AUSTIN, Texas (June 23, 2006) -- Bibble Labs, Inc. ( http://www.bibblelabs.com/ ) today announces the general availability of Bibble Pro and Bibble Lite Upgrade 4.8. This free upgrade is available to existing Bibble 4 license holders, and represents the third such major upgrade of 2006. New features in this release include a redesigned and more powerful Lens Correction tool enabling correction of barrel and pin-cushion distortion, as well as chromatic aberration and vignetting.

A new plugin is also distributed with the application to allow robust Black and White conversion, including an innovative Spot Color feature. "With this plugin, users can create Black and White images quickly, controlling which color channels affect the B&W value, with much more granularity than simple desaturation. This plugin also works in conjunction with our powerful color manipulation tools, providing complete control over the B&W conversion process," says Eric Hyman, president and CEO of Bibble Labs. "Further, our novel Spot Color feature within the plugin allows for creative effects not available in any other RAW Workflow tool."

Continuing Bibble Labs' trend of broad camera support, the 4.8 update adds support for additional cameras, including the Fujifilm S3 Pro and Panasonic LX1, and includes Tethered Shooting support for Fujifilm S2 Pro and S3 Pro cameras (on Windows only).

Bibble was one of the first RAW Workflow tools to offer a native Intel Mac package, and now 4.8 is available as a Mac Universal Binary. Further optimization for Intel Mac's results in even faster conversion times for these platforms, and better memory management offers performance enhancements to Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

Bibble Labs is committed to its customers, and 4.8 includes many additions and changes requested by its growing userbase. "We believe in building relationships with our customers, and listen closely to what they have to say. The direction of 4.8 was greatly influenced by our customers, as they - more that anyone - know what is needed to make the best RAW Workflow tool," says Hyman. "Full Unicode support in IPTC fields is a great example of this, as well as constant improvements of image quality and conversion speed. We have a history of making these upgrades available as quickly as possible, at no cost to current customers."

Availability

Bibble is available in both "Pro" ($129.95) and "Lite" ($69.95) versions for Windows, Macintosh (PPC/Intel) and Linux. Please visit our Web site at http://www.bibblelabs.com for further details and to download a fully functional 14 day trial version.

Be sure to visit us at WPPI 2006 in the Precision Camera (#208) or Kodak Booth (#357) to see this unique workflow in action.

Changes

Bibble 4.8 06/19/06:

• Added Fuji S3 Support
• Added Panasonic LX1 support
• Added Tethered shooting support for Fuji S2/S3 (Windows only)
• Added Black and white plugin control with spot color feature.
• Added lens distortion correction, vignette correction, and CA correction
• Added Hotkey/tool button/menu for Highlight(and shadow) clipping warning 'W'
• Added Display style preference for Linux folks who don't like the windows look.
• Added general preference for clipping values (> or < the value)
• Added Perfectly Clear to the exposure tool
• Added sub-seconds to the renaming tags, and browser date/time sorting.
• Added support for The UserComment EXIF field from Nikon cameras will be saved now.
• Added display of Current noise profile on the "Profile" tab of the NN registered tool
• Added RAW file path to the batch queue EXIF output
• Added image dimensions to the shooting information panel
• Changed New crops created by clicking in the image now start out at the largest size that fits the image.
• Disabled loading of obsolete BPTLens plug-in
• Fixed bug with Fixed Size print layouts and sizes other than "Custom"
• Fixed bug that caused a vertical artifact when Noise Ninja is enabled
• Fixed bug with creating batch output sub directories on network drives under Windows
• Fixed bug with contrast set to -1 and HR on
• Fixed bug with Fuji images, Perfectly Clear, and preview steps set < 2
• Fixed bug that caused old filenames to be displayed after renaming.
• Fixed bug that caused crop menu to be incorrectly set to "Custom".
• Fixed problem with import/export of Unicode IPTC
• Fixed a problem causing the send to batch icon to be disabled after drag/drop
• Fixed crash in browser and elsewhere related to long pathnames.
• Fixed crash caused by clicking before image window is fully initialized or blank
• Fixed unsupported ICC profile caused Bibble to exit unexpectedly
• Fixed 3rd party styles/themes will now work correctly with Bibble.
• Fixed several memory leaks.
• And some other changes in testing versions of posted since 4.7a-b
• Added auto rotation for the Minolta 5D and 7D.
• Added more descriptive text to the Noise Ninja registration helper.
• Change PC constants to reduce contrast somewhat and prevent shadow clipping.
• Change IPTC separator to , from ;
• Fixed silent exit when there are paused batch queues.
• Fixed problem preventing Oly SP500Uz files from loading.
• Fixed incorrect camera white balance for D2hs compressed .nef
• Fixed a bug that affected AdobeRGB JPEGs
• Fixed crash in Photoshop plug-in.
• Fixed bad results for Canon Lens info with Cr2 files.
• Fixed artifacts in Fuji images when Perfectly Clear was enabled
• Fixed tab order and tweaked sliders of all tool panels
• Fixed problem preventing .sr2 , .erf and .raw files to load in PS plugin.
• Fixed Transfer to photoshop problem (finally?)
• Fixed problem preventing PC from being show in thumbs.
• Fixed the Canon 20D clip rect
• Fixed a bug that caused JPEGs to not work with Noise Ninja auto profiling
• Fixed a bug in the Noise Ninja code that could cause darkened edges for some images.
• Compacted most of the tools
• Minor fix - moving the sharpening slider will enable sharpening
• Reduced ram usage for jpeg images.
• Shortened annoyingly long Perfectly Clear tooltip.