Puzzled at the Abysmal Performance of Hasselblad's Phocus Software (Why all the praise?)

[emilediaz]

I keep visiting forums and finding fans of Hasselblad's Phocus software. I am working with a CFV ii 50c and 907x. I'm on an iMac 2020, with a 3.5 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9, 128 GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16GB Graphics card. This Mac is no slouch. In my limited experience with Phocus, I find it to be horrifically awful software. I have decades of experience behind me with Photoshop, Lightroom, and other imaging software and I have rarely seen such a poorly implemented piece of software. I have one single shoot loaded with about 1400 images. That's not a small shoot but it is also not huge. Each time I start up Phocus it takes several minutes to redraw the thumbnails. EVERY TIME! I sit there waiting for it to finish so I can do any work on it. No change I make registers until I click away from the thumbnail to another and then come back. If I switch views, it takes a long time to do so and then redraws many thumbnails again. If I copy and paste settings from one image to 10 others, then it takes another gulp and slooooooowly makes the changes and updates the thumbnails. If I reopen Phocus then many of the changes I made on an image don't show up right away after I click on the thumbnail; it takes a few seconds to think, while the image stays soft and out of focus. Then after 2 seconds, it brings the image into sharp focus, while it still shows me the image BEFORE I made the change, and then after a second shows me the change I made. WHAT IS THIS!!

Does everyone else on this forum using Phocus have like a killer $25,000 Mac or something?

I'm still wondering where all the praise for Phocus is coming from. Before I take advantage of all the awesome things it can do with a Hassey fff file, I first have to get this awful software to just load my images and not hang up forever. Hasselblad people should be ashamed of themselves to saddle us with this poorly implemented piece of crap. "You get what you pay for" has never rung so true.

 

[jng]

I keep visiting forums and finding fans of Hasselblad's Phocus software. I am working with a CFV ii 50c and 907x. I'm on an iMac 2020, with a 3.5 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9, 128 GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16GB Graphics card. This Mac is no slouch. In my limited experience with Phocus, I find it to be horrifically awful software. I have decades of experience behind me with Photoshop, Lightroom, and other imaging software and I have rarely seen such a poorly implemented piece of software. I have one single shoot loaded with about 1400 images. That's not a small shoot but it is also not huge. Each time I start up Phocus it takes several minutes to redraw the thumbnails. EVERY TIME! I sit there waiting for it to finish so I can do any work on it. No change I make registers until I click away from the thumbnail to another and then come back. If I switch views, it takes a long time to do so and then redraws many thumbnails again. If I copy and paste settings from one image to 10 others, then it takes another gulp and slooooooowly makes the changes and updates the thumbnails. If I reopen Phocus then many of the changes I made on an image don't show up right away after I click on the thumbnail; it takes a few seconds to think, while the image stays soft and out of focus. Then after 2 seconds, it brings the image into sharp focus, while it still shows me the image BEFORE I made the change, and then after a second shows me the change I made. WHAT IS THIS!!

Does everyone else on this forum using Phocus have like a killer $25,000 Mac or something?

I'm still wondering where all the praise for Phocus is coming from. Before I take advantage of all the awesome things it can do with a Hassey fff file, I first have to get this awful software to just load my images and not hang up forever. Hasselblad people should be ashamed of themselves to saddle us with this poorly implemented piece of crap. "You get what you pay for" has never rung so true.

There was a major upgrade to Phocus (v3.5.6) in January 2021 that runs natively on the M1 chip. This is what I'm running on my first generation M1 13" MBP w/16 Gb RAM. I'm not seeing any performance issues when handling up to a few hundred files at a time, whereas on my late-2014 MBP Phocus was boggy to the point where I, too, dreaded using it. I think the consensus was that the pre-M1 native Phocus was pretty terrible performance-wise. I imagine performance of the M1 native software will be even better on the 2nd generation M1 machines - a fully tricked out 14" MBP sells for around $4000 USD - but I find my 1st generation M1 machine to be more than adequate for my needs. YMMV, of course.

Others here seem to be quite happy using Lightroom for RAW processing Hassy files, but I never incorporated LR into my work flow. Instead, I do raw conversions in Phocus or Capture One (for my Phase One files) and finish things off in Photoshop. In general I much prefer using C1 over Phocus; however, C1 is simply not an option for processing the Hassy files, at least not yet. We do have options, in any case.

