Develop module Has anybody else noticed odd colour importing OM-1 RAWs to 13.3.1?

[davidbeamanscott]

Lightroom Version Number

13

Operating System

1. macOS 14 Sonoma

I was editing about 200 RAWs last night and thought, well, they look 'jolly'. But it wasn't until I got to the ones with a lot of grass and nature in them that I thought something ain't right.

I was having to dial down the green saturation to something like -25 just make it look like grass and not something from the Dr. Who special FX department (I am sure other colours were affected too, but green was just the most noticeable).

So I double-checked my RAW import profile - Adobe LRC 13.3.1 picks up the OM-1 and I've set 'camera matching' for the colour profile (camera natural) and this is applied on import.

This seems to be something new - maybe with the OM-1 (though I've had it for months and not noticed the issue prior to last night, and no I was sober), I've also put many thousands of shots on an EM1 and EM1 MKII and haven't seen this there.

Recently I clicked the upgrade to 13.3 and then rapidly to 13.3.1;-) so this could've appeared somewhere there.

I dual shoot JPGs at the same time, so thought, ah ha, move these in to LR - no import profile assigned and see what they look like - they look 'normal' - pretty much as the RAWs should look like in terms of colour - just slightly 'amped' as JPGs. Placing them side by side with a suspect RAW shows just how much slider-work I was having to do - the difference is stark.

So, I got one of the 'colourful' RAWs, RESET it in LRC and applied the Adobe Colour profile and popped that side by side to the matching JPG - result: what I would expect; the same colour range, slightly less sharp and colours a tad muted compared to the JPG - with the applied 'Camera Matching Natural' profile - it's the other way around!

I am using a Eizo CS2740 and it's regularly calibrated and not due for a calibration session for about 3 weeks.

Has anyone else seen similar issue or is the general consensus of opinion to junk the 'Camera Matching' profiles (for Olympus at least) and just use Adobe Colour?

I have seen someone go through the same process and used OM Workpace to prove the same point - I have it installed but, life is too short to waste time there to come to the same conclusion.

Regards,

David.

 

[clee01l]

How old is your monitor? Have you used a Colorimeter (Spyder, i1Didplay) to tune your display to the correct colors? Using a bad color profile on the display can alter true colors. I would suspect the monitor before I would try to point the blame at Lightroom or the camera.

 

[davidbeamanscott]

Hi Cletus,

The Eizo is relatively new, about 15 months and is regularly calibrated using Color Navigator 7.2.0 and a Calibrite ColorChecker Display Pro.

As I said, if I apply the standard Adobe Color profile to the RAW, the problem ceases to exist.

I think something has gone awry with the Olympus LR ‘camera’ profiles.

Regards,

David.

 

[clee01l]

Hi Cletus,

The Eizo is relatively new, about 15 months and is regularly calibrated using Color Navigator 7.2.0 and a Calibrite ColorChecker Display Pro.

As I said, if I apply the standard Adobe Color profile to the RAW, the problem ceases to exist.

I think something has gone awry with the Olympus LR ‘camera’ profiles.

Regards,

David.

Based upon those answers, I have to agree. Have you reported it to Adobe?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[davidbeamanscott]

Hi Cletus,

Yes, I finally managed to get around to posting it today on the Adobe LRC Community forum.

I haven’t explored so far raising a call to them as the link to do so wasn’t obvious - happy to do so if you have the support link.

Regards,

DBS.

 

[tom.randall81]

Hi David, stumbled upon this forum post by searching, but you're not the only person seeing this problem. The camera matching profiles in Adobe for the OM-1 are really not great. Did you manage to get anywhere with it? I believe they've always been quite over saturated but you're right in saying that grass looks like gone off lime cake compared to how the raw file is profiled within OM workspace and of course an out of camera jpeg.

It's actually quite hard to correct as well, bringing overall saturation down to like -25, changing the hues of green, yellow, and orange, and a little on the blue can help a bit but sometimes has a negative effect on other parts of the image where a different tone of the same colour is used.

The problem is I don't think enough people are complaining about it. On DP Review forums there's a history of this issue and people just use other things now instead of camera raw. I'd absolutely be up for reporing it to Adobe if I can find the right link - I'd just need to export some examples from my Lightroom Classic catalogue (latest version).

