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Any Hasselblad users just use Phocus and nothing else?
- Thread starter BigBoy
- Start date
Adobe offers a demo version of both Lightroom and Photoshop so probably the best answer to your question is for you to download Lightroom at least and see what you think.
I've used Lightroom since v1 in conjunction with Photoshop. There are many who are adamant that Phocus produces the best colour from 3fff files. Certainly when I bought an H3D back in 2010 Lightroom didn't do such a good job as Phocus with saturated colours - particularly red. My understanding is that Hasselblad since then has provided Adobe with their colour science. With my X1D I think there is very little difference between a 3FR file edited in Lightroom and the 3fff file edited in Phocus and then exported as a Tiff. Others may disagree.
The potential disadvantage of only using Phocus is that you have to export as a Tiff. Storage is cheap these days so not necessarily such a disadvantage. All editing in Lightroom is non destructive - i.e. you don't have to generate a Tiff (or Jpeg) to print. Plus the snapshot element of Lightroom is hugely useful - you can make small or big edits and then just take a snapshot of them so you can try out various versions without losing whatever you did before and without having to generate a new file.
Personally I find Lightroom essential for one thing alone - its cataloging. It is a powerful DAM with keywords, collections which allow you to find any photo quickly.
But at the end of the day only you can decide. So try the demo.
I've used Lightroom since v1 in conjunction with Photoshop. There are many who are adamant that Phocus produces the best colour from 3fff files. Certainly when I bought an H3D back in 2010 Lightroom didn't do such a good job as Phocus with saturated colours - particularly red. My understanding is that Hasselblad since then has provided Adobe with their colour science. With my X1D I think there is very little difference between a 3FR file edited in Lightroom and the 3fff file edited in Phocus and then exported as a Tiff. Others may disagree.
The potential disadvantage of only using Phocus is that you have to export as a Tiff. Storage is cheap these days so not necessarily such a disadvantage. All editing in Lightroom is non destructive - i.e. you don't have to generate a Tiff (or Jpeg) to print. Plus the snapshot element of Lightroom is hugely useful - you can make small or big edits and then just take a snapshot of them so you can try out various versions without losing whatever you did before and without having to generate a new file.
Personally I find Lightroom essential for one thing alone - its cataloging. It is a powerful DAM with keywords, collections which allow you to find any photo quickly.
But at the end of the day only you can decide. So try the demo.
KC_2020
Active member
I'm in the camp that believe you want to use Phocus to at least do the initial raw conversion. Their color science is not duplicated in any other application.
If you want the option to do additional work on your images another consideration is Affinity Photo. It's very powerful, in some ways superior to Adobe's apps and it's not a subscription.
If you want the option to do additional work on your images another consideration is Affinity Photo. It's very powerful, in some ways superior to Adobe's apps and it's not a subscription.
Ty. I assume if I'm working with color it may matter however if I'm shooting just black and white it doesn't really matter then because I will be creating my own black and white preset in Lightroom or photoshop?
MGrayson
Subscriber and Workshop Member
One of Phocus's great features is the luminance curve. Changing contrast does not affect color or saturation. This *was* a big problem with LR (PS could always work in L*a*b* space). But the most recent version of LR has a slider for this saturation effect in the curve tool. Setting it to zero replicates the luminance curve.
I don't work on a wide gamut calibrated monitor - I'm not doing portraiture or advertisement retouching - so I'm perfectly happy with the Camera Standard profile that shows up in LR from the camera and Cobalt profiles if I want to see something different. The Adobe profiles usually leave me cold.
Still, I import into Phocus just to translate to FFF and (maybe) get the hot pixel elimination done. (Doesn't Phocus do that on import?)
I don't work on a wide gamut calibrated monitor - I'm not doing portraiture or advertisement retouching - so I'm perfectly happy with the Camera Standard profile that shows up in LR from the camera and Cobalt profiles if I want to see something different. The Adobe profiles usually leave me cold.
Still, I import into Phocus just to translate to FFF and (maybe) get the hot pixel elimination done. (Doesn't Phocus do that on import?)
mristuccia
Well-known member
For me it is Phocus and then Photoshop if needed.
I abandoned LR and use C1 only for my Fujifilm X-T2 files.
I abandoned LR and use C1 only for my Fujifilm X-T2 files.
KC_2020
Active member
So why not download the trial versions of all the apps you're considering and do your B&W conversion in each ?
Affinity has a trial, Adobe offers trials and Phocus is free. See for yourself.
Personally I would use Phocus to convert my HB raw files no matter where I intend to take them for further processing and B&W conversion can be done several ways within Phocus.
usm
Well-known member
I never used Lightroom but was using Photoshop from the first version on, which was bw, I’m using C1 still for catalogs but no5 for editing anymore.
After changing from Leica to Hasselblad I learned to like Phocus.
The reason for going from Leica was the color, so I am using the software that supports this. As you wrote, I’m also not editing so much, what I see is what I wanna see on screen or print.
One thing was interesting about the change to Phocus was the absence of presets and the reduction of functionality. Helped me to keep my eyes on the image I did.
When it goes to printing (cmyk not fine art) things are changing...
After changing from Leica to Hasselblad I learned to like Phocus.
The reason for going from Leica was the color, so I am using the software that supports this. As you wrote, I’m also not editing so much, what I see is what I wanna see on screen or print.
One thing was interesting about the change to Phocus was the absence of presets and the reduction of functionality. Helped me to keep my eyes on the image I did.
When it goes to printing (cmyk not fine art) things are changing...
