Bibble Pro

Bibble 4.9 is Professional Workflow and RAW Conversion software for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It includes not only common raw enhancement tools but such instruments as Perfectly Clear or Noise Ninja. and the last version has more to offer.

We are looking at it all here.

Supported Cameras and file formats

Bibble Pro support a large variety of camera models.
The most represented brands are Nicon, Olympus, Pentax, Panasonic, and, surprisingly, Creo Leaf. Canon, Fuji, Sony, Konika Minolta, Kodak, and Leica have less than half of the models in the product line supported. Contax, Epson, Imacon, Samsung, Sigma, Mamiya, Phase One, or Casio raw files are not converted by Bibble Pro at all.

Editing files in Bibble is non-destructive as in most raw converters now. Original image is not altered, and source files are not overwritten or edited unless you set ‘overwrite sourse files’ option in properties. By making corrections and adjustments in Bibble you are preparing a list correction instructions that are then applied during conversion process to the source file and saved into specified format (like JPEG or TIFF) or directly to prints. This can be performed both by Batch Processing one or more images, and by saving a single image.

Raw conversion tools

Bibble has a large variety of tools including the standard set working with White balance and Exposure correction. But there is a number of adjustments not accessible in other converters, like Perfectly Clear ® or Noise Ninja ®. There’s no Brightness tool but you can adjust Hue, Saturation, and Vibrance.
Vibrance, by the way, is only present in BibblePro so far. The tool works like Saturation, but selectively, for less saturated areas of the image.

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Perfectly Clear is a unique Bibble tool for complex enhancement of the image. It optimizes the lighting throughout the image while maintaining true color and zero clipping. At the same time Perfectly Clear automatically removes abnormal tint and restores faded photographs. As the final touch, Perfectly Clear should provide photographs with optimal contrast and sharpening.
There are no custom settings for Perfectly clear, you only have 4 preset options: Perfectly Clear is disabled, it is at minimum, maximum or STD (standard).

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Highlight Recovery

The set of tools working with noise and detail also has some specimen that stand out.
First, there is Highlight Recovery, something that not every converter has. The tool attempts to return detail in the highest stop of an image that otherwise would be blown out. Values of 25-50 are generally useful and safe for most images. Due to additional processing needed, very high key images may take longer to process. HR effect will also vary between camera models and even white balance modes. A little HR can help recover detail or color in highly saturated color patches.

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While HR is usually very helpful, occasionally you will run across an image that can have its Highlights hurt by the HR code (Grey or funny color highlights when HR is set to 0), for these images it is recommended to disable HR from the Advanced HR panel, or to adjust the threshold parameter.
There are also images with large areas of overblown highlights that cannot be mended even by Highlight Recovery. One of the examples you see below.

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{mospagebreak title=Raw Convertion Tools (continued)}

Shadows also can be recovered in Bibble by the Fill light tool. It selectively adjusts exposure in the darkest area of the image. You can use it to balance exposure in high dynamic range scenes. Small to medium values work best. Note though that it may increase noise if used in deep shadows.

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Bibble uses Curves tool for color range adjustments and gives a possibility to adjust color channels separately which is nice. The Curves palette contains three eyedroppers for white, black and grey spots reminding of Levels. Another interesting feature is the possibility to compare before and after histograms (but not the images).
The last version of Bibble Pro has also Chromatic Aberration correction and corrections of Lens and Vignetting that only have been present in Adobe Camera Raw so far.

Noise Ninja

Bible has another tool working with the converter – the built-in Picture Code Noise Ninja plug-in. The built in, free version has limited performance. It’s possible to obtain a licensed version as well, that can work both as a plug-in or a standalone. Here we tested just the unlicensed tool on a high ISO (1600) image and it worked well enough. As most nonprofessional cameras are in this ISO range the majority of people would perfectly do without the extra capabilities of the full licensed Noise Ninja.

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Spot healing

In Bibble Pro you can heal the spots of the image that are not needed there. It looks very much like Photoshop Healing brush but can be applied to a raw file. In the example below I did not concentrate much in achieving the perfect result – removing the yellow line on the wall, just tried the tool. You can see the work of it all right: the blurred circles are clearly visible on the textured wall.

