all very disappointing. And it also took me a long time to find out how to open the high res orf's - even Olympus own software (!!) "Olympus viewer 3" cannot open it. I also do not work with Photoshop very often - but I do have the adobe creative cloud bundle abo for lightroom and photoshop (12€ per month). Maybe you buy it as long as lightroom is not able to handle the orfs…

[ssprengel]

I see that ACR 8.8 is available via a manual installer that lists the Mark II as supported. If you have the Photography Plan then you can open your raw files in Bridge/ACR 8.8 and save as DNGs and those DNGs should work in Lightroom. It remains to be seen if we get a DNG Converter 8.8 or a LR 5.8.

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/camera-raw-plug-in-installer.html

[Jim Wilde]

DNG Converter 8.8 is also available, but not (yet?) LR 5.8:

Lightroom Journal | Tips and advice straight from the Lightroom team.

[Keith Reeder]

OT, but:

• Fixed issue with magenta highlights when processing Canon EOS 70D raw files at some ISO settings

Woo-hoo!

[srvman]

Very happy camper here. Its a bit of a hassle but ACR 8.8 works fine.

The quality difference is staggering, I was shooting with my new Oly 40-150 pro and was quite disappointed with it when using Viewer 3.

Almost ready to bring back the kit as I could not believe such poor results with premium kit.

Now the wait is for LR 6 next week and support in DXO OptPro 10.

Thanks for the tip guys!!

[JP Hess]

Next week? Another rumor starting. Amazing!

[Keith Reeder]

JimHess wrote:

Next week? Another rumor starting. Amazing!

The 20-somethingth of March has been mooted in a few places Jim (clueless rumour sites one and all) - I suppose if they keep on with this nonsense for long enough, they'll eventually be right.

It's a bit like "even a stopped clock is right twice a day".

[ssprengel]

Yeah, it is unlikely Adobe would go through the added hassle of releasing ACR 8.8 the day or week before LR 6 would be available.

My guess is that this ACR/DNGC release was Eric Chan’s doing from what he said last week about seeing what he could do about getting support earlier than “in a while” for when LR would come out.

[Keith Reeder]

srvman wrote:

Now the wait is for LR 6 next week

Or the week after.

Or the week after that.

Or the week after that.

Seriously - stop the rumour-mongering!