| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | Carthew, Cornwall, United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 6874 |
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Last year Bibble was purchased by Corel and Bibble5 became called AfterShot Pro.
I have resisted reporting this as I have privileged (insider) knowledge but the time has come to speak.
Corel has made a management decision to kill ASP, effective from now (august2012).
They promise an update but I wouldnt trust it as it has not been out to the Beta Testers.
For more info read below.
Past History.
I purchased my Bibble Pro v2.0.2 license on 3rd November 2000.
Pretty soon afterwards I was part of the beta testers.
There was then Bibble 3 and then Bibble 4.
At that time, Bibble 4 was way ahead of the competition.
Bibble 5 looked like it would continue that way, but hit some roadblocks and lost quite a bit of its competitive edge.
So when Bibblelabs was bought by Corel I was hoping it would pick up speed again.
But then Corel decided on a slow update cycle which already sounded a bit frustrating (after all, why wait months for updates when the lab already has a bunch of fixes and new camera support ready)
And now, just after publicly announcing support for OpenCL:
http://apps.corel.com/lp/amd/index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/photoshop-cs6-gimp-aftershot-pro,3208-11.html
they fire the whole original development team in June/July 2012.
I have been in contact with those guys for many years, so it did not take long for that news to reach me.
Brilliant move. Anyone who has the slightest clue about software development will notice right away, that this kills the product.
After all, this is a raw converter that depends on regular camera updates in addition to bugfixing and enhancements to stay competitive.
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So what are Corel up to?
Playing their customers for fools?
Selling as much licensees as they can before the public realizes what's going on and the product fades into oblivion?
Trying to sell the rights to someone else who will not have access to the most valuable asset, the developers that know the code?
After all, not only is the cost of getting new people to support the code not trivial, but the time hit the product takes is an even bigger problem.
In the end, they are basically killing the oldest independent RAW converter, the only decent workflow solution on the market that does not force a specific workflow down the users throat and the only decent production quality raw converter that is available on Linux.
Whichever way I look at this, it is not exciting or a good future at all.
Just loads of frustration thanks to mismanagement.
Addendum:
There is a small group of us who are looking to buy the source code but this is at a very early stage and I dont know if Corel will sell/release the code or not.
Time will tell. In a year ASP source code will be worthless as will the product if you have a camera released after Nikon D800. There are flaws in the processing of D800E image so beware or be aware!.
I may ask some of you in the future if you are willing to sponsor these efforts.
Put those wallets away in a safe place.
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Still learning after all these years!
https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none