Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: Brad P on May 15, 2017, 03:13:58 pm
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I recently purchased a Hasselblad X1D and am wondering whether I can squeeze out more IQ using Phocus instead of Lightroom/Camera Raw (hereinafter "LR") for untethered raw conversion.
Personally, I am proficient with LR, but not yet Phocus. I don't want to waste much time learning Phocus if LR gives substantially the same (and maybe better) results. Today, Hasselblad says LR is substantially equivalent to Phocus in the second paragraph of page 6 of its Phocus manual (see http://static.hasselblad.com/2014/12/Phocus_User-Manual_v17.pdf). I've spent hours reading posts/articles and demoed Phocus a bit. So far I think LR may be better for me, but there appear to be meaningful pros and cons. I haven't demoed Phocus enough yet to gain the type of experience with it that I hope readers here can share their thoughts on.
Below are observations from my reading and experimenting.
1. Phocus unsurprisingly seems to have better out of the box color. However, I use ColorChecker Passport (and am considering using ColorChecker Digital SG) to create camera profiles for different lighting conditions and I believe that narrows the gap considerably. On that score, I have noticed that Phocus will profile ColorChecker Digital SG profiles as part of its workflow, which is a plus for Phocus.
2. LR seems much better at darks/lights recovery. Phocus appears only to have two directly relevant sliders (recovery and shadow fill) and they only move in one direction (to recover darks or blown out highlights, not to push them out). It appears that with Phocus, one must use the exposure and contrast sliders together with recovery and shadow fill to rather crudely manage the density of highlight and shadow areas. LR has four apparently much more effective sliders (highlights, shadows, whites, blacks) each moving to expand or contract the aspects they adjust. When pushed, Phocus also seems to somewhat violently damage the color balance of recovered highlights. LR does a much better job retaining the balance and can be pushed much further with useful results. With its tools, LR seems to be much more useful in compressing or decompressing shadows and highlights (and indirectly with exposure and contrast, the whole dynamic range of an image), as well as leaving measurable room at each ends of the histogram for further post processing in Photoshop or elsewhere.
3. Lens profiles. I don't yet create my own lens profiles and maybe that is something I should learn. Phocus already has lens profiles for Hasselblad's new XCD lenses, LR doesn't yet, but I am hopeful will soon. There is some loose commentary I have read stating that Hasselblad/Phocus lens profiles are better than LR's and that they also manage chromatic aberration through their lens profiles. I can't yet evaluate the truth of that given the profiles for lenses I have are not yet in LR.
4. Moire and chromatic aberration management. Phocus seems the clear winner for moire reduction with its moire (healing) brush, although that tool also seems to leave behind visible traces of desaturation. LR has a dedicated chromatic aberration tool where Phocus seems to bake that into the demosaicing/lens correction process. I can't tell yet who is the winner on chromatic aberration.
5. Demosaicing. I read some loose commentary that Hasselblad knows their raw files better and cares about them more, so is in a position to develop better demosaicing algarithims. (This of course is the same argument in favor of every camera manufacturer's proprietary raw developer.). I am unable so far to see if this is the case over LR in any meaningful way.
Interested in other's thoughts. Apologies to readers who believe this should be posted the "Other Raw Converters" forum, but looking at the varied posts there and here, I thought it more appropriate here particularly with all the new X1D discussions.
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I recently purchased a Hasselblad X1D and am wondering whether I can squeeze out more IQ using Phocus instead of Lightroom/Camera Raw (hereinafter "LR") for untethered raw conversion.
Personally, I am proficient with LR, but not yet Phocus. I don't want to waste much time learning Phocus if LR gives substantially the same (and maybe better) results. Today, Hasselblad says LR is substantially equivalent to Phocus in the second paragraph of page 6 of its Phocus manual (see http://static.hasselblad.com/2014/12/Phocus_User-Manual_v17.pdf). I've spent hours reading posts/articles and demoed Phocus a bit. So far I think LR may be better for me, but there appear to be meaningful pros and cons. I haven't demoed Phocus enough yet to gain the type of experience with it that I hope readers here can share their thoughts on.
Below are observations from my reading and experimenting.
1. Phocus unsurprisingly seems to have better out of the box color. However, I use ColorChecker Passport (and am considering using ColorChecker Digital SG) to create camera profiles for different lighting conditions and I believe that narrows the gap considerably. On that score, I have noticed that Phocus will profile ColorChecker Digital SG profiles as part of its workflow, which is a plus for Phocus.
2. LR seems much better at darks/lights recovery. Phocus appears only to have two directly relevant sliders (recovery and shadow fill) and they only move in one direction (to recover darks or blown out highlights, not to push them out). It appears that with Phocus, one must use the exposure and contrast sliders together with recovery and shadow fill to rather crudely manage the density of highlight and shadow areas. LR has four apparently much more effective sliders (highlights, shadows, whites, blacks) each moving to expand or contract the aspects they adjust. When pushed, Phocus also seems to somewhat violently damage the color balance of recovered highlights. LR does a much better job retaining the balance and can be pushed much further with useful results. With its tools, LR seems to be much more useful in compressing or decompressing shadows and highlights (and indirectly with exposure and contrast, the whole dynamic range of an image), as well as leaving measurable room at each ends of the histogram for further post processing in Photoshop or elsewhere.
