OM Workspace - Professional RAW Workflow

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

📛 Become a channel member: kzbin.infojoin ☕ Donate a coffee to support this channel: ko-fi.com/thomaseislphotography ❓📩 Direct support: thomaseisl.photography/shop/p/support-ticket

[@tommoss7223]

Hello Thomas, I've been binge watching all of your videos over the last 3 days. They have taught me so much about the OM-1 that I did not know or use. Looking forward to your videos on OM Workspace as I have made little use of it to date. Thank you so much for your uniquely indepth and practical coverage of the OM-1.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks Tom! I'll try my best to provide insights regarding OM Workspace - which is, in my opinion, a great software.

[@JamesMeeks-rv8lb]

Thanks for the video series on OM Workspace! Very clear and concise.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Glad they were helpful!

[@renateschulze1253]

Thank you very much, Thomas! 🙂 I've learned much about workspace and I'm looking forward to the next videos! 🙂

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Great to hear, Renate! Thanks for the feedback 🙂

[@larsarvidoma6207]

Thank you! This is by far the most useful and interesting lessons on You tube the last years, for me as a Olympus/OM user. It´s an eye-opener for the OM Workspace and my professional workflow.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much Lars! That is great to hear and encouraging. Hope you will like the follow-up videos as well!

[@by.othman]

Brilliantly done, many thanks...

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much!

[@philallsopp42]

As usual Thomas, you deliver a master class….I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom but will shift over to OM Workspace…thank you!

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks for the kind words! I will do my best to provide detailed information on Workspace in my upcoming videos to enable you a smooth transition. I'm sure you will like Workspace. Many thanks, again!

[@akralik]

Buen trabajo. Un saludo

[@louiebodenstaff6772]

Brilliant!

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much!

[@And_Sun_Yk]

Wonderful tutorial :) I am just getting to grips with the OM Workspace on my EM1 Mk2

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Have fun - great camera and a capable software!

[@FierceSleepingDog]

Very helpful. Thank you!

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

You're welcome!

[@RoteVanNelle]

Thanks Thomas! I appreciate your videos - thanks for all the work! As much as I like Olympus Workspace, the performance and also error situations up to hangs, make life difficult. Especially the Stamp tool leads again and again to hangs and extreme computing time. I think it would be fair, if you can understand these problems, to also address these aspects. Kind regards! Erich

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much for the kind comment and sharing your experiences! I would definitely not use the stamp tool - retouching and local adjustments should be performed in a dedicated photo editor. OM Workspace is really a RAW converter. More on that in future videos! Best wishes and thanks again for the comment!

[@zaharib]

Great video Thomas ❤

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks!

[@PaulCoggins-eh6vq]

Hi Thomas, many thanks for your video. i will also look at the others you have posted. There is a lot to take in. I was going to purchase Affinity 2 to edit my photo which i take on my EM5 Mark3 but now thinking I don't need to as OM Workspace seems to have more than I need.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Great to hear! I personally use Workspace and then I retouch in Affinity Photo 2, both complement each other well, especially if you are photographing portraits. If not, Workspace will most likely be enough. Keep me updated & happy weekend

[@howardrollinson3819]

Hello Thomas another great video tutorial on OM Workspace thank you very much. I am getting some great shots with my Olympus OM-D E-M1X and I have purchased a little manual lens from TTArtisan 25mm F2.0 it's giving me that retro style on some of my photo's kind regards Howard Rollinson

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey Howard! That's great to hear, stay tuned, more processing tips on the way. Best wishes!

[@RoderickJMacdonald]

Excellent. But now I have a lot of study ahead of me again!:D You have shared a routine, but also some experience. Thank you.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much - the detailed videos regarding the tools will follow soon!

[@alexyphotoman9716]

Hello Thomas...I've just discovered your channel and videos. Very informative, well presented and a good range of topics. I am an avid amateur photographer using a Nikon D500 mostly for wildlife and landscapes, but have been thinking a lot about purchasing a lighter pro camera. I've been hoping that Nikon would release a lighter mirrorless version of the D500 so that I could adapt my f mount lenses, but so far no joy! I've looked at the OM-1 and the Fujifilm XT-5 or X-H2, so your video comparing your D800 kit with your OM-1 kit was very good and I thank you. I also found your video comparing white balance tools very informative.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hello Alex! Thank you very much for your kind comment and for sharing your experiences. The D500 is an excellent camera - one of the best APS-C cameras ever made. It will be tough to find a worthy successor. However, the OM-1 might be that camera - your camera bag will lose some weight, though ;-). Again, many thanks and if you want to know something specific about the OM-1 or anything else, just get in touch!

