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.