Steart, Oly Studio is meant for tethered to the computer use. The E-1 has a setting in the menu that allows for CONTROL or STORAGE.
I never used it with Olympus, but did use the Nikon/Kodak version in a studio I worked at several yrs ago. It was handy for people to see the results of the session immediately after the shoot and thereby make their selections for enlargments.
I have also used this type of system when I work for Kodak EIS. Again, handy for events for immediate selection and processing.
If you are doing event type work under controlled conditions, you may find it useful.

Actually, Olympus Studio is not solely for tethered work as you seem to imply, although it does have that capability (works with E-300/E-500 as well if you set them to 'Control' in the menu). It's a more advanced version of Oly Master for ORF Raw conversion, though it handles JPG editing as well. You don't have to shoot tethered to use it. Unfortunately the trial version can't be udated.

Thanks "pip22" - sorry I don't know your name. You inspired me to download the trial version of Studio as I still have an E-300. To my surprise the trial version has no trouble with ORF (raw) images from the E-330, although apparently the update that you get only with a purchase has some advantages for the 330.
From a quick pass it's clearly a much improved package over Master, and it offers noise "cancellation" and help with "false color" in its raw processing mode. However, at this point I don't see a reason to complicate life further as I don't mind the raw conversion in CS2 and I have my hands full trying to learn it properly.

Hi Alex. I'm still agonising over what to use for Raw work. I use PS7 for editing but that's not compatible with the version of ACR I need for my E-500, and I sure can't afford to upgrade PS just to use ACR (and I've no idea if I'd like ACR anyway.

Problem with both Oly Master and Studio is neither of them can make adjustments in real-time. You move a slider then you have to sit there while it applies it. Makes accurate 'spot on' adjustments impossible. Colours, however, are very accurate to the original scene.

By comparision, Capture One and Rawshooter are real time, instantly updating the preview image. That makes a big difference. But they both render different results at the default settings as far as colour is concerned. I compared them on an E-500 raw file only yesterday. C1 colours appear more red, while with Rawshooter the tone is much cooler, with reds too muted. Odd thing is, with my previous E-300 files, it was the other way round.

Bottom line: Oly Studio keeps you waiting and accurate 'tweaking' is impossible -- but the colours are great straight from the camera.

The other two allow for very accurate positioning of the adjustment-sliders but colours are a bit off.

decision, decisions!

Phillip

Phillip's post is very helpful. I am putting this here to draw the attention of Oly users to a post I just placed under "Digital Darkroom" because I think it's probably a more general issue than just an Oly issue. In brief, when I use Olympus Master software to processes an orf file it tends to come up pretty well exposed (as my cameras' histograms would suggest) but when I use CS2 it pretty well always calls for fairly large changes in the EV.

Adobe CS2 CR has been my tool for processing Olympus RAW files from an E-500. Sometimes the results have been less than satisfactory. A few days ago I opened a RAW file in CS2 where the sky and clouds showed a considerable amount of magenta (which absolutely was not present in the original scene). I decided to try Oly Master and the trial version of Studio for comparison. With those applications there was no magenta in the sky, and colors in the landscape, especially greens, were definitely superior to CS2. There was also more detail in general, but less detail and contrast in the clouds(?!?). From this and other tests it looks like I will often use Studio for RAW processing, then save the result as a TIFF which will be processed with Adobe.
But I hate to lose the extra functionality available in Camera Raw. And I really don't like the sliders and the delay in Studio, but it might be worth it for better results.