[@YannisSinadinos]

Hi Thomas and thanks for the video. I use om workspace for most of my photos and I really like it for fast and basic editing. My serious complain is the very bad shadow and highlight recovery tool. When using highlight below -2 looks very plastic especially in faces and shadows above +2 are also bad. Hope they improve this basic feature. I also really like the ai nr that improves the noise 2 to 3 stops

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey Yannis! Thank you very much! A quick spoiler - the Highlight and Shadow tool is not for recovering shadows and highlights. OM Workspace has a different feature to do that which actually works excellent. In a future video, I will illustrate that. You will be blown away by the results. Stay tuned!

[@christophzimmermann9412]

I waited for this Video 😊

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Great to read 🙂

[@sourcebased]

Fantastic, I love how you simplify the editing steps there. OM Workspace can be a bit overwhelming (at first?) with its many options, sticking to a standard procedure helps a lot and can be a great time saver. Now I just have to try it again and compare it with my usual DxO PL workflow. 😎

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks! Stay tuned for the next videos - I have some powerful OM Workspace features up my sleeves to get you to the dark side :-)

[@sergiodonadeo2810]

Very very interesting. Thank you Thomas for the practical example about how to do. We have seen a lot of manipulations of some parameters. Where are them stored? I think in a .xmp with the same name in the same directory. But, can I move and store either .orf and .xmp in another directory? Is this .xmp file readable and correctly interpreted by other software? Sergio from Milano

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks Sergio! I will follow up with a dedicated video on that. Here is the short answer: OM Workspace has a separate database where it saves the edits. As Olympus / OM RAW files are able to embed certain data, there is no need for an XMP file. Workspace is not utilizing those. Also, this will be illustrated in the future video - stay tuned. If you do not want to loose the edits, move the files in workspace so the database knows where the orf file went.

[@sergiodonadeo2810]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography Thank you Thomas. I follow your video as pearls of wisdom and your comments as gifts

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many many thanks - you really are too kind!

[@cjk1943]

❤ love the video thank

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much!

[@mxyptlk]

Thank you Thomas as always a clear description of your RAW workflow. I must confess to only having experimented with OM workspace as I always import into LR and and edit in LR also, with additional editing in PS. ( I am sure I may be missing benefits of OM workspace by using LR for RAW conversion) But if I follow you correctly, you are saying only use OM workspace for RAW editing then conduct further editing in, for example LR ? I am sure you will explain in another tutorial, but do you save your edits in OM w/space to your hard drive ? then export a copy into say for example LR for further editing ? I import all my images via LR and save to an external hard drive so as not to overwhelm my internal hard drive. Also is OM workspace non destructive.... lol so many questions... But huge thanks to you for your input and so much effort involved... I will follow with interest... 🙏🏻

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey Gerry! Many thanks for the comment and the questions! So yes, I suggest exporting either a jpeg or tiff from workspace and then edit it in another editor if needed. In most cases, you will be fine with the file as it is. OM Workspace is non-destructive. It utilizes a centralized database which you can back up if needed. Indeed, I will provide a separate video on that in the near future - stay tuned!

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Also, you can check out further tips on my website, link in the video description !

[@MarcoPi-pq5kg]

Wonderful content again! If i prefer to shoot in jpeg only, what is the best amount of filtering and denoising that you suggest to leave in camera options? There is no AI denoise for jpeg, so i cannot leave all the denoise option of Om-1 turned off... And what other software you feel free to suggest to denoise the Om-1 jpeg? I am thinking about Topaz denoise

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you very much Marco! That is a complex question. Here is my suggestion: I would not use any denoising on JPEGs. There is just not enough data there to give you a good result. Even if denoising software might do something, it will always interpolate a lot of data. I'm not a huge fan of that, personally. My recommendation would be: Shoot JPEG + RAW. Then bring the RAWs (if necessary) into workspace, click Ai Noise and export to JPEG. Done! The result will be exactly like the in camera JPEG but with the bonus of de-noising. So you are still kinda shooting jpeg only, with benefits 🙂

[@chrispatmore8944]

Amazing stuff!! Cancelling my Adobe subscription now seems even more viable.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thank you for the feedback - that is great to read. I think that OM Workspace really is a very viable alternative. So I would definitely look into that.

