Olympus Workspace Download

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Florene Pothoven

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Aug 4, 2024, 2:04:17 PM8/4/24

to grahliensureas

Iwill not go into the sob story about why I can no longer use Lightroom here. But the things I did most often in Lightroom were: white balance, autotone, and exposure adjustment. I can do the first and the last in Olympus Workspace, and it has the advantage of supporting all of my Olympus cameras and lenses, and (I assume) reading the lens correction data provided by micro four thirds lenses. If I could just figure out an equivalent of "autotone", I really wouldn't be bothered by not having Lightroom anymore. I know that you can manipulate tone curves in Workspace manually, but I was never very good at that.

BTW, does anyone know if Workspace implements the chromatic aberration correction that (allegedly) micro four thirds lenses provide?

3:27PM, 23 June 2021 PDT(permalink)

I do use Olympus Workspace in preference to PS/LR because Olympus cameras produce "Extended-RAW" files which Adobe does not properly understand. and hence can produce artefacts that you then need to correct.

Workspace can convert with the processing that in-camera can do and a bit more besides. It does not have the one-button auto-corrections that PS has but drop-downs that can be customised.

Workspace cannot convert Panasonic raw files which are also "Extended-Raw" but SilkyPix can convert both flavours. The early versions of SilkyPix were like they had been written by an extra-terrestrial alien but the latest version is user-friendly. It takes some getting used to as it is quite unlike PS or LR.

Imo all MFT lenses have good glass with little aberration, as might be expected from Olympus and Leica-derived. The cameras have look-up tables in their firmware to tell them what to do with each identified lens, probably very little, focussing, vignetting, flattening. This is where that "Extended-RAW" comes in telling the converter what to do with the file. I've observed PS can be too aggressive.

I find that the conversion done in-camera nowadays is probably beyond what can be done automatically in PS or LR, so that if I need to re-develop the raw then the photo is probably no good in the first place and wants binning.

Originally posted 34 months ago. (permalink)

jefrs edited this topic 34 months ago.

I actually use olympus workspace a lot. I used lightroom and realized that I had no need for all of their very specific feature. Maybe one day I will need it but as of now olympus workspace is pretty good if you just want basic editing. And I was disappointed the lightroom moved to monthly subscription and because I wasn't using everything lightroom was offering I was giving them more money than what I was benefitting from their software.

34 months ago(permalink)

Yes, Adobe do like milking their customers.

My cameras are Olympus and Panasonic. I do have Photoshop and Lightroom but probably the last stand-alone versions. In addition to doing raw-conversion wrong from these cameras, they will not read the Lumix G9 raw files at all without coughing up more cash. I really do not do enough post-development to warrant a subscription. Usually a crop and maybe brightness/contrast a little. If the sooc jpeg is good, and it usually is, I'll use that. It /is/ possible to do a lossless jpeg edit, it is still compressed but you don't lose more data. Having shot hundreds of photos, most of them rubbish, I do not want to sit in front of a computer for hours fiddling with them. These cameras are pretty powerful now and can get it right first time.

So for that G9 I have SilkyPix. It was once a Panasonic freebie hence upgrades have been reduced price. It is fully-functional now, free updates (well, until the next full version anyway), and recognises practically any camera but provides different menus for each brand, in particular Panasonic and maybe Fuji. It is not so clever with the special functions (colour) on the PEN-F as Workspace is.

34 months ago(permalink)

thegirlwholeftthefridgeopen:

Do you find Workspace incredibly slow to do even the most basic operations on an image, or does my computer have an incredibly specific hangup about Workspace?

34 months ago(permalink)

Rather than type it in again (and upload to Flickr yucky unfinished photos that I don't wish to display) here is something I posed to DPReview about ACDSee, a program that appears to do everything I ever required of Darkroom, except that it can read my E-M1 mk II raw files and doesn't charge rent:

Tinkering with ACDsee

34 months ago(permalink)

mount_evans:

Workspace startup is quite slow but then it runs as fast or faster than PS/LR.

I am using a desktop PC. Quite elderly but still powerful and configured for number crunching (memory, storage) rather than speed (gaming). A laptop may struggle, a 'business' laptop should cope. Mostly down to lack of memory and/or scratch (temp file) space.

If you do also have PS and/or LR then stop and disable their 'services' that constantly monitor your computer as they bog the system down. It's called 'spinning', sitting in the background eating memory and resources. Both want to catalogue all your photo files, Windows does that nicely without their help.

34 months ago(permalink)

mount_evans:

As you say, ACDsee doesn't apply lens corrections given in the MFT 'Extended-RAW' files.

Imo the MFT lenses are that good that they need little correction but these are not the only extra data passed over in the Extended-RAW files.

Workspace will handle all the extra data handed to it in the ORF file. I'm not sure what SilkyPix does but it makes a better fist of it than PS or LR.

The 'Moffat Tunnel' is an example of one that the camera could have taken better but now has to be fixed. I have no idea of the colour of the sky, it appears white overcast. The autumnal yellow has been pumped up too much. The de-hazing has sharpened the distant mountain.

Dusk is always difficult. contrast gets bled out. Wider aperture for less DoF, defocus the background slightly. Fiddle with the gain curves (highlight/shadow/middle), and the compensation +/-EV (I like that by my shutter finger). Change the metering mode, compensation can be adjusted for each. Change the picture mode, and they can be customised. Use a grad filter.

In poor light I usually push shadow up and pull highlights down to increase dynamic range but it is not a one size fits all. It works for birds backlit at twilight but the background can be washed out (not so much a problem with an extra-long lens as they have shallow DoF so the background is blurred anyway). And then fiddle the EV.

These are not point and shoot cameras. They can and will do anything you ask of them. If you set them just-so they will take fantastic photos. Try pretending it is a film SLR and you have one chance to take a good photo. Let the camera do its job and not rely on post processing.

34 months ago(permalink)

I don't recall all the steps I took in ACDSee, but I really did masacre the color. And now ACDSee won't tell me the steps, it insists that this image has no history and will not revert it to the original. But the RAW file still exists, and I tried editing it in Workspace:

It lacks the "punch", probably because it is more realistic. And you can really see the difference in how the lens corrections were handled if you look at the skyline in each, blown up; the ACDSee version has chromatic aberration. (And yes, I did check the box to correct for that. It didn't do anything.) The sky is white, BTW, because the sun is setting behind the mountains and I was exposing for the tunnel entrance. The sky is saturated.

34 months ago(permalink)

mount_evans:

I do take a lot of backlit photos (because birds insist on sitting in the wrong place) and find if I screw the highlights down and the shadows up on the gain curve, and then play with the +/-EV, I can get the sky and clouds back whilst preserving subject detail. I will however sacrifice the sky and background for subject detail. Shooting contre-jour is tricky at the best of times.

34 months ago(permalink)

mount_evans:

Workspace is probably the best thing out there for processing Olympus RAWs, especially the creative extravagances of the Pen-f. It is fabulous in its possibilities. Unfortunately, it is so slow that I cannot use it at all. I am working on a 16' MBP that is less than a year old and cost me over $5000. This computer is very fast with every application imaginable... except WS. I deduce that WS was programmed with the feet. Another opportunity for Olympus to miss the podium. It's a pity, but Olympus offers, once again, something fabulous, but doesn't go all the way... it's the kind of detail that could make a manufacturer crumble... Oh yes, it's already done!

Of course, it's out of the question that I'm going to be shaken down by a lifetime subscription. So I use the extraordinary DXO, in its Prime version. Its noise correction and lens sharpening modules are simply unparalleled on the RAW processing software market.