3. Lens profiles. I don't yet create my own lens profiles and maybe that is something I should learn. Phocus already has lens profiles for Hasselblad's new XCD lenses, LR doesn't yet, but I am hopeful will soon. There is some loose commentary I have read stating that Hasselblad/Phocus lens profiles are better than LR's and that they also manage chromatic aberration through their lens profiles. I can't yet evaluate the truth of that given the profiles for lenses I have are not yet in LR.
4. Moire and chromatic aberration management. Phocus seems the clear winner for moire reduction with its moire (healing) brush, although that tool also seems to leave behind visible traces of desaturation. LR has a dedicated chromatic aberration tool where Phocus seems to bake that into the demosaicing/lens correction process. I can't tell yet who is the winner on chromatic aberration.
5. Demosaicing. I read some loose commentary that Hasselblad knows their raw files better and cares about them more, so is in a position to develop better demosaicing algarithims. (This of course is the same argument in favor of every camera manufacturer's proprietary raw developer.). I am unable so far to see if this is the case over LR in any meaningful way.
Interested in other's thoughts. Apologies to readers who believe this should be posted the "Other Raw Converters" forum, but looking at the varied posts there and here, I thought it more appropriate here particularly with all the new X1D discussions.
There is no easy answer. I often try both for my raw conversions, but I process a relatively small number of images that I want to print. Depending upon what you tend to photograph, one or the other may be preferred. If you shoot under well controlled lighting conditions such as a studio or even outdoors with sophisticated lighting equipment, I would generally opt for Phocus as I often prefer the rendering and I like that the lens profiles are well done and automatically applied. Beautiful color seems easier to achieve out of the box. However, I generally shoot landscapes under natural, often contrasty light. With those images, LR is just so much more effective in handling highlights and shadows for the reasons you described. The Recovery and Shadow Fill tools in Phocus are crude by comparison. I am often amazed at how I can push around a file in LR to achieve a tonal balance that I would struggle like hell to duplicate through exposure blending in an HDR program.
If only Phocus had the tonal balancing capabilities of LR the choice would be easy.
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If only Phocus had the tonal balancing capabilities of LR the choice would be easy.
+1 based on what I have seen so far.
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I recently purchased a Hasselblad X1D and am wondering whether I can squeeze out more IQ using Phocus instead of Lightroom/Camera Raw (hereinafter "LR") for untethered raw conversion.
1. Phocus unsurprisingly seems to have better out of the box color. However, I use ColorChecker Passport (and am considering using ColorChecker Digital SG) to create camera profiles for different lighting conditions and I believe that narrows the gap considerably. On that score, I have noticed that Phocus will profile ColorChecker Digital SG profiles as part of its workflow, which is a plus for Phocus.
IMO yes. i don't think Lightroom is the best at anything. A sort of Jack of all trades, master of none. If you are shooting raw then you should use Phocus to convert 3FR to FFF anyway.
1. The plus is huge, especially if you do reproduction.
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+1 based on what I have seen so far.
I am sure that the HB software engineers working on Phocus are aware of this. Whether they can convincingly close the gap with LR is unclear, given the huge advantage in resources that Adobe has. I will say that Phase One narrowed the gap with LR beginning with C1 Pro 9.
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I am sure that the HB software engineers working on Phocus are aware of this. Whether they can convincingly close the gap with LR is unclear, given the huge advantage in resources that Adobe has. I will say that Phase One narrowed the gap with LR beginning with C1 Pro 9.
I don't HB engineers are doing anything of the sort.
There is a comparison of the 3 on the Peter Coulson site on May 12
https://www.facebook.com/groups/petercoulson.group/
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I don't HB engineers are doing anything of the sort.
There is a comparison of the 3 on the Peter Coulson site on May 12
https://www.facebook.com/groups/petercoulson.group/
What is it that you seem sure the HB engineers are NOT doing? Trying to figure out how to improve the Recovery and Shadow Fill tools in Phocus?
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If you are shooting raw then you should use Phocus to convert 3FR to FFF anyway.
LR is perfectly capable to handle 3FR files. There is no need to convert to FFF in Phocus.
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What is it that you seem sure the HB engineers are NOT doing? Trying to figure out how to improve the Recovery and Shadow Fill tools in Phocus?
I mean trying to "close the gap to Lightroom". That would be going backwards. (:-)
You can't compare old Phocus to new Lightroom. New to new or old to old, Phocus has consistently produced better files to me and most Hasselblad shooters I talk to.
Lightroom just tries to do too many things and for mass work that is great.
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I mean trying to "close the gap to Lightroom". That would be going backwards. (:-)
You can't compare old Phocus to new Lightroom. New to new or old to old, Phocus has consistently produced better files to me and most Hasselblad shooters I talk to.