John

 

[TechTalk]

I keep visiting forums and finding fans of Hasselblad's Phocus software...

It would seem that others, myself included, are not having the same experience as you have. What was Hasselblad's response when you contacted support?

 

[tcdeveau]

That was not my experience on an i9 Mac. I was using a 2018 or 2019 MacBook Pro with an i9 and 32 gb RAM until a few days ago.

The computer itself would get crazy hot and the fans would go nuts and the battery life sucked but the software was fine.

moved to a 14” MacBook Pro with M1 Max and 64 GB ram and the performance with Phocus, C1, and LR is awesome

 

[P. Chong]

Not my experience either. With a HP i7 with just 16GB RAM or on my MBA M1 with just 8GB RAM. Runs well on both, truth be told, the tiny M1 MBA is faster.

 

[Godfrey]

I only use Phocus occasionally, mostly because I'm happier with my Lightroom Classic workflow, but it works with decent performance on my 2019 Mac mini (3.2 Ghz 6-core Intel Core i7, 32G RAM, lots of free space on the boot drive, data stored on an external drive connected with USB 3.1, macOS Monterey v12.5 currently...). I do not load hundreds of files in a single folder (more like 20-50 .FFF files per folder).

Of course, what constitutes "decent performance" is a matter of personal perception and opinion. I'm never in any hurry when I'm rendering photographs.

I would look into what's happening on your boot drive (too little free space, fragmentation, etc).

G

 

[MGrayson]

I just did a test. iMac Pro 2017, slightly slower than my MacBook Pro. I copied every Hassy photo I had (700) into a folder, and then imported it into Phocus. This copied all those into the Phocus folder. That wasn't fast. Then I updated to the latest Phocus. No thumbnails ever redrew, scrolling was fast, editing was fast. No slower than LR, and much friendlier to Hassy images.

Have you reinstalled it?

Matt

 

[kinglang]

The experience of Phocus is runs slowly, but the hasselblad 3FR reflect the color of Hasselblad only in Focus.

 

[steveash]

Phocus certainly isn’t the best user experience and it certainly takes time to create FFF files from the 3FRs, but it definitely gets the best colour, dynamic range and lens corrections from the files.

I tend to load all images into Lightroom first as a DAM and then pick out the best to process in Phocus. That prevents pulling too many unnecessary images into Phocus. It’s also worth using the fastest SSD you have available.

 

[leejo]

I have one single shoot loaded with about 1400 images. That's not a small shoot but it is also not huge. Each time I start up Phocus it takes several minutes to redraw the thumbnails. EVERY TIME!

That's approx 88GB of data. Your problem is almost certainly I/O. You didn't tell us where the files are stored, that's probably key. If the software is having to pull them from anything other than a local SSD you're going to hit transfer limits.

Also - what other people said. Make sure you're up to date, there's probably better caching of metadata and thumbnails in newer versions for these extreme use cases (1,400 images may not be a lot but when those files are around 60+ MB each it's a lot of *data*).

 

[MGrayson]

To be clear, @emilediaz is talking about something worse than slowness. Constantly regenerating thumbnails is something no one else has experienced. There is something wrong.

 

[emilediaz]

I really appreciate everyone's responses. My Mac has a local 8TB SSD where the fff files (153 GB) are stored. Every time I relaunch Phocus, the browser has to slowly redraw the thumbnails. I look at preferences, which are minimal, and other settings, but no clue as to why this is. My Phocus is up to date and I am on a fast new Mac with 128GB of RAM. It seems insane that the browser has to redraw all the thumbnails. I am just sitting there waiting for the thumbnails to come in one by one by one before I can do anything. I simply cannot start editing until Phocus has stopped bringing in all the thumbnails. I can understand that when Phocus makes the original import of the 1400 fff files the import will be slow. But once it is in there and I only relaunch, why does Phocus have to redraw? If I open the activity monitor during this process Phocus is taking up 112% of the CPU with over 80 threads running! My Mac's fan goes crazy until Phocus is done. Whatever for? Just to go get the thumbnails? C'mon Hasselblad. Cache the damn thumbnails like everyone else! What a wasteful piece of software.

