> Yes, quite wrong. ACR can't match Studio color rendition, which I
> interpret to be what Olympus designed the camera for. This is my
> biggest beef with DeepPeeve when they review Olympus raw files. Can't
> be bothered to load up Studio. I have Elements 8.0 and use it as a
> fallback when I want to see how ACR does with an image (just about
> never).
However, ACR does generally do a little better than Studio in these areas:
1. Sharper (if you crank the conversion sharpening up to the hilt and
artifact control down).
2. Better highlight transitions (Studio has no highlight recovery--it
clips it off at the point where the colorcasting starts).
3. Better blue sky gradients. Studio has a tendency to get banding in
deep blue skies.
4. More neutral shadows. Olympus/Studio does the Kodak Portra warming trick.
But Studio is definitely the place to be for any conversions involving
people in the photos.
BTW, a couple of Studio tricks for you guys and gals which I've found
through the years:
1. Keep sharpening at 0 to -1. Do you sharpening in an editor.
2. Use the noise-reduction feature--even on ISO 100 images.
3. Adjust conversion exposure for the mid-tones. Adjust contrast to
control the clip points.
4. Adjust color for final use including some of the saturation.
Then in an editor:
1. Apply sub-pixel width sharpening. I like using a radius of 0.5 to
0.7 with the level cranked up to the point where it is crunchy, then
back off a smidge.
2. Adjust curves for desired density of highlight and shadow regions.
Midtones should be correct if you do your conversion correctly.
3. Color correct the greens a touch away from blue to yellow. (Velvia
adjustment)
4. Wing in some saturation and LCE as desired.
5. Downsize to 80% of original size if you really want the edges to
snap and counter the hyper-active AA filter.
These settings have worked well with E-1 and E-3 files. My DMC-L1
files are processed as similarily as possible.
As another aside, you can get the Olympus E-1 in-camera JPEGs much
more usable if you:
1. Keep sharpening at 0 to -1
2. Do not exceed CS2 in saturation
3. Keep contrast at 0 or -1
4. sRGB
5. WB with -1 adjustment
6. Expose for the midtones. When chimping, the skintones should look a
bit brighter than desired--screen calibration is off.
These settings work great when shooting ISO 400. The images stay
pretty clean and are highly bendable. I do my sharpening in the
computer with an automated noise adjustment and sharpening batch
process. By keeping the sharpening at the end we have much less noise
in the files.
AG
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