Camera
Adobe Camera Raw vs. Olympus Workspace: Which app should you use?
Did you receive a brand-new Olympus camera over the holidays? If so, chances are good that the next addition to your photographic toolbox will be a Raw processor from the likes of Adobe, Capture One, DxO or one of their many rivals. But is payware or even subscriptionware software really necessary, when Olympus provides its own software free of charge with your camera purchase?
| Olympus Workspace version 1.4’s user interface. |
In this article, we’ll compare the company’s Olympus Workspace Raw processing application with its well-entrenched payware rival, Adobe Camera Raw, whose algorithms also underlie the company’s popular Lightroom Classic application. As in previous articles in this series, I’m limiting myself only to image editing in the interests of keeping things to a readable length, and won’t address features like image management, tethering or printing.
The ground rules
This comparison is based upon the most recent versions of each application at the time of writing. For Adobe, that’s Camera Raw 13.1.1 and Bridge 11.0. For Olympus, it’s Workspace 1.4. My computer is a 2018 Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop running Windows 10 version 1909.
To ensure neither Adobe nor Olympus had any advantage out of the gate, I’ve aimed to reproduce, as closely as possible, the look of already-processed images from our galleries, without any prior knowledge as to the recipes behind them.
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| Adobe Camera Raw version 13.1.1’s user interface. |
I’ve chosen images from the Olympus E-M1 Mark II for use in this comparison, as it was the most recent model for which we had sufficient comparison images already prepared, and its launch price and resolution are broadly similar to those of the cameras used in my previous manufacturer software comparisons.
Sharpness and noise reduction were left at their default settings to avoid overcomplicating things, while lens corrections were enabled for both applications. Images processed in ACR were saved at JPEG quality 11, just as used in our galleries. For Olympus Workspace, which offers a choice of just three different compression levels, I used the maximum ‘Super Fine’ quality.
The main differences
Of course, the most immediately obvious differences between ACR and Olympus Workspace are their camera support and price-tag. You already paid for Workspace when you bought your Olympus camera, so it’s effectively free. While it only supports Raws shot by the company’s own cameras, you can expect full Raw support for every Olympus camera to be available pretty much immediately upon release.
Download the full ACR image here; the full Workspace image here.
Photo by Carey Rose
By contrast, ACR comes with a recurring subscription fee. It supports a vast range of cameras from many manufacturers, including every single interchangeable-lens Olympus camera made to date, as well as many fixed lens models. If your camera supports Raw capture, ACR can almost certainly handle it, but that support can sometimes take a while to arrive after the release of new models. It’s also more limited sometimes than first-party software, especially for older models.
For example, while Adobe offers ‘camera matching’ profiles for all of Olympus’ Micro Four Thirds ILCs and Stylus compacts, it’s not available for any of the company’s Four Thirds DSLRs except the E-5. Nor is it provided for Camedia, SP- or XZ-series fixed-lens cameras.
A clean, modern interface and database storage of edits
Olympus Workspace is a relatively new offering that first launched in early 2019 alongside the sports-oriented E-M1X, so it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s pretty clean and modern, aesthetically speaking. And unlike some rivals, it doesn’t make the mistake of storing your edits in your original files, nor does it scatter sidecar files all over your drives. Instead, all edits are stored in a single database whose location you can control.
Download the full ACR image here; the full Workspace image here.
Photo by Carey Rose
Workspace has a non-modal design and is pretty customizable in terms of its layout, which is liberally sprinkled with unlabeled icons. For most the meaning is obvious, but some are a bit opaque, although a description is usually shown if you hover the mouse pointer above them. There’s also an excellent, in-depth PDF user manual linked from the Help menu.
High-res 4K screens, touchscreens and pens work well for the most part, though there are quirks
You can’t directly edit Workspace’s keyboard shortcuts, but you can choose from a few different preconfigured shortcut groups for some of the more commonly-used options. Most editing controls are grouped in an editing palette that, by default, sits at the right of the screen. It has a tabbed design and individual sections under each tab can be opened or closed at once. If you leave many open together, though, you can find yourself doing a lot of scrolling in search of controls.
Multiple monitors are supported, allowing you to view your image full-screen on one monitor while adjusting controls or browsing thumbnails on the other. You can also compare and edit two different images side-by-side, a feature most competitors lack. High-res 4K screens, touch-screens / pens also work well for the most part, although there are some quirks.
Download the full ACR image here; the full Workspace image here.
