OM-3 Color Recipes

Update: New dedicated site!

Updating the recipes on this page was getting to be too much for me to keep up with. I made a site dedicated to sharing these recipes: om-recipes.com. It should offer a better experience for viewing and downloading recipes, and soon should allow people to upload their own recipes to share!

Check it out!

Default COLOR Profiles

There are four default color profiles. The OM-3 manual describes them like this:

  • COLOR1: This is a standard (Natural) preset. Each setting value is set to default (±0).

  • COLOR2: This results in a color tone with depth and richness.

  • COLOR3: This creates a film-like effect with high saturation and rich colors.

  • COLOR4: It creates a light and soft color tone.

Film Simulations

I find it interesting to start my journey of exploring color in photography by referencing film stocks. A lot of research and history went into designing these, and it’s interesting to learn and explore the differences and nuances in the digital age.

Unfortunately I don’t find any of these particularly compelling, at least with the test shots I used in overcast light.

Ali O’Keefe’s Recipes

Ali O’Keefe (One Month Two Cameras) recently published 5 recipes for the OM-3. She describes them succinctly and accurately on her blog along with the intention and suggested conditions. I won’t reproduce them here since they’re easily accessible on her own page. These are the most well thought out and in my experience reliable settings I’ve used so far.

  • OMTC Warm: Golden, punchy, rich skin tones. A bit of that Kodak warmth.

  • OMTC Cool: Clean, neutral, contrasty but calm. Think Fuji Provia or 400H. (same as warm with WB shift)

  • OMTC Soft: Meyerowitz/Cape Light. Soft, dreamy, pastel with luminous highlights.

  • OMTC Chrome: Slide film feel. High punch, crisp edges, moody shadows.

  • OMTC Mono: Tri-X pushed to 800. Bold, punchy, rich texture.

Dave Herring’s Recipe

Dave Herring published a YouTube video detailing his recipe for the OM-3 color wheel. He tweaks the high-saturation COLOR3 profile, bringing down greens and yellows a bit and introduces his own take to white balance.

Jerred Z’s Eternal Sunshine

Jerred Z. has a blog post where he describes a unique color recipe he calls Eternal Sunshine.

OM System Creative Recipes

OM System now has a creative recipes page with four recipes for download (including Ali’s and Jerred’s), and the ability to share recipes with others. The recipes are downloaded as jpg files, and the page features a video showing how to load those into the camera directly from jpg. It appears to be using EXIF data from the jpeg file, so potentially works for any image from an OM-3 or processed by OM Workspace.

Isaac/ibd’s Fuji Inspired Recipes

A few years ago Isaac/ibd shared a set of 10 approximations in a thread on cameraderie.org that detailed Fujifilm recipes created by global optimization & hill climbing against actual examples.

VideoPic’s Recipes and Article

VideoPic recently updated a blog post that delves into details about what “chrome” means in the film world, how it translates into the digital world, and shares a variety of simulations. It looks like it was originally written in 2020 for the PEN-F and has been updated for the OM-3. It’s well worth a read for any interested.

Similar to this page, it covers a variety of profiles shared by various authors and also shares some of his own recipes.