Posterization in Phocus

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Juan Pascual Garrido

Hello friends, I write you asking your opinion about the effect similar to posterization at the zones out of focus in Phocus. When you view it at 100% the result it´s artificial.  I don´t like it and that´s the reason I work with Lightroom (with natural bokeh) instead of Phocus.

I wait for your answers.

Thank you.

NickT

Can you post a screen shot? This is not something you would expect to see in Phocus.
Nick-T typing at you from Flexframe's secret location under a Volcano

Juan Pascual Garrido

Thanks NickT. I´m going to post photos in these days.

Juan Pascual Garrido

Hello NickT, I´m sorry but my English is not correct. What I wanted to say is that with Phocus I find the final pictures softer than in Lightroom, even using a big amount of sharpness in Lightroom, I find that more evident at bokeh zones.
Could you say how you sharpness your pictures? Thanks a lot!

Juan Pascual Garrido

on the left is using Lightroom and on the right using Phocus

BradP

#5
Hi Juan - just a few thoughts from my experience, I see what you are saying. I find Lightroom (and its cousin, Camera Raw) generally has more tools, and in some cases more powerful tools, than Phocus. However, my experience is that Phocus usually does a better job than Lightroom with most of what it can do, particularly with retaining pleasing colors while manipulating the RAW file.  You might ask yourself what happens to colors as you consider these things too.  So nowadays I usually start out in Phocus and do all I can do there, then export the file to Lightroom and add additional adjustments there (actually for me in a Camera Raw layer in Photoshop). 

Your sharpening level in Lightroom is somewhat on the aggressive side.  Your radius setting is fine, but also on the higher side.  You have also blocked out quite a bit of the softer, lower contrast areas with the mask.  All that might explain the differences you see between the two images and are discussing.  I do like the colors better in the Phocus version though, but that's just a matter of taste. If you think Lightroom's sharpening is more important to you than colors, then you might just want to use Lightroom.

I guess in the end it all really depends on what you want to do and what you find pleasing.  I spend typically half to a full day working on a single image trying to get everything in it as good as I can. so using multiple programs makes sense for me.  If you want to develop 100 or more photos in a day, then it may make more sense just to stick with one or the other program. Rarely but sometimes I take event photos.  In that case my whole workflow is in Lightroom mainly because I've used that longer and can work through images faster there. 

bdp

Looks like sharpness is not turned on in the Phocus version.

NickT

Hello Juan
I use Phocus and Lightroom and have never seen a situation where Phocus delivers less sharp files. As BradP has suggested there is a difference in your sharpening settings between the two and I think that is what you are seeing here.

Cheers
Nick-T

EDIT! Ben spotted what I completely missed, sharpening is turned off in Phocus!
Nick-T typing at you from Flexframe's secret location under a Volcano

BradP

Whoops, missed that too!  Nick and Ben are right. Click on the box in the upper right of the sharpen module.  Phocus's threshold (umbral) slider should be adjusted too, which is similar to LR's masking slider.  That should do it.

Alex

Quote from: Juan Pascual Garrido on October 29, 2017, 04:09:09 AM
on the left is using Lightroom and on the right using Phocus
Hi Juan,

Any chance you could provide a similar comparison image but with the same (activated) settings please?
Maybe with a Radius/Radio of 0.8 as a starting point?

BTW; I too find that I get far better resolve from LR than Phocus but I thought that was with just Multishot files (to be expected as support is at legacy level). I'm starting experiment with Iridient which is initially proving to be superior to both in terms of detail/resolve.

Best

Alex

Juan Pascual Garrido

I´m very grateful to you for your help: BradP, NickT and bdp. I´m sorry for my mistake checking off Sharpness in Phocus.

Now I´m going to post bigger photos with only adjust in sharpness (I think with approximate the same amount) in Lightroom and Phocus.  Alex, if you want to see the pictures with exactly adjusts, let me know and I´ll share them. I think what you notice like me is, for example in landscape photos at distance planes with no good phocus, the objects are really soft, aren´t you?

I´m thinking about BradP´s post, and I would like to reach the best colour. What do you think are the best adjusts for landscapes about Reproduction tools: Working Space, Input profile and Response?

Thanks one more time, friends.



Juan Pascual Garrido


Juan Pascual Garrido


BradP

Yes that looks better.  I definitely like the color and sharpening better in Phocus now.

For reproduction, I used to use color cards for all my critical shooting before switching to Hasselblad (I mostly do landscape).  I did that because the color rendering in lightroom and my other cameras was improved by that.  I even did that for a short period of time after switching to Hasselblad and Phocus.  But I soon found (with Nick's help) that Hasselblad's native color profiling was so good it really was a waste of time. I don't do it anymore except for artwork reproduction.  And in studio controlled lighting conditions it might be useful.  But in mixed lighting conditions and outdoors, the lighting is more variable and changing that personally I don't find it useful or even more accurate in most cases.

However, especially when I shoot high dynamic range images and/or exposure blend images, I have started using that module with its default settings, except I select "low gain" in I think the third (?) box down.  That essentially removes a default contrast curve and flattens the image.  It is then ugly.  But using curves or luminosity adjustments in other software it allows basically a repositioning of the default curve to a more accurate one that you can adjust depending on the scene, or a more artistic one.  Play around with it and you can see what you can do. 

Alex

Thanks again Juan for sending over the file for me to play with the sharpening - It was an eye opener and pleasant surprise to see how well the single shot files sharpen in Phocus compared to LR - it's like they've managed to tweak the local contrast to pull out everything. Unfortunately that same tweak doesn't translate well with the Multishot files resulting in embedded halos (bit of a $$ pity as it can't be turned off and only bypassed by leaving Phocus through DNG).

With a view to colour and exposure, as Brad P mentioned; capturing in/for Low Gain Reproduction response gives an initial true rendition of capture. Using Lst Hasselblad RGB for a working colour space profile so as not to mess with the colours when making exposure/curve modifications, seems to give incredible images which can be all the further enhanced when exporting into TIFF for further tweaking.

Alex