Phocus Survey

[NickT]

Hi Guys
I'd really like to hear your thoughts on Phocus in two areas, speed and reliability. If you would be kind enough to follow my template below I will collate responses and send through to DK. If you have more than one machine running Phocus please create a second post.
Thanks in advance
Nick-T

[NickT]

Machine specs:

2 X 2.8 Ghz Quad Core MacPro

10 Gig RAM

Nvidia Geforce 120 GT
Nvidia Geforce 8800


Speed/performance rated from 1 to 10, where 10 is excellent and 1 is useless and taking into account your expectations for your setup. (Ie don't give it a 1 for performance when you know you are running on a crappy laptop):

5

Reliability rated from 1 to 10 where 10 is excellent and 1 is useless:

8

Nick-T

[pippobaudo]

MAC PRO

Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors

6 gb ram

Performance  7

MacBook Pro

2.8 ghz

Perfomance 5

Stability 7

[alexkent]

nick,
my opinion is similar:

2x 2.26ghz quad core nehalem Mac Pro, 12GB, ATI Radeon 4870 512MB.

Speed 4-5
Reliability 8

Speed perfectly usable on this machine, but everything else (Aperture, ACR) is significantly faster. And given this is a current model, Pro range, eight core computer, it should be faster.

alex kent.

[thodges]

I've tried it, but it's so inferior to Adobe Light Room, that I now only use it for firmware updates !

[Mike Farrelly]

PC Laptop - Windows XP
Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz
0.99 GB RAM
Nil Video Card

NOT using Phocus (retaining Flexcolor v4.8.6)

Mike Farrelly
Auckland, New Zealand

[jimgolden]

Phocus 2.0 is HUGE improvement over earlier. recovery, shad fill and clarity are much appreciated

2.66 quad core Mac Pro (late 2009) (desktop)
16GB RAM
4 disk striped RAID
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120

performance: 8

Reliability: 6

I have a nagging problem that phocus crashes sometimes when I send things to the trash on all my machines.

[jimgolden]

iMac 27" 3.0 intel core 2 duo (NOT i7) (tethering machine - heavy use)
8GB RAM
ati radeon 4850

performance: 7

Reliability: 6

I have a nagging problem that phocus crashes sometimes when I send things to the trash on all my machines. This is slower than the hot rod tower, but not by much for Phocus

[bernardo68]

Post deleted by moderator.

http://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/index.php/topic,1051.new.html#new

[jimgolden]

don't you mean phuck Bernardo?

have fun with that aperture...

[silvesterkok]

MacPro 2 x 3Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon

10Gb Ram

ATI Radeon HD 2600

Performance: 7

Reliability: 9

Images only sharp at 100% any other % is useless compared to LR/Aperture/Photoshop

Silvester Kok
ROSE Photography
The Netherlands

[MK]

Mac OS 10.4.4
Processor: 2x3 G Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory: 9 gb

Using FlexColor 4.8.8,
NOT using Phocus

Performance: 10
Reliability: 10


MATTHEW KLEIN
mk@matthewklein.com
http://www.matthewklein.com
P: 212 255-6400

[NickT]

Interesting first post bernardo, I must say I'm tempted to delete it...

[silverpixel]

MacPro 2x 3.2 Quad-Core Intel Xeon

10 GB ram

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Speed/performance: 6

Reliability: 8

[Hywel]

Machine specs:

2 X 2.8 Ghz Quad CoreXeon  MacPro

8 Gig RAM

Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT

MacPro RAID card, data drive  = 3 x 1 TB in RAID 5


Speed/performance rated from 1 to 10, where 10 is excellent and 1 is useless and taking into account your expectations for your setup. (Ie don't give it a 1 for performance when you know you are running on a crappy laptop):

5 - for general image processing
3 - for keywording multiple images
2- for bringing up an actually sharp preview (since you have to go to 100% to do it with distortion corrections on)

Reliability rated from 1 to 10 where 10 is excellent and 1 is useless:

8

My main performance related issue is also the unsharp previews at anything other than 100% with distortion corrections turned on- this makes image selection in Phocus impossibly slow. Workflow in Phocus is generally good, but the other slowdown is when keywording multiple images at once. Somewhere around 50 images selected or so, this dramatically slows down, requiring a few seconds to catch up- annoying, when trying to apply a dozen different keywords to a batch of images.

Version 2 is significantly improved in all respects. Shadow fill and clarity are welcome; negative clarity a la Lightroom might be welcome too (it is useful for skin tones in portraits for example). I'd still like to see a full non-destructive editing toolkit a la LR3/Ap3, but given that that seems unlikely, Phocus is a reasonable tool for the limited job it does.

I use it as a feeder to Lightroom 3 beta (right now) and Aperture 3 (still deciding which to go with). Colours are better out of Phocus, but it is a shame not be able to use proper parametric image editing without an intermediate TIFF.

Cheers, Hywel.