Bibble Labs has announced the release of their much anticipated Bibble 5 Pro Workflow Software. The release comes more than a year after it was officially launched at Photokina 2008.

Bibble 5 Pro is available for purchase for $199.95. Bibble 4 customers can upgrade to the new version – either for free if they purchased after September 1, 2006, or for $99 if their Bibble 4 purchase was made prior to that date. Bibble 5 Lite isn’t expected to ship until the first quarter of 2010, so in the meantime, owners of Bibble 4 Lite are being allowed to use Bibble 5 Pro with their Lite license*. Upgrade instructions can be found on Bibble Labs’ new support forums. Also, see the FAQ’s.

Bibble 5 Pro supports Windows XP, Vista and 7, Mac OS X 10.4 or greater, as well as both Linux Fedora Core 6 or later, and Ubuntu 6.06 or later. The program can accept Raw files from a wide variety of manufacturers, including Canon (except sRaw), Kodak, Leica, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Samsung, and Sony, as well as RGB JPEG or TIFF files at resolutions of 30MP or below, with a maximum dimension of 10,240 pixels on the longer side. The full list of supported file types can be found on the Bibble 5 specs page.

Bibble 5 Pro includes a totally new, completely multi-threaded image processing engine, allowing it to process images faster than anything else. Efficient enough to be perfectly usable on netbooks and older computers, yet powerful enough to take full advantage of 4, 8, 16 or even more CPU’s, Bibble 5 Pro is designed to fully utilize all the computing power available to it. On high-end computers, Bibble 5 Pro is up to 88 times faster in processing and exporting images that other leading applications, while on single CPU computers and more modest machines, Bibble 5 Pro can still be 2 to 8 times faster.

Bibble 5 Pro’s Selective Editing framework allows its image editing tools to operate on the complete image or a limited portion of an image, fully integrated into a totally non-destructive workflow. Read more and download a trial here.

*Once Bibble 5 Lite ships, the Lite keys will stop working on Bibble 5 Pro.

A Bibble support staff (username: cvermillion) has just left a message on DPReview that there will not be a full release of Bibble 5 Professional Workflow Software before the end this month (January). To be fair to Bibble, they had only committed to deliver a public preview version of Bibble 5 no later than the end of January 2009. According to Bibble, a public preview version “let’s users try out most of the new features”.

Even if we see a public preview within the next day or two, the question remains – how far out is the actual release of Bibble 5? Software development always takes longer than even the most pessimistic projections. Think back to the endless delays for the release of Windows Vista, for example. Hopefully, for Bibble 5 the delay is months and not years.

The competitors are not standing still. Adobe ACR has improved a lot recently as has Canon’s DPP (Digital Photo Professional) software. More delays will mean lost business for Bibble. In the meantime, Bibble 4 still does a great job converting RAW files to 16-bit TIFFs!

In case you missed the buzz, there was a controversy over the photographer who took the photo that was the source for Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama HOPE prints.

Earlier, reports circulated that it was a photo from TIME magazine which was reversed and stretched slightly. That photo was credited to Jonathan Daniel of Getty Images, but this turned out to be incorrect. The correct match is a photo taken by Manny Garcia – a freelance photojournalist based in Washington D.C. The photo was taken of then Senator Obama as he was addressing the National Press Club about his recent visit to Darfur.

The first correct ID using overlays was posted on Flickr by “stevesimula”. Idée Inc. (TinEye) took a more sophisticated approach using their image comparison engine PixID. PixID takes a detailed look at the patterns of the pixels images, creating digital fingerprints of the source and target images. It can find a small partial match in the fingerprints, even if the images have been heavily transformed. Edits can include crops, flips, rotation, skews or as in this case – posterization of the image.

TinEye’s PixID can also calculate a sub-pixel accurate transformation matrix that shows how the images best align to each other. They used that to produce the image overlay shown above. Mannie Garcia’s photograph was the best match.

References
fairey poster photo source?
Will the real Obama Hope photograph stand up?
Mystery Solved -Again!
The Obama HOPE Photo Mystery Continues!
Photo source for Barack Obama presidential campaign “HOPE” poster discovered

Authentic Shepard Fairey Barack Obama HOPE Poster 24×36

US $25.00 End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 22:28:46 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $25.00 Buy it now | Add to watch list

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I have been using Exposure Manager (aka ExposureManager) for several years and have written positively about them earlier. There service has grown to become an effective business partner for freelance photographers.

For a yearly membership fee and commission on each sale, they host galleries, print and ship photos, and perform order processing. Exposure Manager is located in the USA, however, they ship worldwide in damage-proof packaging.

Exposure Manager has added quite a few enhancements recently that are worth mentioning.

Product Templates

A new shopping cart module allows for real-time photo personalization using built-in templates. This makes it very easy for customers to create greeting cards, as well as trading cards and magazine covers. Currently they have the following templates available:

1. Photo card templates for the holidays: They have 4×8″, 4×6″, and 5×7″ photo card templates available to make custom Christmas cards.

2. Trading cards: You can use one of their pre-defined templates, or make your own template using a product questionnaire. (Example shown above.)