Photo by Carey Rose
The UI can sometimes prove rather quirky, though
If you have multiple displays of differing resolution and you drag panels between them, the correct per-screen scaling factor is forgotten and the panels can be unusably large or small. And adjusting sliders is easier with a mouse instead of touch or pen input, because you have to double-tap on the slider with a pen or your fingertip before you can make your adjustment.
In most apps, if an adjustment isn’t available you’d expect it to be grayed out, but Workspace doesn’t do so
Nor are those the only strange UI choices. For example, preset white balance can be adjusted on a magenta-green axis with a fixed step size, yet auto white balance is instead adjusted on a green-magenta axis and its slider moves smoothly, rather than in steps. Yet even though it moves smoothly, positions in between the steps don’t affect the white balance at all, meaning you can have two images with seemingly different adjustments that are nevertheless 100% identical.
Even more confusingly, the contrast slider might have absolutely zero effect if the Gradation control is active and set to anything other than normal gradation. In most apps, if an adjustment isn’t available you’d expect it to be grayed out, but not in Workspace. With all of that said, Olympus does provide a wide range of controls including several most of its rivals lack, such as highlight and shadow sliders, keystoning adjustments and even per-color sliders for hue, saturation and luminance.
Download the full ACR image here; the full Workspace image here.
Photo by Carey Rose
Modest performance and very buggy GPU processing
Adobe has done an impressive job tuning its algorithms for performance, and like most of its rivals, Olympus Workspace struggles to keep up with Camera Raw. While fast enough to be usable, its previews aren’t real-time and final output takes more than twice as long. Rendering the six-image batch accompanying this article took Camera Raw around 10 seconds, but Workspace needed a full 24 seconds to complete the same task.
But that’s not the full story, because of an issue I quickly discovered with preview rendering. By default, Olympus uses your graphics processor to boost performance, and previews are rendered in two passes — first at a relatively low resolution, and then a higher one.
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| Olympus Workspace’s GPU rendering didn’t work well for me. Sometimes previews rendered correctly (above left), but frequently they rendered at low resolution (above right) and stayed that way. And sometimes they rendered at an intermediate — but still rather low — resolution (below). Disabling GPU rendering fixed these issues, but made final output much slower. Click or tap to see full-size images. | |
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Frequently though, that second pass never completed, even after the hourglass indicating processing was underway had vanished. And sometimes, the final pass rendered at a moderately low resolution instead, while the hourglass symbol sometimes wasn’t shown at all during processing.
Disabling GPU processing fixed all of this for me, and didn’t noticeably slow down image previews. It did, however, make final output *much* slower, more than doubling the processing time for my six-image batch to around 56 seconds. And it’s an either/or choice which requires the program to be entirely restarted, so you can’t easily switch GPU processing on just for the final render but not the previews.
More natural results than Adobe, but highlight/shadow sliders aren’t as useful
In discussing Olympus Workspace’s user interface, I noted that it had a couple of important controls many rivals lack: A pair of sliders for highlight and shadow recovery. They’re intuitive, but unfortunately they’re also not as powerful as those in Adobe Camera Raw.
Download the full ACR image here; the full Workspace image here.
Photo by Carey Rose
Neither could recover as much highlight/shadow detail as could their ACR equivalents, and at the same time, I found they both affected midtones much more. A soft touch is required with both if you want to avoid banding and blocked-up shadows. And recovered shadows also show very muted color, whereas ACR did a much better job of restoring color to those lifted shadow areas.
That being said, I found Olympus Workspace to do a pretty good job with image quality in other respects. To my mind it did a slightly better job than ACR with lens distortion correction, and its images also tended to look more natural, with significantly lower levels of sharpening in particular. Noise reduction levels are higher by default than those used by Adobe, and have a slightly mottled, less film-like look.
Adobe favors a more consumer-friendly, punchy look by default, with significantly higher levels of contrast and saturation, although obviously you can tune this to your tastes if you forego the auto controls. (And with the exception of a handful of tools, Workspace largely doesn’t provide for one-click auto adjustments.)
Download the full ACR image here; the full Workspace image here.
Photo by Carey Rose
Conclusion
More than most of its rivals, Olympus Workspace leaves me feeling somewhat conflicted. Once you’re past the initial learning curve, its interface is clean and approachable, and it offers quite a few handy tools missing from most of the competition. And it’s certainly capable of providing decent image quality, albeit not in the same class as Adobe when it comes to highlight and shadow recovery.
I could certainly see Workspace being a pretty capable companion for your Olympus camera
But performance is a bit of a weak spot that becomes decidedly more of a concern if you need to disable GPU processing, as did I. It’s certainly possible that my significant preview rendering issues when it’s enabled are specific to my chosen graphics card, a 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti. The good news is that since the software itself is free, it’s relatively simple for readers to test GPU rendering in their own setup to see if they have any such issues.