Maxx9photo
Active member
Lightroom for me when I had X1D.
I import all of my Hasselblad files (X1D and now X2D) via Phocus and proceed from there. For casual shots that don't need much fussing over (e.g., when I get roped into or volunteer to take pictures at a party), I make adjustments in Phocus and simply export as jpegs. For more serious work involving local adjustments etc., I'll perform basic, global adjustments for color balance, luminance levels, lens corrections, etc. in Phocus and export the files as tiffs for finishing in Photoshop. I could probably do more in Phocus but really I use it more as a raw converter and leave the heavy lifting to Photoshop, with which I am more familiar and overall has greater capabilities. I can't comment directly about Phocus vs. LR except that unlike others I don't find Phocus to be too kludgy when used as a basic raw converter. And the colors it produces is what Hasselblad is famous for.
Off topic but somewhat related: when processing Phase One files, I take my files further along in C1 than I would for Hasselblad files in Phocus before exporting as tiffs for finishing in Photoshop. This in part reflects my greater familiarity with C1, but mainly because it has so many great features for advanced editing compared to Phocus and in some ways, compared to Photoshop as well. Some may find this two-step process to be cumbersome but I don't process a ton of images at a time, so it works for me. YMMV.
John
Off topic but somewhat related: when processing Phase One files, I take my files further along in C1 than I would for Hasselblad files in Phocus before exporting as tiffs for finishing in Photoshop. This in part reflects my greater familiarity with C1, but mainly because it has so many great features for advanced editing compared to Phocus and in some ways, compared to Photoshop as well. Some may find this two-step process to be cumbersome but I don't process a ton of images at a time, so it works for me. YMMV.
John
TechTalk
Well-known member
Just to clarify, still photos in Phocus can be exported as: TIFF (8 or 16-bit), JPEG (multiple quality options), PSD (8 or 16-bit), multiple image files as layers in a single PSD file (8 or 16-bit), or DNG
For candids or casual portraits whose main destination is social media or the web for sharing among friends, a jpeg export following quick edits in Phocus to adjust white balance, exposure/highlights/shadow, crops etc. usually suffices. If you poke around here you will see that most of my more serious efforts involve landscapes, cityscapes and still life that are approached more as projects and therefore entail additional futzing (that's a technical term) in Photoshop involving additional fine tuning and local adjustments to sculpt the image. Hope this helps.
TechTalk
Well-known member
Editing raw files is "non destructive" in Phocus as in other raw converters. You can also print directly from raw files in Phocus as you can in other raw converters.
Phocus also stores any number of various edited versions of an image which are selected for viewing from either the Adjustments Browser or from the Adjustments menu in the Toolbar. You can bring up any edited version in side by side (before and after) compare view mode and add additional edits to a new version without overwriting the original or generating a new file. No new copy of an image file is ever required and all of the edited versions are stored directly in the 3F (FFF) image file without a separate side car file required.
The Adjustments Browser can also copy the adjustments used from one image and save those as a custom user preset which can be applied to other images at any time and can import and export custom adjustment presets to and from other Phocus installations. You can also use the Adjustments Browser to edit any custom user presets stored inside an image file by renaming, adding, or deleting them. The Adjustments Browser is a tool with several options which is sometimes overlooked or its capabilities not fully understood and utilized.
Good advice.
nazdravanul
Member
Phocus is ok, for my X2d files. I use C1 for my GfX 100. LR is inferior to both in terms of IQ output. I adjusted to workflow inconveniences, Phocus is a decent tool and it works.
MGrayson
Subscriber and Workshop Member
I don't see any of them as having better or worse IQ output. It's a question of how much work is it to obtain your desired result. Optics aside, any of these camera/converter combinations can produce substantially identical results. Getting Fuji files to look good (to me) was too hard in LR. Perhaps I should have tried them in C1 (which I have used enough to not suffer from the learning curve). If I shot portraits, I'd probably find C1's strengths more relevant.
Just my opinion. If Phocus gets you what you want faster, then it's the perfect choice.
nazdravanul
Member
I couldn’t get my GFX100 files look as good in LR as they did in C1 - in terms of primarily sharpness and microcontrast. I also preferred the default Phocus results vs the default LR results for my x2d files - primarily in terms of colour and, again, microcontrast.
For the GFX files I could never get “identical” files, no matter how hard I tried. For Hassy, the stronger defaults made a compelling case for not even trying harder in LR
My experience has always been that not all Raw converters are created equal.The Camera Standard profile in LR for Hasselblad X2D files produces a starting point that in my experience is very similar to what I get with Phocus for the same file. Moreover, in the last year, the capabilities of LR in the area of selective adjustments through masking (including luminance curves) and noise reduction with higher ISO files have been vastly expanded and improved to the point that I can adjust a raw file in LR that is way better than what I can produce in Phocus. Perhaps I could move the Phocus file into PS for more targeted selective adjustments and ultimately come close to replicating the LR file, but I am not sure. The LR of today is not the LR of yesterday.
nazdravanul
Member
My workflow always includes Photoshop - as I do a lot of compositing. Raw convertors are rarely my only post-production tool, they are only a (critical) starting point. So, yes, layers and selective adjustments are not really factored in my evaluation of Phocus vs Lightroom, for example.
Mark Thompson
New member
I use phocus for all my Hasselblad files (and some canon files). Portrait clients sometimes want Anthropics to soften detail in their face. And I use Helicon for focus stacking. Lastly Pixelmator if I want to add logos or text