Hacking VSCO E-M5 Camera Profiles for Olympus E-PL5 or E-PM2

il_alexk wrote:

texinwien wrote:

il_alexk wrote:

Paulmorgan wrote:

Sure you might be able to get then to work but are they any good.

Lovely DCP profiles are so simple to produce anyway, why bother with the hacking.

So true...

A couple of potential reasons:

1. Some people (me included) enjoy 'hacking' just to see what's possible.
2. Some people (me included) are proponents of the 'time is money' principle.

My farther uses this argument when he pays to his internet provider to help with connecting his mobile phone to the home wifi.

Depending on the value of your father's time, how much time he thinks he'd need to figure out how to set this up and how much frustration he's likely to experience in doing so, this may well be a logical decision on his part.

Anyway, there are thousands of equally good free presets for LR.

Really? Are there thousands of equally good free presets made specifically for the E-M5? Are they all organized together in one place?

The main reason for this is that "lovely profiles are so simple to produce anyway" so people do not bother with charging you money.

In my case, the value of the amount of my time that would be required to create a complete replacement of the VSCO presets and camera profiles is much higher than the price of those presets and profiles

So why not to use the presets that are already available for free?

A number of reasons. One of the foremost reasons is that I don't find it very interesting or enjoyable to search around for, download, install and test a bunch of disorganized profiles of unknown quality from creators whose skills in this area I often have little to no way to judge, just to see whether the profiles are to my liking.

Another reason is that, for what is a small price to pay (for me), I can purchase 80 model-specific custom profiles for each of ~100 (and growing) cameras (yes, that's right, around 8000 model-specific custom camera profiles) plus roughly 400 brand-specific presets (times 6 brands, plus one for 'all other' brands, for a total of around 2800 presets) from a single, professional outfit who specializes in creating profiles and presets, and who has plenty of good online samples of images processed using their profiles for me to judge prior to purchasing them.

It takes 5 minutes to find them on the web,

My google-fu is pretty good, and I'll tell you right now that it takes more than 5 minutes with a standard query like "free em5 camera profiles" to find "thousands of equally good free presets for LR" for my camera / lens combinations, at least.

In google's first 10 results for that search (for me), there are 3 resources that point to LR profiles for the EM5. Two articles mention and link to the same, third-party resource that requires me to register before I can even learn how many profiles they may have that are relevant to my cameras. One link pouts to a forum discussion that contains another link to a three-page list of LR profiles. Only two of the profiles on that three page list are of interest to me (based on my camera and lens combinations).

The other 7 out of the first 10 google results for my search don't contain links to free, third party profiles for my camera. One is for huelight's paid profiles. The others are simply irrelevant, AFAICT.

I timed it, and it took me about 9 minutes to go with reasonable care through the links in google's first 10 results that looked like they might be of interest to me to be reasonably sure whether or not they were actually of interest to me

In short, your 5 minute estimate is clearly an understatement. And I haven't even begun to download, install and test any of the links (nor have I seen any well-organized samples of images processed with these profiles, at least not yet).

thus hacking a commercial product is going to be more expensive both in terms of time and money.

First off, I disagree that it will be more expensive in terms of time and money, especially since my 'hacking' only really has to be performed once for a single profile and camera, after which it's a series of quick copy, paste and replace operations.

Furthermore, I can quickly repurpose all of my command line commands to make copies of all of my commercial profiles for any other camera, for instance, for my GM5, as well as my E-M5II. The more cameras I do this with, the less time will have been required for each new camera-specific profile - the returns for my initial effort are practically guaranteed to increase over time.

Additionally, I prefer 'hacking' to searching for, downloading and testing resources of questionable quality from unknown sources. I'd rather spend twice as much time 'hacking' the commercial profiles than searching for, downloading and testing the free ones.

And, finally, there's an additional value to the 'hacking' - I've learned a few things along the way, as I usually do when I work out how to 'hack' something.

Plus, you are limiting yourself to a relatively small number

This is, of course, a false dilemma. I'm in no way limiting myself by purchasing commercial presets. If I feel the need, I can still go out and search for free presets and add as many as I want, to my heart's content.

I have used free presets and profiles in the past, by the way, and haven't been all that impressed with any of the ones I've tried.

of very expensive presets,

Perhaps you consider $0.0125 (and falling, over time) per custom camera profile and $0.036 (and falling, over time) per brand-specific preset expensive. I certainly don't. See math below.

compared to what the collective knowledge of LR users has to offer.

The team at VSCO has created and released more than 8000 model-specific camera profiles and 2800 brand-specific presets. It's likely they have more experience than any other single profile-creator / preset creator, other than Adobe, perhaps

The Math:

I've never paid full price for a VSCO film pack (watch for promotions), and it has thus cost me less than $400 to by VSCO's film packs 01-06.
Because I can write the cost ff the packs off as a business expense, the actual total cost for me has been less than $200.
This includes 80 model-specific custom camera profiles times roughly 100 cameras (right now - the number of cameras grows as VSCO adds support for newer camera models over time, which updates paid customers get for free, in perpetuity).
This also includes roughly 400 brand-specific custom presets times 7 (one set of roughly 400 presets for each of 6 brands plus one 'Standard', non-brand-specific set) (again, right now - the number of brands grows as VSCO adds support for new ones).

8000 (and growing) camera-specific profiles plus 2800 (and growing) brand-specific presets for $200 (after tax writeoff).

If we split the $200 evenly over profiles and presets, so $100 for profiles and $100 for presets, each profile has cost me just over one US penny ($0.0125), and each preset has cost me a little over three and a half US pennies ($0.036).

While that calculus may not work out for you, at my hourly rate, it's a very good deal, indeed, for me