Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: PeterAit on January 04, 2021, 09:03:07 am
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I am giving my Olympus EM-1 to my daughter. I want to encourage her to use raw files when appropriate so she'll need a converter--free preferably as she has a tight budget. Any recs?
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Hard to say since I don't know what level of functionality she needs.
Affinity Photo has good video tutorials, good help forums, easy to do simple stuff but can do more. But is a one photo at a time product.
Corel's After Shot Pro 3 (formerly Bibble Pro) is an ok DAM with lots of editing functionality but also makes it easy to carry over edits to many photos at the same time.
Neither is free but they're both under $100 so not crazy expensive either.
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For ten bucks a month she can get Photoshop, Lightroom, and Camera Raw. In other words, for ten bucks a month she can have complete post-processing and cataloging tools. Not only is there nothing else out there that can beat this deal, there's nothing else out there that can even come close.
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Rawtherapee - http://rawtherapee.com/
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Olympus itself has a free raw converter, called Olympus Workspace, which replaces its older Olympus Viewer 3. I haven't used the new version, but since it's free, it might be worth a look.
https://app.olympus-imaging.com/olympusworkspace/en/
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Olympus itself has a free raw converter, called Olympus Workspace, which replaces its older Olympus Viewer 3. I haven't used the new version, but since it's free, it might be worth a look.
https://app.olympus-imaging.com/olympusworkspace/en/
Oh yeah, forgot. I used it a bit, good basic editing tools. It is very slow though, but depending on volume of work it might be ok. Has one advantage over others in that it can match in-camera jpgs very well. If they improved the speed, I would use it more to do basic things since it's easy to use.
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To stray from the topic...do you guys (with this experience) think it's better generally to shoot B&W in-camera or convert in Lightroom? I'm shooting both Panny m4/3 and Z6. Or is there something else out there that you don't have to dedicate your life to, to use?
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I guess it's up to the shooter, John. For myself, I want everything the camera can capture. That means shooting raw, which in digital includes color. All the conversions can take place later. The advantage is that (1) if you want to go a different route later on, you can do it, and (2) later revisions in raw conversion sometimes can bring out things that were lost in earlier conversions.
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Same here. With Olympus MFT (and I assume other mirrorless cams) you can set mode to B&W so that the images that appear in the EVF and LCD appear in grayscale. But if you set capture to RAW, you still obtain the RAW file. I convert it to B&W later in Affinity Photo, more filter options. I do it this way primarily because I'm lousy at visualizing scenes in B&W, I lost whatever minimal aptitude I had for that decades ago, so seeing the image in the viewfinder that way is a big help. Purists may scoff. :)
With most Olympus bodies, you can also select "filters" in the menu (yellow, red, etc) and get that baked in to a final JPG if you're not shooting RAW. I haven't tried that yet, been meaning to, but then you're a bit more limited in what you can do in post because they're JPGs, but that's fine in many circumstances.
What I haven't determined yet, because I haven't done much B&W, is whether the filter settings in the B&W menu get baked into the RAW file or not. I suspect not, but it's still useful to see the effect in the viewfinder.
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John, I also use an Olympus 4/3 system and a Nikon Z7. I would think more important than reviewing your photos in black and white would be to concentrate on getting the optimal exposure and then making your conversion. Just my two cents.
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To stray from the topic...do you guys (with this experience) think it's better generally to shoot B&W in-camera or convert in Lightroom? I'm shooting both Panny m4/3 and Z6. Or is there something else out there that you don't have to dedicate your life to, to use?
In LR for sure. The default conversion is one-click but then you have much more control if you want to change things.