RAW editor for Ubuntu

I hate windows.... I was once a M$ dude, but all that changed with Vista. After a few months with Vista I started using linux in pure hate for M$. That path led me to Ubuntu and after a few months I was using Ubuntu 95% of the time.

When Ubuntu 7.10 arrived, I was hooked and use only Windows for stuff that only works there.

I have a DSC-F828, but I never used RAW on it. Tried it, but it was too slow and not much supportet it's files in the beginning. I just forgot about RAW... But now with my new A55v and reading this forum, it sounds like RAW is the best way to go for advanced editing. But the posts here seem to refere only to Windows or Mac software like Lightroom and a few others. Even the included software on my camera is for Windows and Mac.

So I started searching, and came across Bibble 5.
http://bibblelabs.com/

Bibble is incredible (to me atleast). I'm no pro in photography or editing, but I know my way around computers and support people as a living (mostly M$).

The coolest thing about Bibble is that it runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Ubuntu (there are both 32 and 64bit versions available for all).

The way it organizes my files took me by suprize, since exif data i part of the database it creates, I can sort my files based on those values. All my cameras are there, phones, p&s, cameras I have tested, cameras my friends have used and so on. So just by knowing wich camera belongs to a friend, I can see all the pictures taken with that camera. Another cool thing for me is that i can se how many photos are taken with a spesific lense setting. Now I can find what primes would be used the most...

The lense correction works on Jpegs as well as RAW and it has a huge database. My pictures taken with the F828 have all sorts of distortion, and just checking the lense correction the picture is corrected. No need to select the camera make, model og lense, aperture, zoom. It was detected from the Exif and can be done on a folder if I wanted.

With the A55v I have to select lense, I'm using the sony 18-250mm and the 500mm reflex. Both have lense profiles. The list is huge! Sigma, sony, minolta, tamron, carl zeiz, tokina and more...

The noise ninja pluigin is also great, no fiddling, just check it and the noise is gone...

There are a few quick guide videos on their website wich made me learn the basics in e few minutes.

Bibble is increadibly fast! And I have been able to play around, edit a bunch of files all while still importing my library.

I tried searching this forum for Bibble, and it looks like it has been around for 10 years. But no recent post. Just some complaining that the 5 version had not come yet in 2009.

I'm sold after looking at the videos and testing it. I guess the Lite version is all I need. And at 99,95$ its really nothing to think about.

Anyone else using it? Is there something better out there? Do you know of other great Ubuntu compatible software?

I switched to bibble recently in preparation for building an opteron system that never happened. Bibble supports > 32cores which makes me happy.
Things not to like about bibble:

Brightness and Contrast: there is no brightness slider and contrast is strangely defined.

No good way to play with the color content before desaturation: if you like to tune your colors for contrast in a B&W conversion you are out of luck.

Noise: Bibble seems noisier to me than C1 and LR3, noise ninja doesn't impress me and there is not a good way to plugin deNoise. However the wavelet noise reduction plugin is very cool.

Things I love about Bibble:

Recipes that work!: I can set my color space per recipe and process multiple files with a single recipe and generate a gallery from the recipe.

Fast: I thought it was slow but then I tried LR3 again when I needed to do something wierd and its significantly faster for me!

Plugins: the Bibble plugin community is alive and well and for the most part free. I'm using blacky, wavelet noise reduction, wavelet sharpening, angy, and lay quite often.

Pretty intelegent layers: they seem to work, not quite LR3 level of smart but LR3 was crashing when I tried to really lean on the layers.
Good enough Quality!

But since you asked about Ubuntu:

F-spot is included, I've not been terribly impressed. RAWTherapee is available for linux and is open source and probably the closest to the metal raw converter available. If you want that last 2% on an image thats where you should probably start.

I'm quite happy with Bibble,

If you want something light weight ufRAW+gimp kept me going for years before I finally installed my first version of lightroom.

FSpot is being superceded by Shotwell in the latest versions of Ubuntu. Shotwell can edit RAW images, but it's basic.
Another option is the UFRaw plugin for GIMP

My preference is having all of them including RAWTherapee. RAWTherapee is the most sophisticated.

