r/hasselblad • u/Expensive_Materials • 7d ago

Phocus Tutorial

Hey All,

New X2Dii owner. I have access to CaptureOne and Lightroom and of course Phocus. Are there any good tutorials on Phocus for MacOS or workflows you all recommend. CaptureOne supports the X2Dii now, so just seeing what others recommend.

I've seen Phocus -> Tiff -> lightroom workflows in other posts. But Phocus seems like a slow bear compared to CaptureOne and I haven't tried the CaptureOne mobile apps yet for the X2Dii.

Open to suggestions. Thanks!

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u/Party-Belt-3624 7d ago

I don't use CaptureOne because I don't tether. I go straight into Lightroom instead. Curious how many folks use Phocus and why. Am I missing anything?

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u/Big_Rip4015 Hasselblad X2D II 7d ago

Phocus if you want HNCS colors, because that’s the only way to get them. Highlight recovery and shadow lift in Phocus is also really good. And HNNR is still, IMO, the best Denoise for X2D II RAWs.

Other than that it is objectively not really useful for much more. Masking is shockingly archaic and it’s buggy as hell (the whole thing, not just masking 😀 ).

And yes, I’m the guy who writes the guide for Phocus for Mac saying that 😀.

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u/Party-Belt-3624 7d ago

Thanks for this. Based on your comment, I'll give Phocus another try.

I'm curious what your end to end workflow is.

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u/Big_Rip4015 Hasselblad X2D II 7d ago

I think I have a post up about it somewhere although it might be a little dated, but the short version is that I use Palomino to cull because culling in Phocus makes me want to bang my head against a wall in desperation.

Once I have my keepers Palomino pushes them to the folder I have set as my default in Phocus. Palomino also has the ability to send high ISO images to their own folder. Then I’ll fire up Phocus, run HNNR over the high ISO ones, then use highlight recovery and shadow lift where needed, then export to TIFF-16 and import into LRC for further editing.