EDIT: I profusely apologize for my nastiness. It's not, of course, directed at anyone here. I realize that many people are loving the 907x, cfv ii 50c and Phocus. I also realize that not everyone has acquired this setup for mission-critical work. I convinced my superiors to drop megabucks to acquire this system. Now I have to make sure it works as advertised. Perhaps the slowness is not an issue for many. For us, this is just a nasty surprise. Of course, there are other options for workflow. But even a cursory comparison has convinced me that I MUST at least start in Phocus. What it can bring out of the FFF files is simply not there with any other piece of software. And that makes sense; that's how Hasselblad designed the whole system.

 

[MGrayson]

I really appreciate everyone's responses. My Mac has a local 8TB SSD where the fff files (153 GB) are stored. Every time I relaunch Phocus, the browser has to slowly redraw the thumbnails. I look at preferences, which are minimal, and other settings, but no clue as to why this is. My Phocus is up to date and I am on a fast new Mac with 128GB of RAM. It seems insane that the browser has to redraw all the thumbnails. I am just sitting there waiting for the thumbnails to come in one by one by one before I can do anything. I simply cannot start editing until Phocus has stopped bringing in all the thumbnails. I can understand that when Phocus makes the original import of the 1400 fff files the import will be slow. But once it is in there and I only relaunch, why does Phocus have to redraw? If I open the activity monitor during this process Phocus is taking up 112% of the CPU with over 80 threads running! My Mac's fan goes crazy until Phocus is done. Whatever for? Just to go get the thumbnails? C'mon Hasselblad. Cache the damn thumbnails like everyone else! What a wasteful piece of software.

Something is wrong with your installation. I don't know what library and cache files need removing, but you must do a clean install. No one else is experiencing this.

I looked around. Previews are kept in ~/Library/Application Support/Phocus/PreviewCache/. Not sure if you'll want to delete the whole Phocus folder there. Still looking for the thumbnails...

 

[TechTalk]

It hasn't been mentioned yet, so I'll suggest checking Phocus preferences to make sure that "Extended GPU Usage" is activated.

 

[MGrayson]

I have Embedded Preview Size set to Large, and Save Adjustments to Always Save.

 

[emilediaz]

It hasn't been mentioned yet, so I'll suggest checking Phocus preferences to make sure that "Extended GPU Usage" is activated.

TechTalk: That's the first thing I checked 2 days ago. That pref is checked on for sure. There are only so many prefs in Phocus that could affect what I am seeing.

 

[emilediaz]

Something is wrong with your installation. I don't know what library and cache files need removing, but you must do a clean install. No one else is experiencing this.

I looked around. Previews are kept in ~/Library/Application Support/Phocus/PreviewCache/. Not sure if you'll want to delete the whole Phocus folder there. Still looking for the thumbnails...

MGrayson: Thanks for your suggestions. I am looking at this. My "~/Library/Application Support/Phocus/PreviewCache/" is empty. Nothing there. Are you seeing any cache files in yours?

 

[TechTalk]

I'm still curious what the response was from Hasselblad support. I assume that before you came online to start broadcasting to the world that their software was a "poorly implemented piece of crap", "awful software", and a "wasteful piece of software", for which they "should be ashamed of themselves" that you contacted their tech support to give them an opportunity to assist you with your issue.

Like any other software, a file can become corrupted and cause problems. Hasselblad tech support knows which files or folders you may need to delete to resolve your issue. But if for some reason you haven't contacted their tech support yet, I would start by quitting Phocus and deleting from your User Library » Preferences » "dk.hasselblad.phocus.plist" and then relaunch. This will delete any preferences that you've previously set, so you would need to reset those.

It's quite possible (even likely) that the issue resides elsewhere, which is where Hasselblad tech support advice would be more helpful. But, deleting preference files is frequently a first step in resolving issues.

 

[MGrayson]

MGrayson: Thanks for your suggestions. I am looking at this. My "~/Library/Application Support/Phocus/PreviewCache/" is empty. Nothing there. Are you seeing any cache files in yours?

I did, but when I deleted them they didn’t come back. So that’s not the problem…

 

[TechTalk]

If you have another computer to load the software and some of your images on, it may be helpful to determine if the problem you're experiencing is consistent and persists with a new application installation on different hardware.