3FR vs 3fff - What's the Difference?

[pflower]

I am pretty sure that once upon a time I knew the answer to this, but have forgotten it.

I haven't used Phocus for several years - instead I import my 3FR files directly into Lightroom and use that instead.  With Phocus 3 arriving I decided to have another look.  I had completely forgotten that Phocus imports and then converts the 3FR files to 3fff which it then uses.  There is a small size difference (c10% increase in the 3fff files) but what actually is the difference between the files?  Comparing the same file in 3FR format with the 3fff format in Lightroom it is extremely difficult to discern any significant difference.  Upon printing both versions there is (just possibly) a suggestion that the 3FR is slightly more saturated than the 3fff - but that may just be my eyes.

So my question is - what exactly does Phocus do when converting to 3fff?  Ignoring the perceived wisdom that Phocus does a better job on colours than LR - if using Lightroom is there any theoretical or actual advantage to converting to 3fff before importing into Lightroom?

Thanks for any thoughts

[NickT]

3FR is a compressed format and was really only designed to save space on (historically) smaller cards. There would be no point in converting 3fr into FFF before hitting lightroom.

[stephanbruehl]

Maybe one should point out that 3fr is the pure "raw-RAW" picture whereas the FFF includes all development settings of Phocus (in historic order, so one can go backwards to an earlier setting...).
This, of course, doesn't matter if one uses Lightroom where development settings are stored either internally or separately in xmp.

I myself always store/archive the FFF format and use Phocus mainly because I have a lot of pictures taken with the HTS and in this case only Phocus is capable to apply the appropriate lens corrections.

Best, Stephan