[@chrispatmore8944]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography I already use Affinity Photo, but it's RAW processing is quite limited. Great focus stacking for bracketed macro work though, probably even better than OM Workspace. Definitely better than Photoshop and ON1, which I've yet to find many positives for. ACR has certainly improved a lot in the last couple of updates, but it's still a subscription for features I probably don't need.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

I was actually about to ask you whether you have Affinity, because you need it definitely when you are working with OM Workspace. In any case, the RAW conversion in Workspace is top notch, so I think you'll be good. In fact, I only use these two when working with .ORF files and I love it TBH

[@gershonportnoy5589]

Hello Thomas, noticed a strong magenta cast/shift apearing in the image after aplying the vintage filter-espetially on the ceiling of the building entrance, is it possible to change it? is it because of the exposure change applied by the filter? Thank you so much for posting this video.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Yes, the filter applies something very similar to a split toning effect. The magenta cast you noticed is part of that. So even if you lower the black point as I did, the magenta cast will remain, although less visible I'd say. The Art Filters give a very strong effect, in a future video I will show ways to apply more subtle color grading. Hope this helped!

[@gershonportnoy5589]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography thanks for the reply, it helped:)

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Great!

[@alandimery3379]

Very good Thomas. Thank you. What format do you save your edited files to please?

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hello Alan! When I intend on performing complex adjustments in Affinity Photo, I choose the TIFF option. When I just want to retouch one or two things, I pick the JPEG. I never delete the RAWs, though. So I can always go back should the necessity arise. Hope this helps!

[@metalmick99]

Your clips continue to be of such tremendous value, Thomas, as is evinced by the number of views each clip gets as a proportion of the subscribers. That's an astonishingly good statistic. I haven't tested my current post-processing software (ON1) thoroughly against OMW, but the 2 images I've chosen show striking differences in favor of OMW. In the first - of a small waterfall - surrounding vegetation in OMW is noticeably sharper with better detail; in the second, of some autumn leaves, there is obviously more detail. In both instances, the images were exported as TIFF and I hadn't applied any further processing such as tone adjustment, sharpening, etc. Colours in ON1 are also more saturated than in OMW, but this is not a significant issue, I think. I will also add that I read a brief comparison of how Lightroom handled different brands of RAW files, and ON1 was rated highly above Lightroom for ORFs. So to get something that yields great interpretation of ORF files for free is outstanding. (It also implies that photographers who use Lightroom exclusively are missing out on a *lot*.) Because of the feature set of ON1, using it in conjunction with OMW, I'm seeing this as a winning combination for not a lot of money.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks for your encouraging, kind words and for sharing your results which are congruent with mine. I agree that combining different programs is the way to go - ON1 has some capabilities not to be found in WS, while WS excells at processing OM files. Thank you very much, again!

[@ivanmarquez6809]

Excellent video, one question, how i can make a segurity copy of setting raws? I dont Know what files i hace to copy.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey Ivan! Do you mean creating a separate "preset"?

[@ivanmarquez6809]

Where save OM Workspace settings applayed to raws?

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Ah! Two options: right click and click "save batch processing file" or navigate to the presets in the bottom right corner and click on 1, 2, 3, or 4

[@ivanmarquez6809]

I mean i want to have a copy of my raws procesing in OM Workspace in other hard disk

[@ivanmarquez6809]

An these keep settings applayed

[@tkarlmann]

I'm having great difficulty with OM Workspace right now. I just made all the corrections I want to a directory of files -- some JPG and some ORF. Now I need to Export the RAW files to JPGs in order to keep the changes made. Is there a way to Export selected RAW files all at once, or must I export them one at a time? Assistance greatly appreciated.

[@ReinholdFriedrichAuer]

Hi Thomas, today I got in contact with your videos. Let me please ask. What is the reason why you use OM Workspace instead of Lightroom and/or Photoshop like most of you colleagues are doing?

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Welcome to the channel Reinhold and thanks for asking! There are many reasons for that - first and foremost the excellent image quality and tailor-made processing. Workspace preserves the OM System look, which I cannot get from any other software on the market. I've elaborated that in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXqnd2l8mrWbqbM

[@volkerwehres5917]

Thomas, as always easy to learn from your video. I use Olympus cameras since mor than 10 years, starting with the E620 ( with illuminated buttons ❤), than the E-5, the EM1 Mark II and since about a year I use the OM-1. With all cameras I tried the Olympus workspace, with all the cameras I stopped useing workspace an now I do my edits with Luminar Neo and Affinity Photo. I never identified any advantage using Olympus workspace. Is it on your opinion really something one should do? I‘m not sure at all. Best regards Volker

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey Volker! Great to have an "Olympus Veteran" here. For me, it was always the other way round. I started editing files in other programs and then always came back to OM Workspace, as it just gave me the best results (in my opinion) with the least effort. It is a very personal decision, I myself love OM Workspace. It is such a cleverly designed software that works so well with OM files - so I would recommend trying it. Maybe my upcoming videos will illustrate the unique capabilities of the software and might "convert you". There is no harm in giving it another try as it is completely free of charge. Best wishes, Thomas

[@rudyhulsmans7443]

Interesting results, Thomas. They bring up an obvious topic: how much can one tweak a photograph? I tend to stay close to the original, but I have to admit that your edited images in these examples have a lot of 'impact'. A little side question: your om workspace set-up performs very snappy. What machine are you using?