Warning though RAWtherapee will make slower/midlevel computers cry.

Linux native I like Rawtherapee the best.

I also run ACR/PSE via wine which works well too.

--
Rick
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fjbphotos/

While I agree with you on Noise Ninja (Pixie is very helpful), I do not understand your other critical points.

There are plenty of color tools built-in (which still work when set to b&w) and there are great plugins like Harry, Sally, Bathsheba and the b&w film simulators Andrea and iNDA.

Regarding the Brightness and Contrast - are you aware of the triangles at the bottom of the histogram. I guess they provides more option than LR. In case you prefer some sigmoid contrast tool there is the plugin BEZ.

SoulNibbler said:

I switched to bibble recently in preparation for building an opteron system that never happened. Bibble supports > 32cores which makes me happy.
Things not to like about bibble:

Brightness and Contrast: there is no brightness slider and contrast is strangely defined.

No good way to play with the color content before desaturation: if you like to tune your colors for contrast in a B&W conversion you are out of luck.

Noise: Bibble seems noisier to me than C1 and LR3, noise ninja doesn't impress me and there is not a good way to plugin deNoise. However the wavelet noise reduction plugin is very cool.

Click to expand...

lutz said:

While I agree with you on Noise Ninja (Pixie is very helpful), I do not understand your other critical points.

There are plenty of color tools built-in (which still work when set to b&w) and there are great plugins like Harry, Sally, Bathsheba and the b&w film simulators Andrea and iNDA.

Regarding the Brightness and Contrast - are you aware of the triangles at the bottom of the histogram. I guess they provides more option than LR. In case you prefer some sigmoid contrast tool there is the plugin BEZ.

SoulNibbler said:

I switched to bibble recently in preparation for building an opteron system that never happened. Bibble supports > 32cores which makes me happy.
Things not to like about bibble:

Brightness and Contrast: there is no brightness slider and contrast is strangely defined.

No good way to play with the color content before desaturation: if you like to tune your colors for contrast in a B&W conversion you are out of luck.

Noise: Bibble seems noisier to me than C1 and LR3, noise ninja doesn't impress me and there is not a good way to plugin deNoise. However the wavelet noise reduction plugin is very cool.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I'll have to check out the BEZ plugin. I started out working totally in curves with gimp so I'm actually not missing it much but it was something quite odd for me when I first switched since I usually increase contrast and pull down brightness in my post. It was a terrible habit I picked up when the curves tools were not so nice in the earlier LR and I sort of stuck with it in C1.

I just haven't been as impressed by the built in color tools, I really didn't like LR3 for that matter but I find with channel saturation adjustments I don't have enough precision and I posterize way earlier than I think I should. And I just really haven't gotten black and white conversions the way I want them. I'd like to be able to set the color curves until it looks right and then convert that image to B&W when I do I get little bits of color in my B&W file.

I've played with the film simulators and honestly I'm too young to care. It seems like picking things from a box and applying pre-rolled response curves. While they may have nice effects it just doesn't fit my style.

I'll have to look again to see if there is a nice plugin that will let me work in HSV/HSL space with curves. If there isn't I might have to download the SDK and work with them. I really loved the saturation curve in UFraw because it made skin tones so much easier.

I'd actually recommend bibble to my friends. Its a very nice program with a very nix philosophy and an astounding amount of polish. So far though I really just wish it had more punch out of box. It seems to be the perfect program to consistency.

Also another thing to love about bibble is that the keyboard shortcuts make sense. I can do most of what I want to do with an image once I have a look defined without touching the stupid mouse!

I use Rawstudio. But I use the daily build though, you have to add te repository for always having the very latest version. It is quite good with the a850 files so far.

I am normally a JPEGs shooter very experienced with exposure, histogram, white balance and often use bracketing on a tripod so I am not a RAW expert at all.

Normand
My 365 SP photography challenge :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cafemoka/

Bibble is lovelly

I'm attempting to traslate it to a couple of languages. My only attention point is that on a x64 Windows, it riuns on WoW64 ( as a 32 bit app)...so it's not a native x64 app. That said...I don't know wether that's an advantage or not... but since my pc has 16gb of RAM...I got no choise but the x64 on the Win partition .