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Author Topic: Hasselblad Raw Processing  (Read 10764 times)

Brad P

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Re: Hasselblad Raw Processing
« Reply #20 on: May 30, 2017, 05:13:41 pm »

Giving new life to this post. . . after spending several days with Phocus, comparing it to Lightroom, and researching some of the differences, I'm finding that I'm likely to adopt it for all my post processing for the X1D unless I have a file that has so much dynamic range I need to yank it in a bit at the edges with LR/CR.  Here's the some concrete reasons for that (refinements, confirmations or denials welcome):

1. The colors appear more natural and pleasing.  This is the case even when I use Colorchecker Passport to color correct the files.  There appears to be some Hasselblad secret sauce here that Lightroom hasn't picked up on and maybe can't given its cross platform nature.  This probably is related to a couple things.  (A) From some research, Hasselblad cameras and Phocus appear to operate within their own colorspaces, "Hasselblad RGB" (a colorspace near, but different than Adobe RGB) and "Hasselblad L*RGB" (a colorspace near ProPhoto RGB); and (B) Hasselblad uses some sort of algorithm (similar to a dual illuminate color profile, but apparently significantly more complicated) that ends up fine tuning colors based on the white balance adjustment.  I understand this conceptually, but it's not perfectly clear how it's done from what I've found in the public domain.  If anyone knows more about where I can find more information on this please let me know.

2. While LR/CR's highlight recovery clearly pulls in a greater amount of highlight and shadow detail, it appears that most files (even landscape) can fit within Phocus's dynamic range and be adjusted very well with its more limited Recovery and Shadow Fill sliders.  Phocus cannot save blown out highlights that LR/CR can (and Phocus actually does a horrid job for badly blown highlights in relation to LR/CR), but for highlight areas that were close to properly exposed, Phocus's highlight Recovery slider IMO does a much better job (and LR/CR appear to apply sharpening to detail that isn't actually there).  So . . . I guess I will need to expose highlights properly from now on . . . sigh.

3. Initially I thought that LR/CR's exposure sliders gave more control of the histogram than Phocus's sliders.  That's true, but again, with properly exposed highlights and Phocus, I found myself able to use Phocus's curve adjustment to manage a lot of what I use to manage with LR/CR's exposure sliders, and probably with better effect.

4. Colorchecker Passport and Colorchecker Digital SG are built into Phocus, appear optimized to the Hasselblad colorspaces (??), you don't have to reboot to create them and creating them is a tiny bit easier.

5. After I'm finished with all these adjustments I can demosaic the whole raw shooting match to 16 bit Tiffs and work on them in Photoshop or my other 3rd party programs.

Although Phocus is freeware for other camera platforms, I don't believe these colorspace benefits are available to those other platforms.

We'll see how it goes in time, but Phocus might be a nice unintended benefit from my switching to Hassy.  If now only Hassy would give Live View highlight blinkies and/or Live View histograms to the X1D platform, I wouldn't have to review each pic against the histogram to make sure I don't blow the shot, and the world will seem all good again!
« Last Edit: May 30, 2017, 05:47:11 pm by Brad P »
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Ghaag

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Re: Hasselblad Raw Processing
« Reply #21 on: January 15, 2019, 12:47:30 pm »

Giving new life to this post. . . after spending several days with Phocus, comparing it to Lightroom, and researching some of the differences, I'm finding that I'm likely to adopt it for all my post processing for the X1D unless I have a file that has so much dynamic range I need to yank it in a bit at the edges with LR/CR.  Here's the some concrete reasons for that (refinements, confirmations or denials welcome):

1. The colors appear more natural and pleasing.  This is the case even when I use Colorchecker Passport to color correct the files.  There appears to be some Hasselblad secret sauce here that Lightroom hasn't picked up on and maybe can't given its cross platform nature.  This probably is related to a couple things.  (A) From some research, Hasselblad cameras and Phocus appear to operate within their own colorspaces, "Hasselblad RGB" (a colorspace near, but different than Adobe RGB) and "Hasselblad L*RGB" (a colorspace near ProPhoto RGB); and (B) Hasselblad uses some sort of algorithm (similar to a dual illuminate color profile, but apparently significantly more complicated) that ends up fine tuning colors based on the white balance adjustment.  I understand this conceptually, but it's not perfectly clear how it's done from what I've found in the public domain.  If anyone knows more about where I can find more information on this please let me know.

2. While LR/CR's highlight recovery clearly pulls in a greater amount of highlight and shadow detail, it appears that most files (even landscape) can fit within Phocus's dynamic range and be adjusted very well with its more limited Recovery and Shadow Fill sliders.  Phocus cannot save blown out highlights that LR/CR can (and Phocus actually does a horrid job for badly blown highlights in relation to LR/CR), but for highlight areas that were close to properly exposed, Phocus's highlight Recovery slider IMO does a much better job (and LR/CR appear to apply sharpening to detail that isn't actually there).  So . . . I guess I will need to expose highlights properly from now on . . . sigh.

3. Initially I thought that LR/CR's exposure sliders gave more control of the histogram than Phocus's sliders.  That's true, but again, with properly exposed highlights and Phocus, I found myself able to use Phocus's curve adjustment to manage a lot of what I use to manage with LR/CR's exposure sliders, and probably with better effect.

4. Colorchecker Passport and Colorchecker Digital SG are built into Phocus, appear optimized to the Hasselblad colorspaces (??), you don't have to reboot to create them and creating them is a tiny bit easier.

5. After I'm finished with all these adjustments I can demosaic the whole raw shooting match to 16 bit Tiffs and work on them in Photoshop or my other 3rd party programs.

Although Phocus is freeware for other camera platforms, I don't believe these colorspace benefits are available to those other platforms.

We'll see how it goes in time, but Phocus might be a nice unintended benefit from my switching to Hassy.  If now only Hassy would give Live View highlight blinkies and/or Live View histograms to the X1D platform, I wouldn't have to review each pic against the histogram to make sure I don't blow the shot, and the world will seem all good again!

Brad, I was hoping to see if this is still your preferred workflow and if you had any additional insights.
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Brad P

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Re: Hasselblad Raw Processing
« Reply #22 on: January 15, 2019, 02:36:23 pm »

Brad, I was hoping to see if this is still your preferred workflow and if you had any additional insights.

Yes it is.  And a few weeks ago, Phocus was updated with (1) much better highlights (in particular) and shadows recovery and (2) two new interesting “details” sliders (basically a micro contrast and a local contrast slider) making Phocus even more likely to be used on all my Hasselblad files now. 
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Ghaag

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Re: Hasselblad Raw Processing
« Reply #23 on: January 15, 2019, 08:39:33 pm »

Thanks for the update Brad!
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