Bibble 5 has arrived, sorta....

[Dusty]

It's almost here, or so they claim. get the crippled preview here: http://bibblelabs.com/products/bibble5/preview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Dusty

[bakubo]

Colleen at Bibble Labs says this about the official release:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=30884641

[Dusty]

I just recently installed my trial of Bibble 4, so I'm ot about to install 5 until I've had some time to learn this one. There's also the fact that the 5 trial version doesn't support all file types, and it doesn't say on the web site which ones that is.

One of the reasons I want to work with Bibble is that it has support for Linux. I often use Linux systems, and one of the reasons it's not my first line desktop is due to the lack of certain apps. Bibble seems to be the best raw converter out there for Linux users. however, I need to compare it to other non-Linus converters to see how it does.

Still being new to digital, I'm still at quite a loss as to how to develop a good workflow and decide what converter I really need.

Dusty

[bakubo]

Many years ago I used Unix at work and then a few years ago I was doing work on Linux. Wrote lots of software for Linux. I have thought several times in the last couple of years that I should give Linux a try for home use. Much fewer problems with regards to viruses and also most of the software is free. Maybe the next time I buy a computer I will install Linux on the old one to play with again to see how much it has progressed since I last used it in 2003. From what I have learned it seems the single biggest problem for me is that there is still not a good photo editor. There is Gimp, the most sophisticated one, but it is 8-bit only. I have read that it has improved a lot in recent years and will be going to full 16-bit fairly soon. By the way, I think most people use ufraw for raw processing:

http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

[rogprov]

Downloaded and tried it out but quite frankly I'm very hard pushed to see any improvement, using a900 Craw files, over the output from CS3's ACR.
Maybe just me - but I have looked very, very closely. I'd be interested in comparison comments from more experienced users.

[Alain]

Hi

My first impression is fast, fast and fast. B5 is very fast for culling and selecting pictures.

I haven't got the time to compare the IQ, but it's clear they have quite some work to do in most area's.

Alain

[bfitzgerald]

Tried it for a while, needs some work interface wise, but it's running very fast. I have not used a faster raw converter. Though it's a bit of a memory hog, I don't mind if it's speedy.

Output wise, too early to say, it looks decent enough.

As for ACR, "everything" beats it for details, C1 4, RT are two that spring to mind..and the difference in high ISO work is astonishing to say the least.

[UrsaMajor]

Maybe the next time I buy a computer I will install Linux on the old one to play with again to see how much it has progressed since I last used it in 2003. From what I have learned it seems the single biggest problem for me is that there is still not a good photo editor. There is Gimp, the most sophisticated one, but it is 8-bit only. I have read that it has improved a lot in recent years and will be going to full 16-bit fairly soon.

For about 10 years, I've been using a photo editor called Picture Window Pro that has been 16 bit since day one - long before Photoshop had even limited 16-bit functions. Obviously, I've been satisfied with PWP, since I have continued to pay for the upgrades - and will probably also upgrade to the Version 5.0 that is currently in beta, as they are adding several features that look very attractive to me.

I run it under Windows XP, but other users have commented on the company's online support forums that Picture Window runs without problem - and very quickly - on Linux using the WINE emulator. The pricing for Picture Window Pro is $89.95, which I find quite acceptable for what they offer. There is also a version at $49.95 that lacks a few of the features of the other version.

The name of the company is Digital Light & Color, and they have a web site at http://www.dl-c.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FWIW, the company got started when Jonathan Sachs (who wrote the actual code for the first version of Lotus 1-2-3, and is an avid photographer) wrote Picture Window for his own use. He is still actively involved on their support forum, which also has participation by a number of very capable customers.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[bakubo]

Tom, yes I am aware of PWP, but I didn't know it could be run on Linux with Wine. I bought PWP 3.5 for Windows in 2004 because I had heard good things about it and it was fully 16 bit. I have used it quite a bit, but not so much recently. I just don't like it. I have read the tutorials and read on the forums and I realize it has a different paradigm for working on images. I much prefer PSP X and PS CS2 -- I like PSP X better than PS CS2 and I would use it all the time *except* for 4 things:

1. The PS shadows/highlights with advanced controls is much more flexible than the PSP backlighting/fill flash controls. The PSP backlighting/fill flash controls don't have the advanced controls and are more like PSE 6 shadows/highlights.

2. I PS like smart sharpen/lens blur better than just the PSP unsharp mask and high pass sharpen.

3. I like to use the PTLens plugin and on PS it is almost completely automatic, but PSP doesn't pass EXIF info to plugins so I have to look up the EXIF info and manually select the camera, lens, and focal length in PTLens. Not a real big deal, but it is annoying and takes a few more seconds.

4. PSP X does many operations in 16 bit, but it still has quite a few that are 8 bit. Sort of like PS 7 or so.

I also have PSE 6 and use just the PSE editor (not organizer) and in some ways I detest it because it has so many bugs with regards to Windows standard app behavior (maximize, minimize, resize, etc. bugs) and it has strange interface delays (click on a checkmark and it usually takes a second or longer to actually check or uncheck, etc.), but I really like using ACR 4.7 because it supports my A700 raw files and all my previous raw files. Lately I have been using PSE quite a bit.

Ideally PSP X would have all the stuff in items 1-4 plus a really good raw converter that was integrated like ACR.

Back to PWP. PWP can't use any of my plugins and I use PTLens a lot, also use Neat Image sometimes, and a few others.

[Dusty]

Henry, you should d/l a live CD of one of the disrtos and try Linux again. It's gotten much better, as have the GUIs and the programs. Try Ubuntu, it's all the rage now. Personally, I like the SuSE flavor myself. There may even be one targeted to imaging.

Dusty