Folks its time to talk about ART filters

[Siegfried]

Each time I read a forum post or a reply belittling people enjoying art or creative photography, I wonder, should we really box photographers in a set of rules?

I always said, and I continue to believe that one of the biggest strengths of photography with Olympus, is how Olympus integrated color into the Olympus camera. From the Color Creator, the Color and MonoChrome Profile, and now the upgraded ART filters of the new E-P7, Olympus cameras are powerful color and creative tools.

If you add to this the unique Live View and Enhanced Raw File option of using Olympus cameras and Workspace, and you have a highly creative photography solution.

That said, OMDS did some interesting upgrades to the E-P7 ART filters. At first, I thought they only added an opacity slider but that's NOT the case. We can now tweak some of the ART filters by adding or reducing colors. (opposite colors). When you start experimenting you will see it's not a straight opposites function but a unique way of tweaking these ART filters.

For example when last have you read the descriptions for the different ART filters in the Users Manual? Do yourself a favor and do that. Also, see the E-P7 descriptions. For example, did you know that one of the ART filters is in fact a flat profile to give you a higher dynamic range (think video)? Or did you know the new EP7 "Instant Film" ART filter is great for portrait work?

It is NOT possible to save these tweaked ART filters as profiles in the camera but we can edit our Enhanced Raw files in Workspace and Live View. You can even create more profiles with the ART filters in WS. With Workspace, you can also add more variables to your profiles when personalizing your own editing style. You can save your profiles in Workspace with the batch file option.

I updated my Workspace How-To page and I also added more detailed info to the Workspace software version summary page on my blog. OMDS did a number of upgrades with V1.5 which is not explained anywhere else...

So which Olympus cameras will benefit from these improved ART filters? Seems to me all the MKIII or higher models, plus those with the AP Menu have access to these new ART filters when editing the Enhanced Raw Files in Workspace. Obviously, when editing the jpeg file, all cameras will have access to the full WS "jpeg" editing palette. The only MKII that is also compatible seems to be the EM1 II. Why not my Pen-F?

Best

Siegfried

[DeMorcan]

I like the art filters. Although I made LUTs from them to import as color profiles in Lightroom or directly in Photoshop. I did not know about the flat ones until I read this. I have flat ones I use for most of my processing as every RAW now has a curve and other adjustments done to it. Although with ISO 100 the luminosity is flat, the colors are not which gives more contrast.