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When working with this tool I also noticed another inconvenient feature of Bibble – the way it works with cursors. Many tools have their own cursors and it is not enough to be in this tool palette, you also have to choose the appropriate cursor from the top panel with pictograms. I find this highly inconvenient – not once I happened to click the image with the White Balance picker while being in some other tab, the result being a funny colored picture and me, first pressing Ctrl+Z a couple of times and then looking for the Bibble white balance panel to uncheck the “New WB” box.

Black and White plug-in

It’s another uniquely Bibble’s tool giving you a possibility of creating special effects. It’s not so much about raw conversion as about editing, but Bibble allows the application of the tool to raw files.

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Interface

{mosimage cw=250 align=left}Bibble Pro has a very adjustable GUI, though major adjustments are done during installation. At this stage, you will be offered several options concerning the tool palettes mode (floating or docked) or layout (portrait or landscape view). Therefore, it is a good thing to have some picture of your future workflow in mind. I myself prefer the docked tools set, those who work with a two-monitor system would probably prefer the floating one. As for the layout – it depends on the pictures you take: whether most of them have portrait or landscape orientation.
{mosimage cw=150 align=right}Now to the GUI itself. The program window looks too crowded and bright for me. There are too many pictograms and colors that blur the eye.
The upper panel combines tools that control browser options with some raw conversion tools. The converting tools are set in several panels that can float wherever you like to put them, or are docked on the right. All panels can be minimized and thus free the space. You can even arrange several pallets as tabs of a single one. Additional tools from the basic or advanced set can be called through the menu. And starting from the last release you can save your own tool palettes arrangement.

But still, the interface is a little too overcrowded and it can be easy to lose one’s way in it. And there’s an interactive mode on top of all this.
I’ve already said about the confusion with tool panels and WB picker and workflow interference it causes.
I also lost my way not once in assigning a default output format.

Batch converting

Once you edited all the images you can select them all and send to a batch queue. The only thing you will be asked about upon pressing ‘send to batch’ button, is the location of the folder for converted images.
{mosimage cw=150 align=left}Images can also be sent to a batch queue (right form the thumbnail panel, where the edited images are marked by a little pencil pictogram).
Batch converting in Bibble Pro is a background process, that is you can continue with editing the images (even the one you’ve just sent to batch convert) while conversion is going on. Thus, you can just edit images one by one and send them to batch where they will be processed in their turn while you are busy with other images.
And, of course, there’s an option of applying same conversion settings to a number of images. To use it you should save the settings of the master image and then load them for other images. Or you can add them to a single work queue and apply the settings to it.
But there’s another way, too. And here comes the Bibble’s browser nature. The converter can perform editing operations on all selected thumbnails, right in the browser view mode, without the preview. Moreover, browser mode is not limited to displaying images from a single directory. Bibble’s work queues can be defined to provide access to images in multiple directories.
{mosimage cw=200 align=right}Batch Queues (according to file formats) and Work queues (specified the target). One image can be assigned to several queues. Queues can be duplicated, you can easily remove the file from the queue. Can also add images to a queue one by one and immediately process them or from the queue and them process all the images at once. The processing is going on in the background and does not interfere with further editing.
A thing that embarrasses a bit is the file naming issue. If you are sending an image to process without setting any options for naming and file format the resulted (default) name of the converted image would be – filename[bibblepro] – no extension, as a result no program automatically opening the file. In order to specify file extension you should right-click on a batch queue or open it and choose the needed file format.

Browser options

As a browser Bibble Pro is also extremely flexible. You can adjust the way you browse, see your files representations, and preview.
The File browser is parked together with work, batch and printing queues and due to it the sorting is easier, especially taking into account the capability of putting same image in several different queues. There are three default queues, by the way, but you can add more.

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The thumbnails and the preview have to modes – landscape and portrait orientation that you can toggle between. The size of the thumbnails and the accompanying information shown are asjustable, of course. You can freely change the size of the thumbnail and preview section size or completely hide some of them.
And, of course, the images can be rated and tagged, the thumbnails - sorted.

Support

The program is accomponied with an .html based help with a search option. It provides general information well enough but some issues were hard to find. Bibble Labs have also an online learning center with several videos to download, a well structured FAQ, and a support forum of users. All this should ensure a user of timely help with the program.

Installation/Uninstallation

Bibble Pro is an easy to install program, no stubles. Only a few choices to make, but I mentioned the flexibility already.
The uninstall goes smoothly and cleanly with no traces left on the disk

Buying

You can buy Bibble Pro at BibbleLabs site, where it’s sold for $169 with a Bibble lite version available for $69.{mos_sb_discuss:4}