RAW Files and Lens Correction

According to the following article on Luminous Landscape

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

no corrections are applied to RAW files. This would suggest that any lens corrections are applied after the analog to digital conversion and during the RAW conversion process (either in-camera if you save the JPG or during post processing). This would also suggest that my RAW converter if use the RAW file, needs to know my lens.

I'm looking at moving to m4/3 and was wondering if this would be a problem for me. I'm using LR 4 and I don't think that it knows anything about the Olympus 12-40 Pro or the new Olympus 40-150 Pro. My understanding is that the Olympus m4/3 strategy is to rely more heavily on software correction than the discontinued 4/3 lenses in order to keep size and weight down and still maintain image quality (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong on that).

If that's the case then it looks like I'll need to upgrade to a Raw convertor that can apply the appropriate lens corrections. Can anybody clarify this for me please?

Thanks

Dave

What you're suspecting sounds about right. Adobe tend to have the best lens correction database, so if they don't correct a certain lens then I suspect no one else will either. Perhaps Adobe have a list somewhere on their website showing which lenses are in the database.

You might just have to manually select a lens, I have to do this in CS6/ACR for Sigma lenses on a Pentax camera.

For Olympus and Panasonic lenses the correction factors are stored as metadata, along with the image, in the Raw file. So, if LR4 supports your camera, it should support all Olympus and Panasonic lenses used with the camera.

That being said, I highly recommend you upgrade to LR5 or wait a bit since LR6 will be released later this year. Lots of nice goodies have been added.

It doesn't look like LR5 includes any Olympus lenses........

supported_lenses

I use DXO Optics Pro 10 (DOP) which provides very detailed lens corrections for all my micro 4/3 kit. Lightroom (LR) also provides lens correction but the processing is done 'behind the scenes'. I prefer DOP for RAW processing but LR is better for printing support.

Brad99 said:

It doesn't look like LR5 includes any Olympus lenses........

supported_lenses

Click to expand...

Under "Tips for working with lens profiles" read the last bullet.

• For Panasonic and Olympus cameras, automatic lens profile correction is supported on all raw files from Micro Four Thirds cameras.

Thomas Niemann said:

Brad99 said:

It doesn't look like LR5 includes any Olympus lenses........

supported_lenses

Click to expand...

Under "Tips for working with lens profiles" read the last bullet.

• For Panasonic and Olympus cameras, automatic lens profile correction is supported on all raw files from Micro Four Thirds cameras.

Click to expand...

Good spot, I missed that.

Thanks for the information. Do you know if the correction information is loaded in with the metadata?

If that's the case then LR wouldn't need a lens database, just the format that the information was supplied and my LR 4 could support new lenses without updating a database somewhere.

Thanks again

Dave

dahod said:

Thanks for the information. Do you know if the correction information is loaded in with the metadata?

If that's the case then LR wouldn't need a lens database, just the format that the information was supplied and my LR 4 could support new lenses without updating a database somewhere.

Thanks again

Dave

Click to expand...

That's how it works. When Olympus/Panasonic came out with the first u4/3 cameras they worked with Adobe to guarantee that their Raw images would automatically be corrected for distortion. The image correction coefficients are placed in Raw files as metadata, and LR/ACR reads and applies those values.

For other cameras, AFAIK, Adobe (or users) must do a calibration and this shows up in profiles in the Lens Correction tab of LR. And, if you use non-Olympus or non-Panasonic lenses on an Olympus or Panasonic camera they need to be calibrated this way.

Makes a lot of sense and glad to hear it - it's one of life's little joys when you hear of hardware and software manufacturers collaborating on something that turns out to be good for us consumers.

You don't happen to know if the same approach was taken with the other RAW convertors out there do you?

Thanks again

Dave

I have recently switched to using raw files from my Olympus EM5 and just upgraded to DXO Pro 10. I am really enjoying the Panasonic and Olympus lens support, the lack of noise and the color quality of my images.

I am anti-Adobe as far as upgrades and am still using Photoshop CS5 with some plug-ins. My favorite is Snapheal PRO.

Good luck with your decision and good shooting!