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thanks - I am also mostly in the "natural" camp but sometimes adding an interesting effect can be worth it! I'm using a windows machine with a relatively capable graphics card, a GeForce RTX 3060. With anything like that, Workspace is really fast and snappy. Or you can just connect the OM-1, which I will demonstrate in an upcoming video.

[@andrukosti]

Don't you think the highlight shadow adjustment from OM workspace is pretty useless compared to Lightroom?

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Although the name is the same, the tools in those programs do something completely different. The tool in Workspace adjusts only the luminance.

[@mattmavor9154]

Hi Thomas. I have a question for you if you have time. The image quality for OM Workspace and OM Capture are poor on my high end system and I cannot find a setting to overcome this problem. I have an excellent 4k monitor with a fast processor, excellent graphics card, 32 Gig memory etc. I have no problems with any other image software such as Adobe, Topaz, Dxo, Luminar, etc. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this problem? Thanks.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey! Do you mean the image quality of the exported files?

[@mattmavor9154]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography No, sorry I was not clear. The image on the 4k monitor is poor quality. It is impossible to tell if the images are in focus.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

That is very strange! Check if the yellow triangle bottom right corner is active - it is the "fast preview" function

[@mattmavor9154]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography That was a good idea but not the solution. The software was not the problem. I finally figured it out. I changed my monitor refresh rate from 60 Hz t0 120 Hz. This greatly improved the displayed images for both OM Workspace and OM Capture. Thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate your time and willingness to assist your viewers.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

@mattmavor9154 most welcome - thank you very much for watching and getting in touch! I'm glad that you were able to solve the problem, trouble shooting can be a very tedious endeavor.

[@yassassinfo]

optical correction with using lens profile is not needed?

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Sorry, could you rephrase the question please?

[@solderon]

hello, is it normal that the pictures on your website are that much noisy? you wanted that effect? if so, please can you explain why? thanks in advance.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Hey there! They are analog photographs shot with high Speed Film - what you see is film grain. So yes, it is is intentional 😃 Apart from that, it is also part of my style - I don't really like the clean, structure-less look of digital photographs. So I also often add noise in post. Thanks for asking!

[@solderon]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography thank you Thomas, for me I’ve a problem of noise when editing with OM Workspace, especially when I touch coloris and saturation, even the RAW not noisy (shot outside clear day) when edit, it becomes noisy

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

@aminem8771 that is very strange - from my experience, Workspace is very good at reducing noise. Is the exported file noisy too?

[@smkunder1]

I must be doing something wrong, I find Workspace very slow. I do enjoy your content.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks! Have you tried using your GPU as main processor? That is recommended.

[@davidthompson8153]

Nice video Thomas but I find OM Workspace like a lot of camera manufacturers software have serious issues of performance and User Interface. Will stick to DXO and Adobe thanks.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thanks David - it is important to use what works best for you!

[@davidthompson8153]

@@ThomasEisl.Photography Absolutely, well said.

[@benejpocock]

It's so easy to dismiss OM Workspace as a useless bit of 'free' software, and assume the usual suspects must be better. But unless you need to carry out layered or more complex adjustments, it's more than up to the job. One thing I've noticed too is that whilst I always shoot RAW+jpeg, an out of camera superfine jpeg is c.15MB on my OM-1, whereas if I run the raw through OMW, even if I make no adjustments, the exported superfine jpeg is c.6MB - so that's worth it alone!

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Thanks for sharing, completely agree!

[@davidredfearn6065]

This is very helpful content, but a slower pace and an image that requires more subtle editing would make a better example. (I actually think your editing here made the image worse! I try to get the effect I want in camera so that minimal post editing is needed. (Of course, there is no accounting for taste! 🙂)

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Many thanks for the feedback! That is very important and I appreciate it! The video is really meant to demonstrate the workflow - the editing steps themselves will be presented in in-depth masterclasses!

[@davidredfearn6065]

I'm looking forward to the additional videos! Something has been missing in the online reviews and tutorials for the OMD cameras. OMD does a good job themselves but independent content is critical. You are supplying the missing content.

[@nikaberzina2478]

🫤

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Not happy?