I admit that it’s been a while coming but I have finally managed to shoot the XRite ColorPassport in suitable lighting conditions to generate a profile for the Olympus EM5. To be honest, I didn’t expect the new profile to achieve much as the EM5 produces good colours already and in any event, Lightroom includes a few alternate profiles. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I generated this profile and tried it out in Lightroom. The images are noticeably stronger and more natural than using the Adobe Standard profile. I also like the new profile more than the other options that now come with Lightroom for this camera.
If anyone uses Lightroom and an Olympus EM5 (shooting in RAW format) then you can download the colour profile for free from my Lenscraft web site.
The Lightweight Photographer 
The colours look nice and vibrant. I generally don’t use the Adobe standard profile I much prefer the cameras profile esp when on Canon cameras you can create your own in camera.
Thanks. Some of the colours were a noticeable improvement on the standard Adobe profiles. I seem to recall when I had my Canon 5D MKII that there was a profile editor that shipped with it where you could edit and create your own colour profiles. Have you ever tried it?
Related idea:
I have a hang-up about Adobe’s lack of interest or concern in providing Olympus and Panasonic lens profiles. To offer profiles for the Go-Pro toy merely compounds this issue.
I understand that Adobe has a DIY kit available and hope that sometime in the future, you will offer guidance about how to use this. In the meantime, I will experiment with colour profiles – for which Many Thanks!
There is a lens profiling kit that you can download for free from Adobe. It’s quite complicated to use, especially with zoom lenses. You also need a lens calibration test chart which are pretty rare these days. You can print one but I seem to recall there was a limitation with that as well. It’s on my list to look at in the future but it always seems like too much hard work when I get to that point.
If your comment about lack of interest is because you can’t see the profile in the lightroom drop down, fear not. The lens profiles for Olympus and Panasonic are actually built into the software and automatically applied if you are shooting RAW. No need to select them which is one up on the other supported cameras. The profiles aren’t perfect but they are also not bad.
Thanks for a reassuring reply – I didn’t know.
But, are there differences between the prime lenses? I have the 12mm, the 17, the 60 macro, and the 75.
Obviously, I want to squeeze every ounce out of them.
Would DxO be a more suitable ORF converter? I’ll ask Prince Charles.
On the other hand, they’re so good; Is anybody going to notice? Judges are more concerned with searching for blown specs.
Having tried DxO again recently I think you get a sharper, more detailed conversion from Lightroom. I would suggest that you look for any obvious distortion in the image and then use the manual mode to remove that. To be honest, I doubt you will spot anything when using the Olympus and Panasonic Primes. I was recently shooting some brick walls (don’t ask) with the Olympus 25mm. I had been using the lens at f/3.5 and zoomed in to 100%. When I checked the corners I thought oh no they are soft. The I realised I had some shots where the camerar wasn’t parallel to the wall so the tilt was enough to throw the edges ever so sligtly out of focus. Operator error you could say.
Thanks so much for sharing these profiles! I’ve signed up, and then downloaded and loaded up the Olympus OM-D E-M5 profile and it does make a notable difference in the images. I know you also just got a Panasonic GM1. Any plans to make one for that as well? Like you, I happen to own and shoot with both of these great little cameras, and it’s really nice to have the custom profiles for them in Lightroom. Thanks so much for all your hard work and great writing! 🙂
Hi I’m pleased you find the profiles useful (and also like my writing). Yes the GM1 profile is coming very soon; hopefully this week if all goes to plan.
Hi,
Interesting stuff. I’ve only stopped using film recently and am still getting used to working with a digital ‘front end’. Is this profile any use for CS6 – I don’t use Lightroom?
Keep up the interesting work!
Thanks.
Yes, the profiles do also work with Camera RAW which is the software integrated into Photoshop to convert RAW files. You install the profiles to the same location for either Lightroom or Camera RAW. In Camera RAW you can select the “Camera Calibration” tab (third from the right). In this section you will see a drop down called “Camera Profile”. If you have installed the profile to the correct location and you are editing a RAW file from the same camera type as the profile (EM5 RAW file with the EM5 profile) you should be able to select it from the drop down list. I will have to work up blog post explaining how to install and use these profiles.
Hi, thanks a lot for that. As I said, only having given up analogue/film recently I’m still at the early stage of grappling with Adobe RAW adjustments in CS6 – I didn’t realise that it was very ‘useful/essential’ to make adjustments to RAW images before any further editing in CS6! I’ll try the EM5 profile.
So thanks for all the work you put into this, I don’t know how you make the time!
My problem with the ColorChecker is that its only a few color patches, just half of the table is used,the pastels are omitted, and to top it all, the gamut of all the colors fall into the sRGB color space. The camera is able to register so much colors that not even the AdobeRGB space is enough to contain them all.
I am in the middle of creating a table to replace the ColorChecker. I plan to use between 700-800 patches (when I calibrate my digital printers, I use around 1900)
I would be interested to hear about this once you have created it. The Colour Checker has produced good results for me to date but I’m always interested to hear about any improvements.
could you please post the file again?
the link above is unavailable now.
Thank you very much!!!
Thanks for highlighting the broken link. It’s fixed now.