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

il_alexk wrote:

texinwien wrote:

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.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the value of his time. I'd call it "old school" vs "new school". Anyway, my kids are capable of connecting their phones to any WiFi within the first 30 seconds after visiting our friends.

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? ...

... Thousand lines ... skipped

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.

Just drop the "e-m5" from your search. Start with a photo with a proper white-balance, than use generic presets, which is actually the way LR works anyway.

Usually? LR offers camera-specific profiles for some cameras, both E-M5 models included (Camera Muted, Camera Natural, Camera Portrait and Camera Vivid).

I'll be surprised to see a significant difference between VCSO EM-5 profiles and other generic profiles that assumes a proper WB to start with.

It sounds like you're not really sure whether there'd be a difference -- just conjecture on your part, right?

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

Shall we restart a Linux (free) vs Windows (commercial) war? There are plenty of other examples, when freeware matches the quality of commercial products.

Not a good analogy. Linux has thousands of volunteers working together to improve a central codebase. You're talking about many individuals working on their own to output different profiles and presets.

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

My math is different. After playing with available presets, I've learned that there are no presets that work for me as they are. Hence I always edit photos according to my taste, not to the collective taste of VCSO engineers.

Oh sure, I edit mine to taste, as well. The VSCO presets and profiles simply offer what I find to be a good starting point in many cases.

It takes me exactly 30 seconds to get the colours I want, plus I have ~10 my own presets that I use as a starting point for my edits. Surprisingly, they work equally well for all cameras I've ever owned (see my comment about WB above).

Compared to your workflow, I don;t have to spend minutes to circle through 2800 profiles, to find the one I want for every photo. This makes a huge savings for me, at least at my hourly rate.

You've gravely misunderstood my workflow I've only installed the presets and profiles for the cameras I use, so I don't need to scroll through 2800 to find the ones I want, but all 2800 are available to me if I decide to use them in the future.

In short, $0.0125 per camera profile and $0.036 per preset is simply not expensive (for me - YMMV), and I'd rather shell out that little bit of cash than waste my time trying different profiles created by people whose skills I have no way of judging, beforehand.

I've given that a shot, already, and haven't been too impressed with what I've found. Again, YMMV.