If you’re not plagued by the kind of GPU-specific issues that I was, and don’t often find yourself needing to make significant highlight / shadow corrections, I can certainly see Workspace being a pretty capable companion for your Olympus camera, and it’s hard to argue with a price-tag of $0. But if you want the greatest possible scope to correct exposure issues, or you’re beset by problems with preview rendering as I was, you’ll want to give Workspace a miss for the time being.
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| Photo: Mitchell Clark |
This year we attended Adobe Max in person, where we got to demo several of the new features in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe Camera Raw. If you missed the announcement, you can read our coverage of it here, though we’ll be covering the hits here.
We documented the demos on our Instagram, but in case you missed it, we’re rounding them up here. We were also able to interview some folks at Adobe while at the show, so stay tuned for more on the future of Photoshop, Lightroom, and other Adobe projects like Content Credentials.
Adobe Camera Raw Adaptive profile
Adobe has added a new profile to Adobe Camera Raw, called Adaptive. It uses AI to analyze what’s in the scene, and adjust exposure, tones, saturation, and other parameters automatically, potentially giving you a better starting point for your own edits. It’s also designed to work with HDR images and produces both HDR and SDR profiles, making it even more useful for those who aren’t used to editing for HDR displays yet.
Since it’s substantially more opinionated than other profiles like Adobe Color or Adobe Landscape, there’s also an amount slider that lets you tone down or turn up the results.
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Photoshop automatic distraction removal
Perhaps one of the niftiest features Adobe added to Photoshop is the automatic distraction removal tool. It analyzes your photo for cables, wires, or people that may be in the way of your subject, then automatically fills in the areas they took up.
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Lightroom Quick Actions
Lightroom’s new Quick Actions, available on Mobile and Web, will automatically mask parts of your image like subjects, backgrounds, and skies, and let you make adjustments to them.
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Lightroom Frame.io integration
Frame.io is now built into Lightroom, letting you access images uploaded to the cloud service. Combine that with Frame.io’s Camera To Cloud feature, available on some Fujifilm, Panasonic, Nikon, Canon, and Leica cameras, and you can take pictures on your camera then watch them appear wirelessly in Lightroom.
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Content Credentials
Adobe’s Content Credentials system is part of a larger industry-wide initiative to help prove what content on the web is authentic, and to keep track of what edits have been made to it. While at Max, we got to take a look at the Chrome extension meant to surface the credentials attached to images on social media and other sites, as well as the closed beta site that lets you attach content credentials to your own images, and view what credentials are attached to existing images.
We got to sit down with one of the senior directors of the Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe while at the conference, so expect a more thorough check-in of the technology to come.
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Generative Extend in Premiere Pro
Photoshop has had several generative AI features in beta for a while now, but now Adobe has introduced one for its Premiere video editing software. It lets you extend a clip by up to two seconds, helping you fill in gaps, transitions, or slightly flubbed takes with imagery generated by Adobe’s Firefly model.
According to Meagan Keane, Principal Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Pro Video, the idea came from asking customers what some of their biggest editing pain points were. The Pro Video team was then able to take that to the research team, and the result is Generative Extend.
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| Photo: DPReview staff |
As part of DPReview’s 25th anniversary celebration, we’re looking back at some of the more significant cameras to come along over the past 25 years, and today, we’re highlighting the camera that led the 4K revolution in consumer cameras: the Panasonic GH4. Officially announced in early 2014, we published our GH4 review on October 16, 2014 – ten years ago today.
We’ve all become so used to 4K video that it no longer registers as unique. It’s found on virtually every mirrorless camera made today, smartphones, action cameras, miniature gimbal cameras, webcams, security cameras, and even those wacky $100 ‘pro’ video cameras you see on Amazon and wonder who buys them.
But, of course, it wasn’t always that way, and we have the GH4 – the first mirrorless camera to capture 4K video internally – to thank for opening the metaphorical floodgates and ushering in the 4K era.
I had a personal interest in the GH4: as someone who had adopted the GH line early on for video projects, I was as curious as anyone to know how it stacked up. Although I was on staff at DPReview, I wasn’t involved in writing the GH4 review and probably read it with as much anticipation as anyone else.
