Phocus 1.3 What's next??......

[robertpoll]

It's come up in the past, and I'm sure hasn't been forgotten, but the ability to set output black/white levels would make quite a few people happy I think...

...rob

[David Grover]

From an expert's perspective (that would be my perspective), I must say something that is going to seem very critical of Hasselblad:

By reading many posts on this forum (and LL) about how other photographers work, it seems to me, and I could be wrong, but it seems to me as if the H/Phocus programmers did not work hand in hand with photographers, meaning, by my reading posts of tethered crashing and similar critical failures, it seems as if both developmental and post-release testing was not done in real world environments (i.e. shooting all day, etc...).

Since my needs are much simpler than a product or commercial shooter (go outside, shoot to CF card, download, I'm done), I can only go by what I have read; my experiences with Phocus have been fairly pleasant (although Importing 3FRs from anywhere still dump the FFFs to the Desktop no matter what).

I suggest that Hasselblad management, whomever that may be (), take a more hands on approach with photographers who have demanding work environments and fix the bugs and issues that arise. Because in today's economy, the good will of a few loyal customers is insufficient for keeping a company alive.

I hope Hasselblad listens, because I don't think things are going too well right now.


Kind regards,
Derek

I will certainly say we don't always get it 100% right, but the intentions are good! 

Joking aside, we are always improving and Phocus has had quite rapid additions and will have more by the end of the year.  The comments here are very useful so please don't hold back.

There is an extensive 'to do' list so it is a case of prioritizing them release by release. 

I was at a large studio in Holland yesterday where they are thinking of replacing a dozen or so competitors systems with H3D's.  They have bought one to test.  After an introduction to Phocus and the camera, they were very impressed, which is a story I can repeat many times over.

I would love to get round everyone and really show what Phocus can do, as I appreciate professionals don't always have the time to sit and fiddle with new and different software.

Nick - can you set up a webcast? 

Derek - your import issue - what is the destination set to in the Import window?

D

[Alex Maxim]

Yes it bugs me too. To rate an image I need to click or zoom on the preview first. Otherwise, keyboard commands are ignored.

Another small annoying thing, when I hover a mouse pointer over an image name it highlights which is good. But when you click on it to rename the file the highlighted name is still displayed and does not let you see what you are editing until you move the mouse pointer away.
Either the highlighted name should disappear as soon as you enter into rename mode or the rename must take place inside the highlighted box.

Anyone else experiences this?

[jlm]

i'd like better functionality in setting the export location:

similar to setting capture destination:
1.  have an "export destination" heading in the browser, settable the same was as the Capture destination
2.  in the export ddmenum have a choice: "same as import destination" (a "preview" subfolder would be created there)


as i see it now, the only way to set the export destination is tovia the export ddmenu, work down through your file structure branch by branch, even though the location you want is showing on the browser

jm

[Hywel]

My wish-list for Phocus:

1) Local adjustments. Specifically, a local non-destructive clone/healing brush, in the style of Aperture or LR3. Other local adjustments would be desirable, obviously, but healing/retouch on skin and dust spotting is the real killer one for me.

2) Output sharpening. My final output is for the web, and I would really like a smart adaptive output sharpening routine at the end of the processing chain, after the downsample. Even just giving me a post-downsample unsharp mask with adjustable parameters would be fine, but there are more intelligent solutions around (LR3 again comes up trumps here).

3) (This may be here already but I don't know how to do it). If one has foolishly imported files with small inbuilt previews, reprocess the images to upgrade that to large inbuilt previews! Can this be done if you have only kept the fff's, not the 3fr's? I've learnt from my mistake NOW, but there's still 10,000 images captured on my MacBook before I figured it out which show hideously fuzzy previews on my MacPro Either that or I'm still seeing the 25% render "bug" (and if so, I really need that fixed. I *really* need to be able to judge image sharpness when browsing to rate images).

4) Final output watermarking. The simplest solution would be the ability to overlay a graphic with some user-controlled scaling and placement options (bottom left, rescale to so-and-so pixels high). Again as my final output is the web, I want to overlay my "corporate logo" onto the files. PNG or PSD overlay would be the best- something which supports alpha channels for graduated transparency for drop shadows etc. anyway.

5) Highlight recovery.

6) There may again be a way of doing this, but I'd like a simple way of "synchronising" the setups on Phocus on different computers, so if I set everything up on say my MacPro, I can click a button or copy one file across to have the same setup with all preferences, adjustment sets and metadata sets on my MacBook.

Cheers, Hywel Phillips

[NickT]

Hello Hywel
Great first post!
I've posted a summary of Phocus 2.0 features here.

As to your questions
I'm not sure how hard local adjustments are, I'll ask.

Output sharpening presets, great idea. You can sort of do this now by modifying a bunch of files then exporting but I guess the sharpening would be done before downsample which isn't really what you want...

Great idea re the previews will ask if this can be done.

Watermarks yes I hear you.

Highlight recovery is in 2 and it works! Hurrah!

Yes you can save and share setups. Have a look at the adjustments browser. Select the user tab and hit the "+" at bottom right to create a new adjustment preset. These are saved in users/library/application support/Phocus/settings/user defined from where you can share them.

HTH
Nick-T

[Hywel]

Hi,

  Thanks for the reply and for the presets sharing- will look into that. Hopefully Hasselblad will come up with the goods- highlight recovery in Phocus 2 is welcome news!

  Cheers, Hywel.