This review looks at Bibble Labs major update for their professional version of their RAW converter and image editor from the point of view of a Bibble Version 4 user. Other articles cover the new management and selective editing facilities.
The Bibble 5 version had its first announcement in September 2008. The subsequent beta versions had enough bugs to show why it has taken such a long time for a final release of the software. Bibble promised buyers of Bibble in the period after September 2006 a free upgrade when version 5 eventually became available. The test version of Bibble 5 Pro is an upgrade of Bibble 4.10 Pro purchased in this period, and it did not cost anything extra.
The initial version 5.0 still lacks some of the functions of 4.10 such as the healing brush tool and the plugins from 4.10 do not work with 5.0. Part of the reason is that Bibble 5 Pro is completely new for the efficient incorporation of the additional features in to the program.
Color Scheme
The first obvious difference is the color. The default background for image preview is gray, unlike in Bibble 4’s white background. Photographers prefer a gray background because it is similar to standard 18% gray mid-tones. The colors and brightness surrounding the image influence the perception of brightness and color. The neutral gray allows accurate adjustments of these image attributes.
It is possible to change the background colors in Bibble 4 but many photographers would leave it at white without realizing it is optional. In Bibble 5, the gray extends to the control menus on the side, giving a uniform appearance. The new colors are easier on the eyes, white is fine for reading text but it seems a bit bright for long periods of intense scrutiny of the computer screen.
The Layout
At first glance, Bibble 5’s layout is similar to the old version, but there are subtle improvements. The right column layout seems to be more useable. The old one had section headings taking up space, while Bibble 5 Pro’s first control panel has all the basic controls in neat uncluttered layout. Before, some were in different sections and subsection and added mouse clicks to get to them.
There are still tabs to toggle to more advanced control panels allowing finer detail of the basic adjustments. Here to the grouping of image adjustment tools facilitates a logical an deficient workflow. Less clutter in the detail control panel made more room for the combined levels and curves histogram. This is now larger and easier to use.
Professional photographers often use graphic tablets with a pen-like pointer rather than a mouse to navigate applications and adjust images. The adjustment sliders in Bibble 5 Pro work better with the Wacom tablet than did Bibble 4.10 Pro.
File types
Bibble 5 Pro still supports all probable RAW file formats from camera manufacturers, plus JPEG and now you can edit TIFF files, previously you could only create them in Bibble 4.
Output box
One result of the simplification of the tool groupings is some of the controls are now in an expanded output dialog box. These seem to be all the options needed when creating an output copy of the image. Setting the output file is a frustration in Bibble 4 as there it is set in the Miscellaneous section of the right control panel.
Metadata
This is one of the big differences between the Lite and Pro versions of Bibble. The Pro version allows editing of the metadata such as Photographer and IPTC data as well as keywords. Professional photographers use these all the time for submitting and organizing photos. Stock library software often reads this information to provide titles and captions as well as photographer details and keywords. It only needs doing once in the master file and all the data is there whenever they need to submit the image.
There is a difference in Bibble 5 in applying metadata to images. Bibble 4.10 Pro uses a separate popup dialog box for adding metadata to individual files. Adding basic details, such as photographer’s name or a set of common keywords to a group of files, meant selecting the group in the image thumbnail display and then using the metadata dialog box.
In Bibble 5 Pro the metadata is accessed via one of the tabs in the right control panel using the pointing device. The older version used keyboard shortcut (CTRL + I) or an option in a drop down menu at the top left. This change is symptomatic of the small detailed improvements in Bibble 5 Pro. The photographer edits the metadata of one image, copies the settings, and then pastes them to the range of selected images. This makes it a bit harder to accidently overwrite existing metadata.
Change Image View
Another small change that is just more efficient. Bibble 5 Pro uses function keys to toggle from thumbnails to full screen views. There are three hot key F6, F7 and F8 - F6 gives a large image in the display window, F7 adds a row of image thumbnails along the top of the display box as well as a large display of the selected image, while F8 fills the box with thumbnails of images from the current directory.
Lacks Spot Healing
This handy feature to fix small imperfections such as skin blemishes or pimples is missing from the initial release of Bibble Pro, According to Bibble labs on their user forum they intend to include this in an upgrade release of Bibble 5.
Existing Bibble 4 Files
The Bibble environment is a non-destructive editing system, all adjustment details are kept in a separate data file and only applied to output image files. Bibble 5 uses a different data file system than version 4. This means all the current library of photos do not have this data if opened in Bibble 5. This is a particular issue for the asset management section of Bibble 5 as it currently cannot read the metadata from the older files.
Because the data files are different, they can exist side by side so the current suggestion from Bibble Labs is to keep running Bibble 4 alongside Bibble 5 for the moment. The ability to import the image data from version for to the current version 5 is another feature planned for future upgrades.
Still Some Bugs
For some cameras the color temperature adjustment does not show the correct value when trying to return to the “as shot” setting from other color temperatures settings. The image looks right but the displayed color temperature is wrong. (Update: this appears to be fixed in the latest release 5.0.01 )
Cost
For many current Bibble Pro users Bibble 5 Pro is a no cost upgrade, while for new users it is a $US199 download from Bibble Labs for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
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