3. Magazine covers: They have added sixteen different magazine covers for almost every sport available.

Request Email Address

By enabling “require email address” in your gallery settings, your visitor will be requested to enter their e-mail address prior to viewing the gallery. You can also make this an optional request, which can be bypassed. You can see a list of who visited your galleries by visiting the reporting screen in the sales management area.

Favorites & Saved Cart

Favorites allow the customer to make an initial selection of preferred photos before adding them to the shopping cart. The shopping cart is then saved automatically if an e-mail address is present. This makes it easier for a customer to continue an interrupted shopping process at a later time.

Share This!

Another new option makes it easier for your customers to spread the word about your photos. By enabling “Share This!” in your gallery settings (under the “Protect tab”), your customers will be able to add a link to your gallery to Facebook, MySpace, blog or send it by email.

Sign-up Deal!

Exposure Manager has graciously allowed us to continue to offer a coupon for 2+ years.

Use the coupon to the right and get a $5.00 discount coupon on a yearly account, or the 2nd month free on a monthly account. The discount will be automatically applied.

If you wander around the site, make sure to come back through the link if you choose to sign-up. For convenience, I have also put the link on the sidebar.

Bibble Labs will be officially launching Bibble 5 RAW conversion software on Sept 23rd at Photokina 2008. Bibble 5 offers significant improvement over the Bibble 4-series in all aspects of photographic workflow. It offers finer control over image quality and adjustments, huge speed gains, and a more flexible workflow. Bibble 5 will support all current operating systems and platforms as well as 64-bit operating systems.

Completely new is the Layers & Regions control that allows you to create multiple layers with circular, polygonal, curved or painted regions that include any of Bibble 5 editing tools. Selective Editing is completely non-destructive, and is tightly incorporated into the workflow. You can copy and paste regions from image to image, and add, delete, rename, and re-order Layers & Regions in the Layer Manager.

Workflow Features

• Image Comparison View
• Layers & Regions
• Noise Reduction with Noise Ninja Technology
• Simultaneously Browse & Search
• Presets that can include image settings and metadata
• Image Edit History
• Multiple versions per master image
• Hotkey editor
• Intelligent renamer
• Group images into Stacks
• Keyword Sets and Hotkeys
• RAW-level plug-in interface

Price and Availability

Bibble 5 Pro will be available in Q4 of 2008 at an initial price of $199.95, and will continue to be offered for Windows, OSX, and Linux. Bibble Version 4 will continue to be available until Bibble 5 is released. Purchasers of Bibble 4.10 (current version) will receive a free upgrade to Bibble 5, when it becomes available.

There is no mention of Bibble 5 Lite in the press release. I assume the lite version has been discontinued. Also, no information yet on what discount (if any) current users of earlier versions of the Bibble 4 series will receive.

ACD Systems International Inc. has just released ACDSee Pro Photo Manager 2.5, a major update to ACDSee Pro 2 with new features designed to improve digital asset management and workflow, provide greater flexibility for image editing and offer more options for presenting photos.

ACDSee Pro is a powerful “one-stop” software package for viewing, processing, editing, cataloging, publishing and archiving digital images. Photographers can complete their work from beginning to end, including state-of-the art RAW processing, all in one application, improving the efficiency of their workflow. ACDSee Pro also offers the fastest JPEG viewing and image browsing available today.

ACDSee Pro is designed especially for professional photographers, photojournalists, artists and editors who generate and work with large volumes of high-resolution images. ACDSee Pro makes their jobs easier when organizing and editing images up front and also when archiving projects.

What’s New?

• Organize up front
• Embed metadata
• Save searches
• Protect original images
• Create an auto slide show
• Borders, drop shadows, edge effects

What about RAW?

ACDSee Pro includes state-of-the-art RAW processing, including the ability to recover up to two stops of lost highlight detail and the convenience of copying and pasting RAW settings or batch processing multiple files. ACDSee Pro is compatible with the multitude of file formats associated with today’s top digital camera models.

For the complete list of camera RAW formats supported by ACDSee software, see: ACDSee Pro RAW formats.

Price, availability, and coupon code

ACDSee Pro 2.5 is available for a free 30-day trial and for purchase for US$129.99.

Thanks to a special arrangement with ACD Systems, we can offer the following deal:
Save 15% on NEW ACDSee Pro 2.5 with Coupon Code 2PRO15. via link

ACDSee Pro 2 users are eligible for a free upgrade to this new version.

Have you ever wondered if anyone is passing your images off as their own? Or, could someone even be using your images commercially without your permission? Up until now, it has not been easy to find out.

So when I heard about TinEye, I was eager to sign up. Using a sophisticated algorithm TinEye creates a digital fingerprint from the image and searches for a match in its database of pre-indexed images. Currently their database comprises 702 million images, a fraction of all the images on the web, but the database is growing rapidly.