 

[davidbeamanscott]

Hi Tom, I just picked your response up. The problem seems to have gone away. Now...I wonder if it was me re-registering my OM1 in the RAW defaults (deleting it and re-adding) panel that caused something to reinitialise itself in LRC - I mean, I was out of ideas.. Now, when importing the images don't exhibit the garish colours - they look like 'Camera Natural' and are registered as Camera Natural in as a profile in Develop mode.

I'm going to import some OM1 RAWS this weekend - I'm currently with LRC 13.4 and Camera RAW is 16.4 (I think there was a point release of LRC since I posted) and let you know what results I see - pre and post point update. BTW my OM1 is now on firmware 1.7 as released yesterday - not sure if that will make a difference (unlikely) but I thought I'd mention it.

Regards,

David.

 

[KarstenG]

This seems to be something new - maybe with the OM-1 (though I've had it for months and not noticed the issue prior to last night, and no I was sober), I've also put many thousands of shots on an EM1 and EM1 MKII and haven't seen this there.

It's not new. I have owned the OM-1 since its launch in Mar 2022 and the issue with Adobe camera matching profiles exists from the very start, with no change.

Traditionally, Olympus color matching profiles have always been oversaturated compared to the JPGs rendered in-camera. For OM-1 it seems they have maxed the effect. Or perhaps it is just that I have become more sensitive regarding colors ;-) See below side-by-side comparison that I created for a discussion on the German Olympus forum ("Kamera Natürlich" is Camera Natural).

I'm not using Adobe camera matching profiles except for certain images where the look fits.
(in general, picking the best-looking color profile is my very first step in development)

Adobe Color etc. deliver a much more natural look, however, they are biased towards warm colors. Another great option is Color Fidelity profiles. I have been using these for many years for my previous cameras and can absolutely recommend them for their natural look.

Anyway, there are situations (especially, when there is lots of greens in an image) where I'm not happy with any of these profiles. Then, as a last resort I do create a TIFF file in OM Workspace and pass it on to LrC for giving it a final touch. If you want the magic of Olympus colors and not a rip-off, there is no other way

 

[tom.randall81]

@KarstenG is right, these profiles haven’t changed. In fact I have no idea what they are basing the camera matching profiles off, because even on the I-enhance in camera / OM Workspace profile with saturation turned up the ACR profiles look nothing like them. It’s almost like they’ve whacked saturation and contrast UP when it should be the other way. I can get close using the calibration panel and then colour channel mixer, but the biggest issue I have is tonal changes, like in autumn when you start seeing greens transition to yellow and then orange and each leaf has this tonal change in - ACR renders it all a similar tone whereas the camera or Workspace can and does separate these tones.

In Workspace, HSL panel in hues there are more separate colours in the mixer for orange to yellow to green, whereas ACR has just those. Adjusting the hue of one colour takes what it thinks is that colour for everything.

This can be helped a little by the new “point colour” tool but it’s a bit of a drag getting that far.

The Workspace to TIFF option is one solution but TIFF files are massive, and you miss some of the raw develop capabilities of editing a direct raw file.

I guess OM and Adobe don’t play with each other too well!

 

[KarstenG]

I guess OM and Adobe don’t play with each other too well!

I have always wondered how these camera matching profiles are developed. Is this done by Adobe, by the camera maker or it some joined task?

 

[SaraLH]

I noticed that same thing with my OM-5. Went back to importing with Adobe Color and everything was fine.

 

[tom.randall81]

I have always wondered how these camera matching profiles are developed. Is this done by Adobe, by the camera maker or it some joined task?

I reckon the big players, Canon in particular probably have some mutual agreement there. For OM, I fully believe someone simply eyeballed it.
Someone who can’t see saturation and contrast and overall colour tone most probably, just so the cameras are supported at a bare minimum. I don’t mean that to sound salty as it does, but judging by other forums, if Adobe had great camera profiles for OM I think more people would use it, especially alongside all of the enhance tools now available.

It’s a shame. Like I said, I can get close, but splitting those tones up like OM does is very hard work, if possible at all.