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Bibble 5's logo. Click here to visit the Bibble website! Bibble 5 Pro now available (UPDATED)
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(Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - 18:23 EST)

Bibble Labs has today announced the debut of the long-awaited major update to its RAW file converter, Bibble.

Bibble 5 Pro can now be purchased, and Bibble 4 customers can upgrade to the new version - either for free if they purchased after September 1st 2006, or for a $99 fee if their Bibble 4 purchase was made before that date. Bibble 5 Lite isn't expected to ship until the first quarter of next year, so in the interim, owners of Bibble 4 Lite are being allowed to use Bibble 5 Pro with their Lite license. (Once Bibble 5 Lite ships, the Lite keys will stop working on Bibble 5 Pro.) Upgrade instructions can be found on Bibble Labs' new support forums.

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 30 megapixels 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.

As compared to the most recent pre-release version, Bibble 5 Pro final has three main bug fixes. A problem with keyword editing has been corrected, and a related database upgrade will fix any bad catalog information from pre-release versions. There are also two further fixes - one for crashes that occured when rolling up/unrolling a newly created stack, and one that corrects an issue with the "Always prompt for job name" item in the copy queues not staying checked.

As compared to Bibble 4 Pro, the new release still lacks some functionality, including the Perfectly Clear tool, the Heal & Clone brush, black / white / gray pickers in the curves tool, Web Gallery output, and more. According to a post in the company's support forums, these and more are planned to be available in Bibble 5.1, which will be a free upgrade for all Bibble 5 users. Bibble 5.1 is expected to reach final release at around the same time as Bibble 5 Lite.

For new customers, a trial version of Bibble 5 Pro can be found in the Bibble Labs Download Center. Bibble 5 Pro can be purchased immediately, priced at US$199.95 for a license that covers all three operating systems. Bibble 5 Lite is not currently available for purchase, and Bibble 4 Lite is no longer available on the company's website, leaving the Pro version as the only option available to new customers for the time being.

More details can be found on the Bibble Labs website.

UPDATED 2009-12-30 21:06ET: Official press release added.


Original Source Press Release:

Bibble 5 Pro Now Available

Blazing Fast Photographic Workflow Including Complete Selective Editing, Photo Organization Tools, and RAW support for all the latest dSLR's

Austin, Tx, Dec 30th, 2009: Bibble Labs, Inc today announces the immediate availability of the all-new Bibble 5 Pro Photographic Workflow application for Windows, Mac and Linux, bringing to market a new level of power, speed and control to digital photography.

Bibble 5 Pro excels in the areas that matter most to today's photographers, including flexible tools for organizing and managing digital photographs, the most complete selective editing tools offered in a photographic workflow application, and RAW conversion and editing speed up to 88 times as fast as other leading applications.

Real Power, Really Fast
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. "With dual core processors now being replaced with four-core processors, and with 6- an 8- and higher core count processors on the horizon," says Eric Hyman, founder and owner of Bibble Labs, "it's clear that utilizing the full power of those additional CPU's is the key to true workflow performance."

Total Editing Power and Freedom: Unrestrained Selective Editing
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. "The ability to apply just about every tool Bibble 5 offers within freeform curves or brushed regions opens up amazing editing possibilities" says Jeff Stephens, President of Bibble Labs. "This exemplifies our commitment to building the most flexible, most powerful, and most widely available photographic workflow application." Essentially any image adjustment tool offered in Bibble 5 Pro - including 3rd Party Plug-ins - may be applied selectively to key portions of images, allowing an unparalleled level of creative control: quickly apply multiple white-balance settings to fix difficult or mixed lighting situations, apply noise reduction only to the deepest shadows, sharpen only key points of interest, the possibilities are endless.

Bibble Labs continues to offer the industry's only RAW-level plug-in API, allowing 3rd Party developers to write image editing tools that can access decoded RAW files, TIFF's and JPEG's directly within Bibble 5's image editing pipeline. With Bibble 5 Pro's plug-in API, every plug-in built for Bibble 5 is also open to the full power of Selective Editing, adjustment Presets, edit History and all of Bibble 5 Pro's other workflow advantages.

Asset Management: Innovative, Powerful and Flexible
Importing images into catalogs allows Bibble 5 to summarize information about the photos in that catalog which enables searching or browsing by a wide range of metadata. Such tools are indispensable when working with a large body of images; yet it is the optional nature of Bibble 5 Pro's Cataloging system that makes it uniquely powerful. "Catalogs and metadata searching and browsing are critical when working with tens of thousands of images or more" says Stephens. "But hand me a memory card with a dozen photos while I'm working in Bibble 5 - that's when its flexibility really starts to shine." Bibble 5 Pro allows the photographer to quickly switch to 'File System' mode, allowing them to just click on the folder where these few images are stored and go to work on them right away. Those images are not imported into the catalog, but all Bibble 5's other tools and capabilities can be applied.

Multiple Catalogs can be open at once, while browsing or searching across all open catalogs, which provide immense storage and organizational flexibility. Unique and powerful "Refine" browsing allows photographers to gradually narrow their photographic collection down to show only the images that are necessary at that moment. Bibble 5 Pro is the only photographic workflow application to provide this level of flexibility and choice in the critical decisions that each photographer faces regarding cataloging and asset management.

Solid Platform For Future Advancements
"We continue to be committed to bringing value to our customers after they purchase our products," says Stephens, "and we already have some exciting things in store for later versions of Bibble 5." Bibble 4 was upgraded and enhanced with major features twelve times over several years, adding major new components release after release. Bibble 5 will carry on this tradition, with the first free update planned in Q1 2010.

Availability, Upgrades, and Pricing
Bibble 5 Pro is available immediately for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers for $199.95 from http://bibblelabs.com
Bibble Labs customers who purchased Bibble 4 since September, 2006 are eligible for a free upgrade to Bibble 5 Pro. Earlier Bibble 4 Pro customers may upgrade to Bibble 5 Pro for $99.

Bibble 5 Lite will follow, scheduled in the first quarter of 2010. Bibble 4 Lite customers who purchased Bibble 4 since September, 2006 will have immediate access to Bibble 5 Pro until Bibble 5 Lite is available.

Bibble 5 Pro includes RAW support for many of the newest SLR's available, including Canon 7D, S90 and G11, Nikon D3s, and D5000, Pentax K-x, Sony's a850 and a550, and many others. Bibble 5 is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and has lower hardware requirements than many other applications in its class.

Bibble Labs, Bibble Pro and Bibble Lite are trademarks or registered trademarks of Bibble Labs, Inc. Noise Ninja is a trademark of Picture Code LLC. Camera brands and models are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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