FlexColor resources

[cpclee]

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Can someone suggest a good website that explains FlexColor? I've been using Apeture and CS4 with my DMR files but would like to learn FlexColor. I find it to be rather unintuitive. For example, I couldn't choose the DMR profile unless the camera was plugged. Neither do I understand the reason for needing to convert to .fff.

 

Thanks!

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[Jamie Roberts]

It's completely hard to use unless your're tethered, and have a Hassy, in which case the scratch pad, the fff files and other stuff makes perfect sense

 

The profiles for the DMR in FlexColor are excellent, however, and worth playing with! FWIW, I've found that C1 gets me 95% of the way there with 100% better workflow

[robsteve]

You don't need to select the DMR profile like you are doing. I assume you are choosing the camera profile for tetherd shooting. If you are just importing the DNG files, it will select the proper DMR profile there and you do not need to have the camera attached.

 

I have also found that if you import the files with FlexColor, you can then use Hasselblad's Phocus software on the fff files. Phocus is a bit more intuitive than FlexColor.

 

Either Flexcolor or Phocus are more difficult to use than Capture One or Lightroom. Capture one will give the sharpest files, Flexcolor the best color. Unless you want perfect skin tones or better reds with little effort, Capture One is the better choice.

 

When using Capture one, tune down the noise reduction as it kills some of the fine details in the DMR file.

 

Robert

[Overgaard]

Here's a quick run down.

 

Open FlexColor

 

Choose Window > Import

Then in that new Import window, scroll to choose desitantion folder to be imported.

(You have to have your DNG's in a folder you can choose)

Then you get a preview of the DNG's in the folder in the Import window.

Double-click the one you want to open and it opens in the mail window.

You can adjust white balance and all, but often clicking A for Auto is the right way to start. Sometimes you will need to tone down (desaturate) red, choose 2 in shadow depth, tone down highlight by typing 1 or 2 in hightlight, etc. But very often it's there in Auto.

When done, you press SAVE and it saves a TIFF file.

 

The DNG file will now be gone from your Import window, so if you want to "re-import" it, choose Window > Thumbnails where it is now, together with all previous files. You can open that and do further adjustments later. Those are files now in Scratchpad folder somewhere on your disk, and as far as I know those are .fff files and can be opened in Phocus if you like to. Though I find Phocus too slow and not worth the hassle to work with. I use Lightroom for most of my workflow from the DMR and choose a few files to work on in FlexColor if the result is not as I want it from Lightroom.

 

A warning about FlexColor is that the preview you see is very bad. So save a TIFF or two and open those in PS to see what it looks like. And learn the look of FlexColor that way.

[cpclee]

Thanks for the tips everyone.

 

I used the trial version of Capture One very briefly when testing the M8 and thought it gave extremely good image quality. I'm currently using Aperture for cataloging and both Aperture and CS4 for RAW conversion. Aperture has very flexible versioning and file / backup systems and is very nicely integrated into Mac OS X. My intention is to use FlexColor as the default converter for the best images but have to say its interface really sucks. (Even worse than SilverFast which is already really bad.)

[cpclee]

Thanks Thorsten for the step by step instructions. I will be sure to try our your secret (no more) tweaks.