Lightroom just tries to do too many things and for mass work that is great.
I generally would agree with you, but not when it comes to the Recovery and Shadow Fill tools in Phocus. IMO, they are poorly implemented compared to LR.
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Based on my experiences:
Lens distortion corrections are automatically handled and done very well by Phocus, Lens chromatic aberrations & fringing can be better handled in Adobe's software. With Adobe's software you have to do a lot of the work yourself whereas Phocus does it all for you; whether it's to the quality you require is the contentious point: with Phocus you have to accept the CAs for what they are (you see them or you don't); with Adobe you have to manually tweak the corrections yourself - if you can bothered / have the time then you'll get the results.
Phocus and Capture One are very successful because they get good results 'Straight Out of the Box'. Adobe's LR is sometimes a bit more of jungle to work through to get good results (am looking forward to using Torger's DcamProf Gui for profiling DCPs). Different people prioritise different tools/solutions as their needs require.
Myself I would just have wanted all the updates ploughed into an improved Flexcolor (and use PS to do the heavy lifting), but I'm sure that powerful as it is, it doesn't fit the bill for a lot of photographer needs.
Btw for Hasselblad's Repro (Low Gain) mode in LR/ACR, select process 2010 using Standard colour, Curve set to linear and Contrast, Brightness & Black point set to 0.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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If only Phocus had the tonal balancing capabilities of LR the choice would be easy.
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++1
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I think you will find as we all have there's not one program to handle all possible files depending on which lens you're shooting with for example wide-angle with a 45° sun flashing in the Lens neither lightroom or phocus will be able to correct the glare that diffuses the contrast from the 28mm. Also backlit thin branches against day grey-ish or whitish sky will have some magenta shift either program is incapable of correcting that magenta shift on the Thin branches however you can come close. The best thing about Phocus is the curves tool it works unlike any curves tool I've ever used so smooth Adams graduations you cannot get that out of light room and you can't get that out of Photoshop the main reason for using Phocus just to use that curves dialogue.
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best thing about Phocus is the curves tool
Interesting been using Phocus for 9 years and the reps always said don't use curves that was a few years back. Must give it a go.
Shaun
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Take a look at Peter Coulson video for the full explanation and demonstration I sure you will understand and also see for yourself the reasons.
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Thank you for all your thoughts. I have definitely not done enough testing to form an opinion for others, but for my work, having tested different cameras, lenses, and many different versions of Aperture, C1, DXO and several others during years past, I am inclined to remain with LR CC. Mainly for its consistency and predictability, but also exposure, lens profiles, and custom camera profiling adjustments. Other functions (noise, sharpening, contrast, structure) seem best mostly done in 3rd party programs for the moment. Demosaicing is most important, and getting all things into good TIFFs. Sometimes, a Jack of all trades is helpful in that, absent some secret Hassy sauce that I don't see at the moment.
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Hi Brad,
I would agree in part. Lightroom does a lot of content aware processing. You may like or you may not. I have seen some pretty strong indication that Lightroom actually have a lot of Hassy's secret souce imbedded. It makes a lot of sense. After all, Hasselblad is not selling Phocus, it is just a tool to make best use of the Hasselblad back.
Offering excellent support for Lightroom/ACR, which happen to be the dominant tool in the industry makes a lot of business sense.
Best regards
Erik
Thank you for all your thoughts. I have definitely not done enough testing to form an opinion for others, but for my work, having tested different cameras, lenses, and many different versions of Aperture, C1, DXO and several others during years past, I am inclined to remain with LR CC. Mainly for its consistency and predictability, but also exposure, lens profiles, and custom camera profiling adjustments. Other functions (noise, sharpening, contrast, structure) seem best mostly done in 3rd party programs for the moment. Demosaicing is most important, and getting all things into good TIFFs. Sometimes, a Jack of all trades is helpful in that, absent some secret Hassy sauce that I don't see at the moment.
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I have seen some pretty strong indication that Lightroom actually have a lot of Hassy's secret souce imbedded. It makes a lot of sense. After all, Hasselblad is not selling Phocus, it is just a tool to make best use of the Hasselblad back.
Hasselblad makes a Lightroom plugin that you can download free from the Hasselblad site.
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Hasselblad makes a Lightroom plugin that you can download free from the Hasselblad site.
Thanks Bob. It looks like that plugin is limited in function to activating LR's tether capabilities for H cameras. Is that the one or is there another you're referring to?
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Thanks Bob. It looks like that plugin is limited in function to activating LR's tether capabilities for H cameras. Is that the one or is there another you're referring to?
That's it. i have never used it as I tether to Phocus and don't use Lightroom. I assume by the name Hasselblad tether plugin for Lightroom that is all it does.
I don't know why Lightroom doesn't tether anyway to Lightroom if it reads Hassy files. It may well do something else and therein is the mystery.
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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!
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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, 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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Thanks for the update Brad!