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Newbie issues with On1 2019 and Olympus EM1 mark II

Maria Hiles

I'm new to On1, having used Lightroom (standalone) for some years but (like many others) being unhappy with the subscription only model.  I purchased On1 a few months back but due to a rather hectic time moving house, have only just started to look at it - having first updated to the 2019 version.  I realise that I probably have a lot to learn and need to study some of the tutorials but I was wondering if anyone else has experience of using it with an Olympus EM1 Mk II, as my initial experience isn't great.

If my hubby loads his Canon RAW files, he can quite quickly get results comparable with our old version of Lightroom but my Olympus RAW files look dull and appear to have lost rather a lot of detail, regardless of any sharpening settings.  The camera is supposed to be supported, according to documentation.  Does anyone know of any compatibility issues with this camera - or am I making some obvious newbie error?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

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3 comments

Date Votes
  • Donald Yoho

    I primarily use Lightroom Classic CC and On1 Photo Raw (now 2019) as a plug in primarily for the Effects module. I am also an Olympus EM1 MkII user. I have my own issues with Photo Raw 2019 (related to lack of Smart Photos in 2019 vs 2018 that allowed a Lightroom to Photo Raw roundtrip with non-destructive editing) so for the time being I will be sticking to 2018 as a plug-in until I come up with a better workflow. 

    Anyway, I experimented with opening my Oly raw (ORF) file in Photo Raw 2019 just to see what your are experiencing. First of all, the camera is definitely supported otherwise you would not even be able to view a raw file. So, in the Browse module I navigated to a test ORF file and first viewed it in Browse. In Browse, I suspect the initial view is of the jpg thumbnail file embedded in the raw file vs the On1 default representation of the raw file.  That's typical of most editors including Lightroom in Library mode (at least initially in the Lightroom workflow) and even in Oly's own editor.  However the view in Browse might also just be a generated default view from the On1 Edit-Develop module.  The point here is that your Oly camera settings might affect the initial jpg thumbnail view in Browse. As you probably know, the visual settings on the camera are not applied to the actual raw file, for example the camera Picture Mode settings are not applied to the raw. But they are applied to the embedded jpg and consequently what you see on the back of the camera when you view it and what you often see initially in editors.  I have my camera Picture Mode set to Natural (vs Muted, Portrait, Vivid etc).

    The Browse mode view looked about what I expected it to look like.  Then I opened the photo in the Edit module. That module opened up in the Develop tab--I suppose that is the default.  Probably the most important item is in the Tone and Color section in the Develop tab--the Camera Profile. That is the initial profile that On1 applies to the raw file to give you a basic rendering and interpretation of the raw data. On 1 Standard is apparently the default but you can choose Landscape, Portrait, Vivid and Neutral.  Those settings give you vastly differently interpretations of your raw file, most of them pretty gross in my opinion.  But for me, the On 1 Standard profile made my Oly file look about what I would have expected. Different editors create their own profiles for viewing the raw files from the various cameras and some editors do it better than others. Perhaps what you are seeing is an On1 profile that is not as good, to your eye, as the one you are used to seeing in Lightroom. As an aside, I noticed that my Oly lens was properly identified in the Lens Correction section further below the Tone and Color section.

    For me, I still like to do my Developing in Lightroom and then go to On1 only for additional styling, mostly in the Effects module. Its more about what I'm used to rather than Lightroom being better than On1, although I am less than impressed with the On1 profiles. Hope this helps.

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  • Mike Miles

    I'm also a EM Mark II user and I didn't notice any real problems with the Raw images that I loaded (I played with ON1 2018.5 and 2019 for about a month).  I've also looked and compared Luminar to Lightroom and PS Elements.   True, there are differences between the "Raw Engines" in regard to how the software is rendered.  After all, images are really digital files and each RAW conversion uses a different algorithm, but I didn't find any stark problems.

    If there was one issue that was troublesome, it was that ON1 was way too sluggish on my computer (which is no slouch).  It really showed up using the RAW files (no problem with JPG's) and was evident in lagging when cropping and stamp/cloning.

    Interesting YouTube presentation on software and RAW files: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZdzcaaqaeY

     

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  • Ralph Louzon

    I first loved ON1 and then I experienced the fairly  poor quality of the ORF RAW processing. The image is flat, kind of noisy, highlights are difficult to manage, compared to Capture One I use now mostly.

    I will come back to ON1 when the raw engine (at least for ORF) will significantly be improved...

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