# Olympus RAW Files Preview Problems



## gbuck (Apr 15, 2014)

Hi,

I am a beginner with LR and have taken on board the advice to convert RAW files to DNG.  Unfortunately I have discovered that Finder (I operate an IMac, Mavericks 10.9.2) will not preview these DNG files.  I use an Olympus EM1 and have been reliably informed that Apple does not support Olympus RAW files converted to DNG, but they do support Canon and Nikon.  I would appreciate everyone's support in trying to get Apple to recognise Olympus and I would be grateful if you would take a few minutes of your time to copy the following few sentences and post them onto the Apple Feedback web page, which I have also provided.  Thanks in anticipation.....

"Hello,

I use an Olympus camera and convert the RAW (ORF) files to DNG in Lightroom.  Unfortunately Finder preview does not preview these files, although I believe that Canon and Nikon camera files are previewed.  Would it possible for Apple to enable previews in Finder of Olympus RAW files converted to DNG?

Thanks."

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


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## clee01l (Apr 15, 2014)

I would not make a recommendation to convert any proprietary RAW form to DNG unless your version of LR would not support the native RAW format.  There is not a lot of benefit converting to RAW unless you don't like XML sidecar files or use a lot of Adobe products that can interact through the DNG. 

I also am surprised that OSX does not have a CODEC for the DNG or what makes this DNG unique from DNGs derived from Canon, Nikon Pentax and Panasonic.  I did look at DNGs that I have and Panasonic, Pentax and Nikon all show a thumbnail.  However Lossy DNGs do not have an embedded JPEG thumbnail and the Preview App won't open the lossy DNG.  Did you create lossy DNGs when you converted?


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## gbuck (Apr 16, 2014)

The reason I converted to DNG was because I have read it as recommended by several tutorials on LR which were not written by Adobe employees.  There are in fact several reasons to convert and I understand there are also some counter arguments.  I did not convert using lossy compression.  It is a fact that Olympus RAW when converted to DNG is not recognised by Finder and this is because Apple has not produced the codec.


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## clee01l (Apr 16, 2014)

I would be interested in seeing this problem on my iMac.  Would it be possible for you to post a copy of one of your Olympus RAW files to a public location  (like your DropBox Public folder) and providing me a link so that I can download and import in into my LR catalog?


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## gbuck (Apr 16, 2014)

OK, will do, Cletus. The files are about 15mb in size.  I have not used DropBox before, so will the file size be a problem?


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## clee01l (Apr 17, 2014)

gbuck said:


> OK, will do, Cletus. The files are about 15mb in size.  I have not used DropBox before, so will the file size be a problem?


DropBox gives you 2 GB free storage.  You can place any file or number of files up to that limit for free. You can buy additional storage if you want to store more in the cloud.


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## clee01l (Apr 17, 2014)

Gorden, Thanks for the file.  I do see now what you mean.  It is puzzling to me that a DNG  would be any more than the proprietary RAW data in a different wrapper.  DNGs can be linear or nonlinear, lossless or lossy compressed. I can understand that the DNG CODEC used by OSX might only work for the lossless DNGs which is an older DNG Specification. And I can see that the CODEC might prefer non linear over linear. But I can not understand why it works for Panasonic, Canon, Nikon and Pentax but not Olympus.  DNGs are a variant of the TIFF/EP6 file specification. So there is not "rocket science" behind the conversion.
Interestingly, I ran the DNG through this online EXIF viewer: http://regex.info/exif.cgi  It showed both embedded JPEG thumbnails but not the 1:1 image


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 17, 2014)

I see the same issue with my Sony RX100 files Clee.  Apple like to create their own previews instead of use the embedded previews.  It took them forever to update to display the native Sony RX100 .arw files too.


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## zackmyfriend (Jun 10, 2014)

I bought a E-M1 last month and experience similar problems with importing the RAW files. As LR5.4 says it does support .ORF files I tried to import them directly from the camera/sd-card but this brought LR to crash every time. My first guess was a performance issue with my MacBook Pro so I copied the files to the respective folder on my HD and tried to import them from there. Same thing happened. Is there no other way than converting them to .DNG before importing, which, as mentioned by gbuck, doesn't work anyway?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 10, 2014)

Hi zackmyfriend, welcome to the forum!  Can you send me one of the problem files please?  Easiest option is to go to www.wetransfer.com and send it to [email protected].  (Don't email it direct as it'll get stuck due to the size)


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## tjcadwalader (Jun 12, 2014)

I have been using a E-M1 for several months and have not seen an issue with imports to LR 5 .  I use a Macbook Pro also.  I will be watching this thread to see if I can offer or gain any insight.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 12, 2014)

Ah ha, I think I've just figured out which thread the ORF file came from! I've downloaded it and imported perfectly into LR 5.4, so we may need to be looking for other import problems. Do other file formats import into  LR without crashing?


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## Polarmarianne (Feb 9, 2015)

Hi, I have used lightroom 4.4 for some years now and imported raw-files from my canon camera - no problems at all! Now i have bought a Olympus E-M1 and its not possible to import the raw-files! I have tried both from the card-reader and from my computer. Do you have any idea what to do?


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## Jim Wilde (Feb 9, 2015)

Hi, welcome to the forum.

Unfortunately, raw support for the E-M1 was not added until Lightroom version 5.3. So in order to process raw files from your new camera your choices are:

1. Purchase and install the latest LR5 version (5.7.1), or

2. Download and install the latest version (8.7) of the free Adobe DNG Converter (separate stand-alone program), which you then use to convert the raw files to the DNG format (they'll still be raw data). Your Lightroom 4.4 version will then be able to import and process the DNG files.


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## Polarmarianne (Feb 9, 2015)

thank you for Your answer!


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