Phocus crop tool doesn't work

[michaelrommel]

Hello,

I cannot for the life of me figure out, how to crop an image.

See video here (https://youtu.be/RLcXh9TLL2I). I honestly have no idea, how people work with this software. Adobe is no alternative and there are virtually no programs out there, that can read the images from a CFV II 50C.
What are other people using these days?

Thanks for any tipps,

  Michael.

[tenmangu81]

It's very easy. Did you try the right tool (in orange, at the bottom left of this screenshot) ?

Otherwise, yes, Adobe is a rather good alternative, but you could miss some colours in rare cases (complex lights, for instance) and the lens corrections are better done in Phocus than in Lightroom.

[sc_john]

Hello Michael,

I feel your pain in working with Phocus. Its documentation isn't the most robust.

Here is my approach to using the Crop tool:
1. After image is loaded into main window, open the Crop tool in the adjustments panel on side of screen by clicking on the small triangle.
2. Select your desired crop ratio. You may need to enter a new preset; for example 12x6 was not amongst the original presets.
3. Select the Crop tool icon from icons at bottom of screen.
4. Place the Crop tool pointer (↖︎) point the image, and cursor changes to a cross (+). Press and hold left mouse button, drag to create desired crop. Switch from crop tool to some other tool (magnifier or hand) to implement crop.
5. If you want to modify crop, choose Crop tool... place cursor on image outside the cropped area, move cursor to edge or corner of cropped image (placement has to be fairly precise), cursor changes to arrow with line through the it. Press left mouse button, and proceed with modification.
6. If you want to move the crop selection with our modifying the overall crop, place the crop cursor on the cropped portion of image. Cursor will change to a hand symbol. Click and hold the left mouse button. Reposition crop.

Good luck!

John

[michaelrommel]

Hello everyone,

thank you all that took the time to reply to my pain. I have now figured out what went wrong...

For whatever reason no matter what I did, the cursor did not change from the hand to crosshairs or an arrow to modify an existing crop. But then I rebootet the Mac and then it started working. Very strange I thought. Then some time later again the same thing happened. It was only after some time working with it that I understood, that Phocus locked itself in a "panning" mode. You can get into that mode by double pressing spacebar in rapid succession. Then you cannot operate the crop tool anymore.

A simple press of spacebar again resolves that and brings you back into normal mode.

Now all is working. Albeit, the SW is pretty slow, even on an M1 20 core machine...

Thanks all,

  Michael.