XZ-1 Samples using RawTherapee and...

Hello,

The RAW converter used makes a big difference. I think it was Oluv who pointed at the excellence of RawTherapee (RT): I stopped using it a while back because of constant changes.

I decided to revisit RT: By default it produces terrible colors (IMO) compared to the Oly JPG Colors. Then I came accross these Profiles:

http://www.mediafire.com/huelight#4,1

All the Olympus ICM profiles seems to give colors close to the XZ-1 JPGs, so I installed "Huelight_EP2_v4.icm" into RT: Voila, the Oly colors are back!

Below is the orignal image taken from Oly Viewer 2 from this thread:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&message=37590750

RAW converted with Oly Viewer 2, Camera settings & Noise Reduction off
http://www.objective.no/gostemp/Olympus_XZ-1/P1290041_OV2.jpg

RT using settings: USM 0.8, 150, 512, Luminance Noise Red: 2.5, 1000

http://www.objective.no/gostemp/Olympus_XZ-1/P1290041_RT-USM-0.8-150-512_LN-2.5-1000.jpg

RT using settings: RL Deconv 0.8, 75, 20, 30, Luminance Noise Red: 2.5, 1000

http://www.objective.no/gostemp/Olympus_XZ-1/P1290041_RT-RL-0.8-75-20-30_LN-2.5-1000.jpg

See the differences?

Thus, when discussing Image Qualilty, you cannot only blame one factor e.g. the lens, but have to consider all factors in the chain that produces the image: The RAW to JPG engine is one of the important factors.

I am amazed at what I can get out of RT and still keep clean pictures.

The XZ-1 is a gem in my opinion: You can get the details you can expect to get from a tiny sensor if you put your mind to it:

I have created a profile in RT (not icm profile), that loads the settings and the ICM profile, and voila RT can Batch Process my images and produce sharp Oly Colored JPGs that I import into LightRoom

Geir Ove
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My album at: http://www.objective.no/gostemp