Using TinEye is a breeze. Simply upload an image, paste a url or, using the handy Firefox or Internet Explorer plug-ins, it’s as easy as a right-click on the image and selecting ‘search TinEye’. When a match is found, the results are impressive to say the least. Since matching is based on pattern recognition TinEye is successful in identifying not only exact copies but also images that have been significantly manipulated, including cropping, re-sizing, skewing, adjusting color, superimposing text, to name a few. TinEye is owned by Idée Inc. Their website has some excellent examples showing successful matches of heavily manipulated images.

To facilitate confirming the match a handy ‘compare images’ button allows the user to toggle between the searched and found images helping to spot any differences. This is especially useful for images of common subjects as I realized when I thought I had found another match. Only close examination showed it to be very similar indeed – but not the same image. It’s worth being very sure of your claim if you decide to follow up with anyone about unauthorized use.

Selecting some of my own photos, it didn’t take long for me to find several used without my permission. An example is shown to the right (click on the thumbnail to see a larger version). The photo of Bagan is from my recent trip to Myanmar. TinEye returned two hits; one authorized, one not. The first hit is unauthorized but the second one (Crystal Treasure) does have my permission to use the photo.

TinEye found another one of my images on the home page of a highly professional looking UK-based consultancy firm. In testament to how well the Tin Eye software works my image had been cropped and bold text had been superimposed over about one third of the image. Not only that, it was incorporated in a scrolling slide show. Further searches revealed another company with another of my images on their home page, again without permission. This time the subject had been cut out and the entire background removed but TinEye had no problem tracking it down.

Having made many searches, I’m left hoping that some form of batch searching will become available in the future. Currently images have to be searched individually but the ability to search entire folders or web sites would be wonderful. Plugins are available for both Internet Explorer and FireFox that allow you to simply right-click on any image in the browser and select ‘Search Image on TinEye’.

We’ll see how things develop but there’s no doubt in my mind that Idée Inc have come up with a winner with TinEye.

To request a free log-on, go to www.tineye.com.
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FastStone Image Viewer has been around for more than 3 years. Yet, I am amazed how many photographers don’t know about it.

The name is deceiving as it’s real strength is as a thumbnail browser and image organizer. What convinced me to switch over more than a year ago is the ease of viewing and handling RAW image files. Previously, I was using ThumbsPlus which required a plug-in and numerous updates to handle RAW files. And, ThumbsPlus is not free.

FastStone Image Viewer supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).

Yes, FastStone can convert RAW files to TIFFs and JPEGs. However, I usually don’t use it for that purpose. It’s easy to setup links to external programs. When I have selected a photo for editing, I right-click on it and choose Bibble Pro, PhotoShop, or IrfanView Viewer.

One very cool feature is the ability to create a fully portable (no-install) version of the program which can be run from a removable storage device. You can carry slide shows in your pocket!

FastStone Image Viewer is totally free. However, if you use it and like it, be kind and donate a few dollars to the development team.

Robert’s Rating:

Bibble Labs, Inc. has just announced release of Bibble Pro Version 4.99 RAW conversion software. New cameras added in this release include the Nikon D300 and D3, Canon 1Ds Mark 3 and G9, Sony Alpha A700, and Olympus E-3. Version 4.99 also adds tethered shooting support for all Nikon SLR’s on Intel Macs (PowerPC Macs and Windows were already supported).

As with previous versions, the Bibble Pro plug-in for Adobe Photoshop supports CS2, CS, and version 7. Support for Adobe Photoshop CS3 will be implemented in the upcoming release of Bibble 5. This has never been an issue with me as I prefer to save the converted files as 16-bit TIFFs and open them later into Photoshop.

This latest update is free for all current Bibble 4 customers, and new customers will also receive a free upgrade to Bibble 5.

You can buy Bibble software on the Bibble Labs website or at Amazon.com if you want the boxed version. Links are below.

Resources:
Order Bibble Pro at Amazon.com. Then, update online.
Order Bibble Lite at Amazon.com. Then, update online.
Order Bibble Pro or Bibble Lite at Bibble Labs.
Registered users upgrade here.
The press release is here.

Robert’s Rating:

Bibble Labs, Inc. has announced the release of Bibble Pro 4.98. Version 4.98 adds a number of new features and cameras including full support for the Canon EOS 1D Mark III, Fuji S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, Olympus E-510, E-410, and SP500 UZ and the Panasonic FZ8. It includes broader tethered shooting support and processing of Fujifilm’s Wide Dynamic Range and Canon’s new sRAW format. The update is free for all registered Bibble 4 users.

Is this the last release before we see the long anticipated Bibble 5.0? I would expect so as the press release makes no mention of supporting Photoshop CS3. You can still save your converted files to a folder and open them in CS3. However, it’s unlikely that the Bibble Photoshop plugin will work in Photoshop CS3. Although, I can’t say for sure as I haven’t tried it.

You can buy Bibble software on the Bibble Labs website or at Amazon.com if you want the boxed version. Links are below.

Resources:
Order Bibble Pro at Amazon.com. Then, update online.
Order Bibble Lite at Amazon.com. Then, update online.
Order Bibble Pro or Bibble Lite at Bibble Labs.
Registered users upgrade here.
The press release is here.

Robert’s Rating: