Hasselblad Workflow Question - Phocus and Lightroom

[ghaynes754]

For those of you that shoot with an H3D what is your workflow process.  Examples
1.  Do you process in Phocus and out and bring into Lightroom.  What format for the export?
2.  Do you process the raw H3D files into Lightroom directly?
3.  Do something totally different?

My impression is that there are distinct advantages to both tools.  Phocus for the lens correction for example. (Maybe someone will make it a setup in Lightroom??)

Let the opinions and voting begin....

[pflower]

Well I'll throw my workflow in for a H3D-39.

I import everything into Lightroom as 3FRs and use LR to weed out and delete those I don't want to keep.

Most of the files I will then adjust in LR and print direct to an Epson 3800.  I was not particularly happy with either the Adobe Standard camera profile in LR or the Hasselblad profile (although subject to what I say below they are not actually bad) so I have made a camera profile with the x-rite Color Checker Passport which seems pretty good.

In general I would say that 75% of my work (predominantly landscape or at least subjects in natural daylight) are well served by using 3FRS in LR and then printing to inkjet.  I have spent a lot of time comparing 3FRs directly printed from LR with 16bit Tiffs exported from Phocus.  There is very little in it.

The one area in which LR falls flat on its face with the H3D-39 is with images with saturated reds.  For some reason LR translates these into vastly oversaturated neon glow oranges.  Printed out of LR they look like they are vastly out of gamut and the printer has thrown a hissy fit.  Although it is possible to improve these with the hue and saturation sliders in the profile pane, this is not particularly satisfactory.  So for those I import into Phocus and export the 3fffs as Tiffs which in terms of colour accuracy are much superior.  I tend to do virtually no actual processing in Phocus and find that a "neutral" (i.e all settings on default) export as Tiff from the 3fffs is very good.  These then go back into LR and are stored next to the 3FRs.  I then delete the 3fffs.

I tend not to use Photoshop at all these days.  Most of the adjustments made to the 3FRs in Lightroom can be copied over to the Tiffs exported from Phocus and then fine-tuned and printed.

Exhibition prints are mostly C prints.  For those I always make tiffs through Phocus, adjust in LR and use Photoshop for the final stages.  To be honest it is very difficult to tell the differences in quality between tiffs exported directly from 3FRS in LR and those generated out of Phocus.  You can tell there are _differences_ but not really that one is superior in quality (saturated reds and some very saturated greens excepted).

Were it not for storage issues I suspect I would export everything as 16bit Tiffs from Phocus and then use LR.  But 256MB per file is too large for the amount of files I shoot.  LR seems to handle the large tiffs perfectly happily.

Mind you I do nothing that requires absolute colour accuracy (i.e. product shots etc).  If I did then i suspect Phocus would be the starting point.

[JonathanBenoit]

Well I'll throw my workflow in for a H3D-39.

I import everything into Lightroom as 3FRs and use LR to weed out and delete those I don't want to keep.

Most of the files I will then adjust in LR and print direct to an Epson 3800.  I was not particularly happy with either the Adobe Standard camera profile in LR or the Hasselblad profile (although subject to what I say below they are not actually bad) so I have made a camera profile with the x-rite Color Checker Passport which seems pretty good.

In general I would say that 75% of my work (predominantly landscape or at least subjects in natural daylight) are well served by using 3FRS in LR and then printing to inkjet.  I have spent a lot of time comparing 3FRs directly printed from LR with 16bit Tiffs exported from Phocus.  There is very little in it.

The one area in which LR falls flat on its face with the H3D-39 is with images with saturated reds.  For some reason LR translates these into vastly oversaturated neon glow oranges.  Printed out of LR they look like they are vastly out of gamut and the printer has thrown a hissy fit.  Although it is possible to improve these with the hue and saturation sliders in the profile pane, this is not particularly satisfactory.  So for those I import into Phocus and export the 3fffs as Tiffs which in terms of colour accuracy are much superior.  I tend to do virtually no actual processing in Phocus and find that a "neutral" (i.e all settings on default) export as Tiff from the 3fffs is very good.  These then go back into LR and are stored next to the 3FRs.  I then delete the 3fffs.

I tend not to use Photoshop at all these days.  Most of the adjustments made to the 3FRs in Lightroom can be copied over to the Tiffs exported from Phocus and then fine-tuned and printed.

Exhibition prints are mostly C prints.  For those I always make tiffs through Phocus, adjust in LR and use Photoshop for the final stages.  To be honest it is very difficult to tell the differences in quality between tiffs exported directly from 3FRS in LR and those generated out of Phocus.  You can tell there are _differences_ but not really that one is superior in quality (saturated reds and some very saturated greens excepted).

Were it not for storage issues I suspect I would export everything as 16bit Tiffs from Phocus and then use LR.  But 256MB per file is too large for the amount of files I shoot.  LR seems to handle the large tiffs perfectly happily.

Mind you I do nothing that requires absolute colour accuracy (i.e. product shots etc).  If I did then i suspect Phocus would be the starting point.

I'm not sure about this. If you are worried about storage issues. Why not use lightroom to slecet the "keepers" then import those 3FR files into phocus and process them that way? Phocus is a great piece of software that is fine tuned for the hasselblad images. To use a different software is limiting. Same thing goes for Phase One backs and Capture One.
I'm not sure there is any reason to use LR with any digital back files. Just my opinion...

[pflower]

Ah, but the only way out of Phocus is via a Tiff which takes up 256mb compared to a 50MB 3FR.  I have already nearly filled up a 2TB drive - meaning 3 drives when you allow for 2 backups.  I think I would prefer to deal with Tiffs but its getting cumbersome with piggy-backed drives.  Either I am going to have to revisit storage possibilities - RAID systems etc. or be more selective about what I shoot.

[Nick-T]

Why export 16 bit Tiffs? Do the heavy lifting (major tone corrections in Phocus (which will always be on the 16 bit file) then export an 8 bit Tiff.

My workflow I much prefer the RAW processing of Phocus to anything else for 'blad files so I sort/process in Phocus and then export 8 bit Tiff to Photoshop for editing (if needed) then deliver to client. I then use Light room if I need to re-purpose that tiff for web portfolio etc.

Nick-T

[David Watson]

I have tried editing raw files in Lightroom, Photoshop and Phocus.  There is no question in my mind that Phocus produces the best raw conversion but Lightroom is the best "library"manager. 

I import all the files into Lightroom from the cards
Do a selection in Lightroom
Export those files in their native format to a folder on my desk top
import them into Phocus
Do any adjustments
Export the keepers as 16 bit TIFFs (sorry Nick)
Re-import them to Lightroom. 

In order to keep track of what is happening I keep the original file name/number so that I can keep the raw file with the TIFF in my Lightroom library.  The rejects are binned and the not-sures are archived with a copy of the keepers in raw and TIFF format.

Finally I do a selection on the TIFFs and export them with a job name in both TIFF and JPEG format for the client.

Sounds complicated I know but it works for me.