Post your Bibble 4.0 RAW workflow review/experience!

[sGu]

I'm sure many of you have tried Bibble 4.0 pro trial, and I'd like to hear what you think of it, all the pros and cons please, post some comparison images if possible.

I haven't yet had time to test it out, tomorrow should be fun, and i'll post mine as soon as i have a good run of it.

:D

[TonyKInTexas]

I started out with a D30 and BreezeBrowser. I acquired C1LE when it came out. I've tried various freeware/shareware programs and keep going back to C1LE.

So I grabbed, eagerly, Bibble 4 @ 4:30 AM on Thursday (10/14). Last night I shot a concert with very difficult lighting conditions. I decided to try BreezeBrowser, Bibble and C1LE.

For my needs and tastes, I find C1LE delivers more of what I am looking for. I may even spring for the Pro upgrade at some point. I like the Bibble interface. My issues with Bibble lie in getting my output. If I try to do batch processing it seems like I am limited to 3 queues. Save As, in single mode, is more flexible.

BreezeBrowser still has some uses. Version 2.10 throws an error when trying to do combined processing. Version 2.9 does not have this issue. The colors out of BreezeBrowser are warmer than I care for.



I'm sure many of you have tried Bibble 4.0 pro trial, and I'd like to hear what you think of it, all the pros and cons please, post some comparison images if possible.

I haven't yet had time to test it out, tomorrow should be fun, and i'll post mine as soon as i have a good run of it.

:D

[Jesper]

I have Photoshop CS and Capture One LE, and downloaded Bibble Pro 4.0 last week to try it out.

It looks nice and is fast - both the previews and actual RAW conversion are much faster than in C1. But unfortunately Bibble still has some bugs.

I noticed that Bibble has some bugs in the Shooting Info window:

- On images with shutter speeds longer than 1 second, it displays "Exp Time: 1/0 sec".

- It shows "Metering: Spot" on photos where I used partial metering (the 10D doesn't even have a spot meter!). This is a bug that C1 also had (is fixed in the current version of C1) and it has to do with Canon's cameras that actually use a wrong value in the EXIF info.

- Aperture values are sometimes strange, for example it shows "8.05" or "16.05" for f/8 and f/16.

I had a series of photos of a landscape, and one of the photos looked completely different than the others: the contrast was much stronger. In PS CS and C1, the photo looked just like the others in the series. So it looks like Bibble did something strange to that photo for some reason.

My conclusion until now: nice program, but it is not yet mature, there are bugs that need to be fixed. I've already paid for Capture One and Bibble doesn't have anything (yet) that makes it worth it to buy yet another RAW conversion program.

[tommykjensen]

My conclusion until now: nice program, but it is not yet mature, there are bugs that need to be fixed. I've already paid for Capture One and Bibble doesn't have anything (yet) that makes it worth it to buy yet another RAW conversion program.

But if You don't have C1 I think it is worth the while to have a close look at Bibble.

[Scottes]

OK, I'm going through an image as I type... For the "bugs" someone tell me if they've figured any of these out - it's too early to know if they are bugs or lack of knowledge.


DO NOT set a directory in Bibble, exit, and then delete the directory. Well, it's not a catastrophe, but it took some mad clicking and hunting and poking to get the browser to browse *any* directory. I have no idea how I got it back.

Can't seem to find a way to reset a single tool back to the original settings. That sucks. Oops, found it in the drop-down menu next to the palettes title. Cool.

I wish Crop had some aspect-ratio settings like everyone else. Oops, found it under Tools... Basic... Rotate/Crop... Crop to... Custom. Can't seem to define a new ratio, but that's better.

When you select a new setting (like Sharpening strenght) Bibble updates the picture with the setting under the cursor whether you've clicked on it or not. I don't like that.

And I wish that *any* of these RAW editors would adjust a setting in the background and *then* show the updated image. Waiting for the image to redraw means that you can never really compare two settings. Ideally it would be cool to instantaneously flip back and forth between two options. So if you had a temp of 4900 set, and then chose 5100, there'd be a button to flip back and forth between these two settings *instantaneously* to allow a good comparison. It's just simple BitBlts to save the previews in a couple of buffers...

Picture Options... Auto Level is cool. Works well on my test image that's for sure.

Cool, you can choose output size. That can be handy.

I'm liking the Tools palette and how you can pick and choose and collapse.

Hmmm... No prompt to overwrite an existing image when saving. Kinda odd. But the second save certainly went a whole lot faster!


OK, done. Very minimal processing in PS, but it's here (at 158 KB!):
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=45644


I'm liking Bibble. If Capture One doesn't get their act together with the 20D I may just spring for the extra money and start Bibbling from now on. (That would kinda suck though.)


Edit: Playing with crop some more. The histogram doesn't update and base itself on the crop area - instead it stays the same, showing the histogram for the entire image. That *sucks* IMHO.

[Jesper]

My conclusion until now: nice program, but it is not yet mature, there are bugs that need to be fixed. I've already paid for Capture One and Bibble doesn't have anything (yet) that makes it worth it to buy yet another RAW conversion program.

But if You don't have C1 I think it is worth the while to have a close look at Bibble.

Yes, that's true - if you don't have C1, Bibble is an interesting alternative. C1 also has bugs, but it's slowly getting better, although the people at Phase One are unfortunately not very fast with fixing bugs.

I'm especially worried about that landscape photo I wrote about. Why does Bibble make that one photo look completely different from the others in the series? I feel I can't really trust Bibble when it does such automatic "corrections" to my photos - I want to control any corrections myself.

[sGu]

did you use default settings? I've come across the same situation, and on another forum where Bibble's programmer Eric suggested turn off auto level, auto sharpening and change default choise for contrast level, otherwise you'll see a huge difference between Bibble and other RAW coverters.

[Hogleg 44]

I am trying Bibble, I also tried C1 a while back, but haven't yet convinced myself that is worth the $250 price tag for SE....and they have already demonstrated how little they value their customer base.

For me, in spite of what I read to the opposite, the learning curve of C1 was very simple, and came to me quite quickly.

On the other hand I am finding that Bibble is much more difficult to get a handle on. Processes don't seem to work out the way I think they should. It has crashed on me at least twice, the thumbnail screens don't seem to want to stay in the orientation that I put them, I have to use the drop down menu's to accomplish some of the tasks that the buttons on the toolbar should take care of in my opinion.
I am sure that my problems with it are my own fault, but I am having a difficult time getting it down pat....and the "Help" isn't much help since it points to things that I can't find.

Like the other fellow said....there are bugs!...And I'm not sure they are all of my making.

I like the processing speed, and the developed pictures are 'adequate', but I definitely am still evaluating!!!

[Jesper]

did you use default settings? I've come across the same situation, and on another forum where Bibble's programmer Eric suggested turn off auto level, auto sharpening and change default choise for contrast level, otherwise you'll see a huge difference between Bibble and other RAW coverters.

Yes, just the out-of-the-box settings from Bibble. I've already de-installed it again, so I can't check if switching the auto stuff off helps, but probably it does....