[silkstone]

The purpose of this post is NOT to...

(a) criticise Adobe,

(b) suggest that Adobe's products are anything other than excellent,

or (c) persuade users of Photoshop CS3, Elements, ACR and Lightroom that they should give it up and use something else.

The purpose IS to point out that there are alternatives which are generally less expensive and which some people actually prefer. I believe it is important, especially when advising newcomers to digital photography, to avoid the impression that the world ends at Adobeville. There are other products out there, most of which are available on free trial and some of which are totally free. It may be worth giving them a chance.

And with that disclaimer....

support.bibblelabs.com :: View topic - mystery of Bibble Pro's excellence

[Chris H]

Would love to see a demo of Bibble 5

Although I love what bibble does I found the front end tiring even with your lessons Silky

Hopefully 5 will address the issues of making it more intuative ( sorry no good at spelling ) because it's a darn good proggy, then I'll bung some money their way and get a copy.

Would be nice if you could buy a boxed set too coz I like pretty boxes

[silkstone]

They didn't do themselves any favours by mentioning Bibble 5 way before it was going to be released, but at least there will be a free upgrade for anyone buying Bibble 4.x. From the screenshots and the info on the forum, it looks as if v5 will support versioning, layers, and cataloging/library (as an option to file browser), plus other enhancements. The current interface is a bit weird, but OK once you get used to it, and it is highly configurable.

If you've looked at the holiday shots I posted a few days ago, those were processed entirely in Bibble, apart from one where I used the GIMP as second-stage to bring out cloud detail.

And that's another thing....

Take a look at the latest version of the GIMP. I never liked it, but I've been playing with the new version and it's really very good, although again the GUI is very different from PS etc. In Windows you can use Faststone as the browser and launch the GIMP from a thumbnail by pressing 'E'. In Linux you can launch from the Nautilus file browser or from gThumb.

[fgates]

I think it is important that photographers realise that there are alternatives to the expensive packages on the market. Not everyone can afford them and there is a big temptation to use a pirated copy. I also think that some competition would also help the giants to get really creative and use their financial resources to come up with even better solutions.

Here is a picture that I edited in Gimp. The raw file was converted using UFRaw. All this is free software. I must say that I do find the Adobe unsharpen mask easier to use. I haven't ditched Windows or Adobe, but I am still using an old version of Photoshop.