BibblePro 4.6 with Noise Ninja is now available
25th February 2006
BibblePro 4.6 with the integrated Noise Ninja is now out. I downloaded a copy and have been playing with it this morning.
Bibble is worlds better than the last time I tried it a few years ago. The biggest change that longtime Bibble users will notice is the new tabbed interface.
It feels much more comfortable to me than the old style, but then I’m used to Capture One and Pixmantec RawShooter.
One thing I wondered when I first heard about this: what is this going to do to Noise Ninja sales? Bibble Pro is US$129. To get the Photoshop plug-in for Noise Ninja, it’s either US$44.95 for the 8-bit-only “Home Bundle” or US$79.95 for the 16-bit “Pro Bundle.” Why but Noise Ninja when you can get it and a raw converter for not that much more?
There are three different levels of Noise Ninja integration. You can see the first one at the bottom of the screenshot above: Basic Noise Ninja. It’s one slider and the corrections it makes are pretty crude. But, on a few pictures I played with that needed only minimal noise help, it did a nice job.
The second level is on a panel under the Detail tab:
This offers two sliders, and it gives a bit more control than the Basic option. But on pictures where I would need more adjustments than the basic option gives me, I would like more control and separation of noise reduction between luminance and chrominance. Luminance is basically the detail of the picture and chrominance is the color. Kind of like a comic strip: the lines of the pen are luminance and the color is, well, the color. My Canon 20D does a great job with luminance noise so I usually don’t need to reduce that, but I always want to clean up a bit of the color noise on high ISO shots.
Then I looked down at the bottom of that tab:
Ah-ha! To get the real Noise Ninja inside Bibble Pro, you need to purchase a license. But which license? Can I get away with the cheapest Home license at US$34.95? I don’t know, but I asked the question on the support forums and I’ll update this post when I know the answer.
Update (2006-Feb-25 11:56): Any Noise Ninja license will do. Looks like I’ll buy the basic Home license if I decide to take the Bibble route.
February 27th, 2006 at 22:53
Thanks for the kind words.
Remember tha NN technology is based on camera profiles, and We supply profiles for most supported cameras including the 20d. the NN sliders strenghts realtive to your cameras profile, so sinc eyour 20d has low chhroma noise, Bibble and NN know that and you don’t loose anything by using the single slider. The extra controls become useful when you have an image that has extra luma or chroma noise that needs to be dealt with seperate 8)
Hope that makes sense
Eric
bibble@bibblelabs.com
February 28th, 2006 at 6:48
[...] Update (2006-02-26): I’ve written about Bibble Pro 4.6 with Noise Ninja, including screen shots of the new user interface. [...]
March 2nd, 2006 at 12:24
[...] I got a response from the developer of Bibble, pointing out that one of Noise Ninja’s strengths is its use of profiles. [...]