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| Photo: DPReview staff |
It’s worth remembering that the GH4 was a hybrid camera designed to appeal to both stills and video shooters, and it had features to appeal to those who wanted to do both. Like the GH3, the camera was built around a 16MP sensor, but it supported 12fps burst shooting (7.5fps with focus tracking), a 1/8000 shutter speed and 1/250th flash sync. It even had a rather lovely 2.36M-dot OLED viewfinder.
But realistically, nobody was buying a GH4 just to shoot stills. You bought it because you wanted a solid video camera that could shoot stills when needed.
“Realistically, nobody was buying a GH4 just to shoot stills.”
The GH4 could capture 4K video at up to UHD 4K/30p (3840×2160) or DCI 4K/24p (4096×2160) internally and supported both Long GOP and All-I codecs at bit rates up to 200Mbps. Although we take bit rates like this for granted today, this was very high at the time. The camera also produced pleasing 1080p video, though as we called out in our review, its HD video wasn’t as good as the perfectly oversampled 1080p video from the Sony a7s.
Despite the impressive specs and beautiful video to match, we had some nitpicks. To start, 4K video captured internally only had 8-bit 4:2:0 color, providing less flexibility for color grading in post. (10-bit 4:2:2 color was supported, but only when recording externally.) Additionally, the GH4’s sensor was 4608 pixels wide, requiring the camera to use a smaller, native crop of the sensor when shooting 4K. This resulted in a 1.1x crop for DCI 4K and a 1.2x crop for UHD 4K.
Equally as crucial as its video specs, the GH4 illustrated Panasonic’s commitment to supporting a professional video workflow.
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The camera included several now-common tools to improve the video shooting experience, including focus peaking, two zebra settings, control over Master Pedestal (black level) and luminance scale, and a ‘cinema-like’ gamma preset. It also allowed users to set the shutter speed and ISO as shutter angle and gain and could generate color bars for calibration. It was also possible to switch between capture frequencies, meaning the camera could support NTSC, PAL, and true 24fps cinema standards.
“Equally as crucial as its video specs, the GH4 illustrated Panasonic’s commitment to supporting a professional video workflow.”
Alongside the camera, Panasonic released the optional DMW-YAGH interface unit. This $1999 accessory unit added two XLR inputs for audio, an SDI input for timecode, four 3D-SDI connectors capable of outputting 4:2:2 10-bit video and a 12V DC power socket. The unit attached to the bottom of the GH4 and felt oversized relative to the camera. Beginning with the GH5, the interface unit was phased out in favor of the DMW-XLR1, a much more affordable option in the style of the hotshoe-mounted XLR adapter we’ve become accustomed to today.
The GH4 was also the camera Panasonic used to debut its newest autofocus technology: Depth-from-Defocus, or DFD. DFD attempted to build a depth map of a scene by making tiny focus adjustments and analyzing changes in the image. With an understanding of the out-of-focus characteristics of a particular lens, the camera could build a depth map of the scene.
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| The optional DMW-YAGH ‘Interface Unit’ provided a more extensive selection of video industry connectors for using the GH4 as part of a high-end video rig. | |
However promising the technology may have been, DFD never quite met expectations. Panasonic really wanted to make it work, and it’s possible that, given fast enough sampling and processing, it might have continued to improve. Unfortunately for Panasonic, cameras using phase-detect autofocus consistently provided a better AF experience, particularly when shooting video, and the company eventually made the jump to phase-detection with the Lumix S5II in 2023, finally arriving in the GH series on the GH7 in 2024.
In our review of the GH4, we found a lot to like and a few frustrations. For example, despite having an autoexposure compensation dial, the camera didn’t allow you to use it when using Auto ISO in manual exposure mode, and there was no Auto ISO option when shooting video in M mode. Overall, though, we were mighty impressed and saved our biggest praise for the camera’s video capabilities:
“The GH4 was also the camera Panasonic used to debut its newest autofocus technology: Depth-from-Defocus, or DFD.”
“It’s in terms of video that the GH4 really stands out. It produces some of the best video we’ve yet seen – losing out only to the Sony a7S’s moiré-free 1080 output. The ability to capture good quality 4K, whether for use at full resolution, downsampling to 1080 or cropping to 1080, adds real flexibility to the camera. Low light performance is solid if not exceptional,” we concluded.
The GH4 landed in the retail market at a price of $1699, or about $2260 today adjusted for inflation, which isn’t far off the $2199 price of the GH7. It’s amazing to think about how expectations for video have changed over the years. However, the GH7 has its work cut out for it: rather than being an obvious standout in the crowd, it has to compete in a marketplace of cameras brimming with video features. Maybe in another ten years, we’ll look back to see how it held up.
| Photo: DJI |
DJI has announced the Air 3S, an update to its existing dual-camera Air 3 model that upgrades the primary camera to a larger Type 1 sensor and adds features that promise to make the drone easier to operate at night. DJI is positioning the Air 3S as “perfect for travel photography.”
