Olympus "Art Filters" (in Vienna and Stuttgart)

One of the fun features of my new camera, the Olympus E-PL2, is its "art filters".  The Olympus art filters are basically a set of pre-packaged algorithms that apply Photoshop-like processing to a JPEG file, inside the camera.  There are six "art filters" available on my camera model:

- Pop Art
- Soft Focus
- Grainy Film
- Pin Hole
- Diorama
- Dramatic tone

Frau A and I played around with a few of them over the last couple of weekends.  First, here is a "regular" photo, taken in a bar on our first evening in Vienna. 

Now here is a photo a few seconds later using the "dramatic tone" art filter.  It appears that this filter pushes the contrast pretty high, probably the saturation also, and maybe a few other tricks too.  It's my favorite filter so far, and I'll probably do a dedicated post on it later.

 

You can also get neat "mirage" like effects from reflections with the dramatic tone art filter.  We just set the camera on the table (marble and polished) and pointed it at the hotel entrance.  This has a warm golden glow, and the table looks pretty cool.  In this case, I'm glad we didn't have a mini tripod with us and tried the table.  Frau A did the creative work here.

A different example:  here we're at the Schönbrunn Palace gardens in Vienna, and taking a "normal" (unprocessed JPEG) photo of an arch.  The sky is slightly blue, the arch green, background buildings brick/reddish, and Frau A in front.

This is the result with the "pop art" art filter.  It cranks up the color saturation.  You can see how yellow the small part of the building through the second arch (in the background) comes through.  That I like.  The green is more intense too, and the brick colors richer.  And look how the gloves on Frau A stand out!  It's an interesting effect, but has its downsides.  For instance, the grass on the right starts out as a dirty green and becomes reddish/rusty with this filter.  That's not to my taste.

Here is one example on the streets of Vienna where the effect was OK -- probably because it was more localized.  The "regular photo" would have been a lot more subdued, because the sky was gray.  The filter took the yellow from the rental bikes and brought the color forward (it's unrealistic, but photography is art, right?).  The red car and pale yellow taxi behind it stand out a bit more too than they would without the art filter.  Because the graytone street was not affected too much, it's not too overwhelming.  The photo itself, of course, is not going to hang in the Met, but that's part of the process of getting to know a new camera and limitations of the photographers!

The "diorama" filter makes things look like a small model of the scene.  Here is a shot from the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, about one story above the cars in the exhibit (the effect works better the higher you are above the subject).  Some whites are a bit blown out (overexposed) and it's a bit grainy because the E-PL2 likes to crank the ISO in low light, but works for this test.

 Now here's a similar photo using the "diorama" art filter.

The cars definitely get a shiny, plasticy/metallic look to them -- not bad.  The downside is that this filter takes a tremendous amount of processing.  The camera literally locks up for maybe 20 seconds while the algorithm works on the JPEG.  Also, I've noticed that it makes a lot of the photo out-of-focus.  Look at the front tire on the red car... it goes from OK to just plain blurry.  I'm guessing this is part of the goal of this filter, rather than an error, in effect trying to create bokeh?

From greater elevation, you get something like this (shot from the television tower in Stuttgart).  Again, you see some significant blurring of subjects not in the middle of the frame, which is not evident with in processed shots.  Interesting.  I'm not sure about this art filter yet.

Perhaps I'll break down the others in another post, but I was not initially excited by the output from the other filters.

For casual photographs, the art filters are actually a lot of fun and much better than using Photoshop.  Pros will prefer to use more powerful tools that give them complete control, but for weekend getaways you can get some nice surprises and turn a dreary day into something really cool.