The present study analyses three beam shaping approaches with respect to a light-efficient generation of i) patterns and ii) multiple spots by means of a generic optical 4f-setup. 4f approaches share the property that due to the one-to-one relationship between output intensity and input phase, the need for time-consuming, iterative calculation can be avoided. The resulting low computational complexity offers a particular advantage compared to the widely used holographic principles and makes them potential candidates for real-time applications. The increasing availability of high-speed phase modulators, e.g. on the basis of MEMS, calls for an evaluation of the performances of these concepts. Our second interest is the applicability of 4f methods to high-power applications. We discuss the variants of 4f intensity shaping by phase modulation from a system-level point of view which requires the consideration of application relevant boundary conditions. The discussion includes i) the micro mirror based phase manipulation combined with amplitude masking in the Fourier plane, ii) the Generalized Phase Contrast, and iii) matched phase-only correlation filtering combined with GPC. The conceptual comparison relies on comparative figures of merit for energy efficiency, pattern homogeneity, pattern image quality, maximum output intensity and flexibility with respect to the displayable pattern. Numerical simulations illustrate our findings.