Phocus --> LR --> PS Workflow

[aaronlund71]

I am hoping somebody can shed light on their workflow using Phocus, LR, and PS. 

I have a lot of presets that I have downloaded over time in LR.  Is there a mechanism to copy these presets into Phocus?  Alternatively, should I do basic raw editing in Phocus and then export .tiff into LR to apply to present and finish in PS?

Thanks!

[mikejmcfarlane]

Hi, Phocus and Lightroom are pretty different bits of software, and both are also highly configurable so you will find many different workflows that people use.

I would describe Lightroom as software for cataloguing and RAW conversion/basic manipulation, and the intent is to hold your entire library of photographs in that catalogue. Phocus is not really a catalogue, it is designed to ingest a photo shoot, do RAW conversion, and then you will archive those photographs elsewhere ready to ingest a new photo shoot. That doesn't mean you can't use it as a catalogue e.g. you can create elaborate directory structures, but Lightroom is def better as a catalogue for searching and managing lots of images. ymmv

What Phocus does well is RAW conversion of Hasselblad images. It handles detail, colour (using the Hasselblad Natural Colour System) and lens corrections significantly better that anything you can do with Lightroom or the Adobe RAW converter. Whether you can see this difference will depend on your eyes, your monitor and your chosen output method. Lightroom is pretty good, but if you ware working on a good monitor (e.g. LG 5K) and making high quality large prints the RAW conversion from Phocus is significantly better. Again ymmv

With that said, here is my workflow (I don't use Lightroom any more though as there is no need for it in my workflow):

1. Plug SD card in to Mac and import images in to Phocus.
2. Rate and sort images in Phocus, delete the bad photos.
3. Select best images, make RAW adjustments in Phocus and export 16 bit TIFFs to Photoshop for finishing.
4. Do whatever in Photoshop, save PSB files to disk.
5. Output - make a print, export to Photos shared album, send to client ...
6. Archive RAW and PSB files to Synology Diskstation using a date based directory structure. This is backed up to Synology C2 backup.
7. Enjoy my prints :-)

If I need to re-process any images I would have to retrieve them from my archive and re-import to Phocus. I don't have to do that often, so not an issue for me.

[SrMi]

I am hoping somebody can shed light on their workflow using Phocus, LR, and PS. 

I have a lot of presets that I have downloaded over time in LR.  Is there a mechanism to copy these presets into Phocus?  Alternatively, should I do basic raw editing in Phocus and then export .tiff into LR to apply to present and finish in PS?

Thanks!

When I feel the need to demosaic a raw file with Phocus instead of Adobe, I transfer the raw from LrC to Phocus, do some necessary adjustments in Phocus (e.g., highlights, shadows) and export it back to LrC for further processing in LrC and PS.