Anyone else struggling with Hasselblad colors in Lightroom? Found a workflow that actually works
I’ve been shooting with the X2D II for a while now, mostly street and documentary work. The color rendering is the whole reason I bought into the system.
That HNCS rendering, the skin tones, the way shadows hold detail...
But every time I edit directly in Lightroom, something dies. The files look like any other camera.
I know Adobe worked with Hasselblad on their camera profile, but it’s just not the same.
After going deep into forums and documentation, I landed on a hybrid workflow: do the color development in Phocus Desktop (white balance, base exposure, lens corrections), export as 16-bit ProPhoto RGB TIFF, then finish everything in Lightroom. Masking, local adjustments, export. That’s where LR genuinely shines.
The problem? Phocus is a pain to set up efficiently, and there are basically zero community presets out there. Everyone builds their own from scratch.
Curious if others have dealt with this:
∙Are you using Phocus at all, or have you given up on it?
∙Anyone built Phocus presets they actually like?
∙Would a set of ready-made Phocus presets (matched with corresponding LR presets for the finishing workflow) be something you’d actually pay for?
Genuine question, not selling anything, just trying to figure out if building this is worth the effort