Help!! ACR vs. Olympus Master for RAW conversion?
RovingEyePhoto
Registered Users Posts: 314 Major grins
I shoot an Oly E-3, everything in RAW, and wonder if for the past few years I've been giving away something in RAW conversion.
The camera comes with Olympus Master, but I'd used PS previously, so when joining the Oly camp, I automatically went to ACR (CS3) for RAW conversion, tying directly into ACR's adjustment tools. I occasionally employ PS layers, but I'm neither fast nor efficient at it, so typically get all adjustment done in ACR, entering PS only for sizing and JPEG conversion.
The question here is: am I'm giving away something by not using Olympus Master for RAW conversion, it's specifically designed around Oly's RAW engine, will it produce a better result? I've read here at dGrin and elsewhere that each company's RAW converter is preferable to using ACR, but I'm used to ACR, understand a lot of what it can do, am pretty fast with it (but see below, still tons of hours), and am totally unacquainted with Olympus Master. Notwithstanding being pretty fast with ACR, I pour over problem images, and ultimate IQ is my main concern. I know I should just take the time and try Olympus Master, but time is so much at a premium that I convince myself to be satisfied in my possible ignorance.
Any thoughts out there that I'd be gaining IQ by biting the bullet and jumping into Olympus Master? If so, is it designed such that all the adjustments I do in ACR are available there, or would I export from there to ACR or, more frighteningly, into PS for all the fine tuning stuff (WB, exposure, recovery, clarity, curves, sharpening, noise reduction, hue/saturation/luminance, crop, straighten, etc)?
I may sound lazy in my manner of RAW converting and processing, but I'm not. Each 5-6 hour modeled shoot, 10-15 total through the late-spring/summer/early-fall season, requires maybe 20+ hours post from start to finish. Typically, my workflow produces 500+ TIF versions from the 200+ best RAW images, 300+ JPEG versions of the best TIF versions, 30+ re-dos from RAW to JPEG, with a final result of 100+ best JPEGs (my most recent shoot produced 271, go figure). So my process is a round-about one, but for me the only way to confidently get from start to finish. Like so many others, I have to see the image and play with processing and alternatives on the screen to gain any kind of reasonable idea of the ending point. I've tried pre-grading upon initial conversion to lessen the TIF process, and find that doing so invariably leaves way too much on the cutting room floor, a huge waste relative to time saved.
Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts?
Many thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
The camera comes with Olympus Master, but I'd used PS previously, so when joining the Oly camp, I automatically went to ACR (CS3) for RAW conversion, tying directly into ACR's adjustment tools. I occasionally employ PS layers, but I'm neither fast nor efficient at it, so typically get all adjustment done in ACR, entering PS only for sizing and JPEG conversion.
The question here is: am I'm giving away something by not using Olympus Master for RAW conversion, it's specifically designed around Oly's RAW engine, will it produce a better result? I've read here at dGrin and elsewhere that each company's RAW converter is preferable to using ACR, but I'm used to ACR, understand a lot of what it can do, am pretty fast with it (but see below, still tons of hours), and am totally unacquainted with Olympus Master. Notwithstanding being pretty fast with ACR, I pour over problem images, and ultimate IQ is my main concern. I know I should just take the time and try Olympus Master, but time is so much at a premium that I convince myself to be satisfied in my possible ignorance.
Any thoughts out there that I'd be gaining IQ by biting the bullet and jumping into Olympus Master? If so, is it designed such that all the adjustments I do in ACR are available there, or would I export from there to ACR or, more frighteningly, into PS for all the fine tuning stuff (WB, exposure, recovery, clarity, curves, sharpening, noise reduction, hue/saturation/luminance, crop, straighten, etc)?
I may sound lazy in my manner of RAW converting and processing, but I'm not. Each 5-6 hour modeled shoot, 10-15 total through the late-spring/summer/early-fall season, requires maybe 20+ hours post from start to finish. Typically, my workflow produces 500+ TIF versions from the 200+ best RAW images, 300+ JPEG versions of the best TIF versions, 30+ re-dos from RAW to JPEG, with a final result of 100+ best JPEGs (my most recent shoot produced 271, go figure). So my process is a round-about one, but for me the only way to confidently get from start to finish. Like so many others, I have to see the image and play with processing and alternatives on the screen to gain any kind of reasonable idea of the ending point. I've tried pre-grading upon initial conversion to lessen the TIF process, and find that doing so invariably leaves way too much on the cutting room floor, a huge waste relative to time saved.
Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts?
Many thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
See my work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/26525400@N04/sets/. Policy is to initially upload 10-20 images from each shoot, then a few from various of the in-process shoots each time I log on, until a shoot is completely uploaded.
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Comments
If this were true, how would Adobe, DXO, PhaseOne, Bibble, and others survive. I would suggest that the non-OEM RAW converters are generally more favored by most Fine Art Photographers, from my own very limited experience.
I have never opened the package for the RAW converter for my Panasonic GF-1, nor for any of my Canon cameras. I must be doing something wrong
Whether you will prefer the results from Olympus Master, or Adobe Camera RAW, should be easy for you to answer - run a few comparison edits with both pieces of software with the same RAW file, and decide which you prefer. Kind of like making a test print.
Theory is always fine, but in the end, the answer is really in the test print, isn't it? You can tell my darkroom experience, I suspect.
From a practical standpoint, Lightroom with the Adobe ACR RAW engine, will be the fastest, smoothest workflow for you, I suspect. Much easier than an outboard RAW processing engine.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
The Pathfinder speaks great wisdom. Remember,
Adobe allows you to change your default settings (at least in Lightroom), if you need an initial preview that is closer to how Olympus would process your images. It's trivial to set up.
Do you have a DAM solution? I find that Lightroom has really helped with the culling, rating, keywording, organizing, etc. of pictures, so that flying through and editing them is a breeze.
Olympus Studio is competing with other commercial offerings, however I am not sure how well it can seriously compete.
In some limited cirumstances, one can get better results with the camera software than 3rd party, however generally speaking, one often finds that other software vendors provide better workflows or features or provide better results.
I agree with Pathfinder, the only way for you to be happy with this personal choice is to run tests comparing workflow, response, quality of output etc.
Stephen Marsh
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
To answer Pathfinder's initial question, I posted the thread because I recalled reading somewhere that the manufacturer's RAW converter generically does a better job on that company’s particular camera's RAW images. I'm happily reading here that that's not the case, "happily" because I'm comfortable with ACR, think I get good results, and haven't the time to re-invent my work flow.
As for a manufacturer's converter producing something very close to that company’s particular camera's JPEGs, I stopped shooting RAW+JPEG just for the reason that the JPEGs I was getting weren't very good. This may have something to do with my style of shooting, lots of back light, harsh light, and other troublesome lighting, and going for particular effects that seem best for the genre I'm married to.
As long as we're talking, possibly I can get response from you guys to a related question. I'm planning later this year to jump camps from PC to Mac, so will have to decide between the Mac version of Photoshop or switching to Aperture. As already said, ACR works fine for me, but there's something to be said for having single-source Apple support on both hardware and software, thus the lean toward Aperture. I’ve already checked out Numbers and Pages, and the look and feel of them is so close to Excel and Word that I’ll have no problem. Aperture, however, has different knobs and handles than Photoshop, a different look and feel. Or maybe it really doesn’t, just seems that way to me, and I’m overstating the issue. I’ve been to an Apple Store with some of my RAW files and fiddled around a bit, I recognize the functional similarities, but still am wary of the learning curve. So that’s my related question: have any of you made similar change, and what was your experience? Please keep in mind that I presently rarely enter PS for anything other than sizing and JPEG conversion, so substantially all my experience and regular workflow is in ACR. If of any help in responding, you can see examples of my work at Flickr, or far less voluminous (and less current) examples at SmugMug, links to both are in my signature below.
Again, thanks for taking the time.
Aperture will probably greatly reduce the amount of time you spend in Photoshop, as it has a lot of powerful editing features for Raw. The same could be said for Lightroom 3 (my poison of choice.)
The commands for CS3,4,5 are the same whether on a Win box or OS X.
Adobe will even let you swap your PS license from Win to a Mac.
If you don't want to stay with PS, look carefully at Lightroom3
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
As I said in the earlier thread where we discussed your switch from PC to Mac, I think you will find digital asset management (DAM) to be a great help in managing your photographic library. Lightroom and Aperture both offer this functionality. You should really give one or the other (or both) a try, using your actual photographic opus. You'll wonder how you lived without DAM.