The main camera on the Air 3S gains a 50MP Type 1 (13.2 x 8.8mm) CMOS sensor and features a 24mm equiv. F1.8 lens. That’s an upgrade from its predecessor, which utilized a smaller Type 1/1.3 (4.8 x 3.6mm) CMOS sensor with a marginally faster F1.7 lens. The telephoto camera remains unchanged between the two models, using a 48MP Type 1/1.3 sensor and featuring a 70mm equiv. F2.8 lens.
In addition to stills, both cameras can capture up to 4K/120p or 4K/60p when shooting HDR. All video can be captured in 10-bit, even in regular color mode, and D-Log M and HLG modes are available. The maximum ISO has been raised to 12,800 (3200 when shooting D-Log M). However, DJI says the Air 3S includes a new, more advanced video encoding algorithm that reduces video file size by over 30% without compromising image quality.
DJI claims both cameras can capture up to 14 stops of dynamic range and says the new main camera should capture even more detail than the camera on its more expensive Mavic 3 Pro model.
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The DJI Air 3S is similar to its predecessor, the Air 3, but it gains a larger Type 1 (13.2 x 8.8mm) CMOS sensor on its main camera.
Image: DJI |
Beyond the cameras, DJI has added several appealing features to the Air 3S:
A new Free Panorama mode enables users to create panoramic shots by stitching together images across a manually selected subject area. This works with either camera, but DJI suggests the best results will come from using the telephoto camera, which reduces distortion.
The Air 3S also includes features designed to make it easier and safer to fly at night, including Nightscape Obstacle Sensing, with the Air 3S becoming the first DJI drone to feature forward-facing LiDAR. Additionally, the drone includes downward-facing infrared sensors and six vision sensors (two each at the front, rear and bottom). According to DJI, this combination of sensors provides the Air 3S with “nightscape omnidirectional obstacle sensing,” which should allow the drone to automatically identify and navigate around obstacles for safer nighttime photography.
This technology also enables DJI’s next-gen Smart RTH (return-to-home) feature, intended to allow the drone to return safely to its takeoff location, even at night.
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The Air 3S is available with either DJI’s RC-N3 controller, which requires a smartphone to monitor the camera feed and aircraft status, or the RC 2 controller (above), which includes a built-in 700-nit 5.5″ 1080 screen.
Image: DJI |
The Air 3S also includes real-time vision positioning and map construction technology, designed to allow the drone to memorize a flight path and to return safely when adequate light is available, even in areas without satellite coverage.
The new model also features DJI’s ActiveTrack 360 subject tracking but introduces a new subject focusing feature designed to keep a subject in sharp focus, even during manual flight or when a subject moves off-center. This should allow a pilot to focus on creative decisions like composition or camera movement while ActiveTrack keeps the subject in focus.
There are a few hardware specs worth noting as well. The Air 3S weighs 724g (1.6 lbs), just 4g more than its predecessor, and is rated for 45 minutes of flight time. It includes DJI’s O4 video transmission system that transmits 10-bit video at up to 1080/60p and 42GB of built-in storage. A new Off-state Quick Transfer feature allows files to be transferred from the drone to a smartphone or a computer even when powered off.
Finally, for the privacy-conscious, a new Local Data mode completely disconnects the drone from the internet, ensuring that all data stays only on the device. DJI likens this mode to airplane mode on a smartphone.
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The Air 3S is available in several packages. The Fly More combo shown above includes the RC 2 controller, ND filter set, two additional batteries (for a total of three), a charging hub, extra props and a shoulder bag, will retail for $1599.
Image: DJI |
The charging hub that ships with the Air 3S supports PD fast charging and features a power accumulation function. It allows users to transfer the remaining power from several depleted batteries into the battery with the most remaining power – something anyone who has had to use drones in remote locations without a charging station is likely to appreciate.
Price and availability
The DJI Air 3S is available for purchase in several configurations: the drone with the RC-N3 controller, which requires a smartphone to monitor the camera feed and flight status, will retail for $1099. A Fly More combo with the RC-N3 controller, ND filter set, two additional batteries, a battery charging hub and shoulder back will retail for $1399. Finally, a Fly More combo with DJI’s RC 2 controller, which includes a built-in 700-nit 5.5″ 1080p screen, ND filter set, two additional batteries, charging hub and shoulder pack, will retail for $1599.
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