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| Corel and AfterShot Pro | Rating: 
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| Author | Post |
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| Posted by jk: Sat Aug 25th, 2012 07:25 | 1st Post |
| I have used Bibble Pro since October 2000 for all my RAW processing. 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. ===================================== 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. 
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Doug: Sat Aug 25th, 2012 07:42 | 2nd Post |
| That's a shame. Reminds me of HPs purchase of Palm and the Google purchase of Motorola What did Corel gain from this whole process?
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| Posted by jk: Sat Aug 25th, 2012 11:57 | 3rd Post |
| Not a lot other than the fastest RAW processor and its source code. They have been selling licences at a $£90 which is half the price that Bibble was selling them at but their advertising reach has been wider so probably revenue is similar. I really cant see what Corel sought to gain other than to remove some competition from Adobe products. Doooh...
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| Posted by Constable: Sat Aug 25th, 2012 15:13 | 4th Post |
| I'm not surprised. I had a real hassle getting my copy of ASP and have had no response to a number of polite requests for updates. Ed
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| Posted by jk: Sat Aug 25th, 2012 16:34 | 5th Post |
Constable wrote: I'm not surprised. I had a real hassle getting my copy of ASP and have had no response to a number of polite requests for updates. Corel dont reply to individual customer!! Bibble were a bit better but they were very resource limited in 2011/2010. Ed, what do you need replying to?. You can PM me questions or better yet email them to me and I will try to get an answer for you.
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| Posted by TomOC: Sun Aug 26th, 2012 13:45 | 6th Post |
| Corel has always been the second choice software - kind of like Word Perfect compared to Word. Trying to keep up with a market leader is a fools errand - always better to just try innovating and taking a new, better, different course. If anyone is going to challenge Adobe, it is likely to be Apple...who shows hints of a threat and then doesn't follow through. I've always wondered how firms like Bibble, Phase One, etc manage to eke out survival revenue. No sooner do they gain a slight edge and Adobe comes along with leapfrog features and swamps them. JK... Save your money - a near impossible chore in my opinion ! Tom
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by jk: Sun Aug 26th, 2012 15:09 | 7th Post |
| I think it may be a long and difficult road to get source code from Corel. Not sure if I have energy for that and then the long road to take Bibble to a good place. Need to see how it works out in the next month.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by TomOC: Mon Aug 27th, 2012 00:59 | 8th Post |
| I didn't mean to sound quite so negative - I know you really have your heart invested in Bibble... But just go for it with the attitude that it is a labor of love, not a great investment. Who knows, it may turn out to be profitable but ...? More important than a good place is a good price Tom
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
| Posted by jk: Mon Aug 27th, 2012 02:54 | 9th Post |
| I understand what you are saying Tom. In my younger days I'd probably just do it for the fun but these days I would rather do stuff that gives me less angst!
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Mon Aug 27th, 2012 04:41 | 10th Post |
| Having followed Bibble for a few years and dabbled with using it I have to say I felt it was a good product which lacked the resources it needed. It has a good and faithful following of discerning and expert users, in my opinion for delicate adjustments and a subtle adjustment tool I prefer it to anything else, particularly for IR work which I find hard in Ps. I think it's disgusting that a company like Corel takes over a small but good specialised product like Bibble and effectively casts it aside like so much garbage. I have never been a fan of Corel although I did use it Corel Draw the very early days to create graphics for 'in house' adverts for a betting shop chain when I used to build the odd PC for fun then I remembered why I used Mac's. I was devastated when I first saw this thread, although to be honest not completely surprised. Very sad. As for a Phoenix resurrection attempt I suspect it would be a money pit. Eric Hyman was I think the founder and driving force behind Bibble, a product like Bibble needs a driving force and without Eric who I believe retired from the company a couple of years ago and Jeff Stephens has negotiated the takeover by Corel to allow the product to move forward with more backing. That appears to have failed.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Doug: Fri Aug 31st, 2012 22:07 | 11th Post |
| Seems to be a habit of Corel http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/08/31/users.asked.to.switch.to.corels.pinnacle.studio/ (having said that they just released 'Pinnacle Studio', currently free, for iPad and it actually looks pretty good)
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| Posted by jk: Sat Sep 1st, 2012 04:19 | 12th Post |
| Yes they did similar stuff when they purchased PaintShopPro, Wordperfect Office, and other softwares. They buy a fairly good product then sell it to death at a low price but only bug fix never enhancing the product!
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Sat Sep 1st, 2012 04:33 | 13th Post |
jk wrote:Yes they did similar stuff when they purchased PaintShopPro, Wordperfect Office, and other softwares. They buy a fairly good product then sell it to death at a low price but only bug fix never enhancing the product! Issuing updates for new camera is enhancement??? The original Bibble forum is almost dead, I can't find any current info, what happened to all the dedicated users?
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Sun Sep 2nd, 2012 04:00 | 14th Post |
| The Bibble user forum still exists but has little utility and use as the Corel product ASP had updates to the SDK which is used for all the plugins so these had to be reworked to work with ASP. The users are all on the new Corel forums.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Constable: Sun Sep 2nd, 2012 10:17 | 15th Post |
| Not according to afk! http://support.bibblelabs.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=19684&start=60 "The people who ran the forum have been fired, Corel does not care." Ed
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| Posted by Robert: Sun Sep 2nd, 2012 13:31 | 16th Post |
Constable wrote:Not according to afk! And that was 18th August. Total disaster. I read the entire thread oil and water, and two disparate camps at war, seem appropriate phrases.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Sun Sep 2nd, 2012 17:00 | 17th Post |
| There are those who are stuck in disbelief and there are those in another camp which contains myself who would like to get hold of the code from Corel and make it open source. At this stage there is much gloom, doom and uncertainty as well as no clear plan. The next few months will see the code die in Corel's hands or get extracted and reused. I have a backup plan which is to use Phase One Capture One until I have a decent second string product (probably RAW Photo Processor and/or DCRAW as my second string RAW processor). If we get the code from Corel then great but I wont be holding my breath.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Peter_LO: Wed Sep 5th, 2012 04:10 | 18th Post |
| I'm hard pressed not to double check the posting date to make sure that the whole thing is not an April Fool's joke but I'm disappointed. That said I'm not surprised too because I also had a very bad experience in getting my free copy of ASP from Corel (I think I mentioned about that in the old forum?) like Ed did. A few months ago I came across braindistrict.com, a site founded by the creator of MainActor, Markus, who says he'll build a new MainActor using the old code. I wonder if Eric Hyman still has the right to use the B4 code? Probably it'd be way cheaper to get the old code from him rather than buying the B5 code from Corel. In fact I think B4 is good enough in most occasions though it requires extensive update to support new cameras.
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| Posted by jk: Wed Sep 5th, 2012 10:07 | 19th Post |
| Peter, unfortunately not an April Fool joke!! I hadnt thought of the B4 angle. I guess that Eric still has a copy of that code. Corel may or may not of purchased rights to that source. I might send Eric an email and ask the question. Unfortunately Bibble5 is a complete redesign from the ground up so all the nice plugins we have developed wont work!
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Constable: Sat Sep 8th, 2012 15:59 | 20th Post |
| JK and all There does seem to be a new kid in town. Noise Ninja has just launched PhotoNinja as a raw conversion programme. I have played with it bit today. It seems to do fantastic out of the box RAW conversions using presets (tested with D4, D800E and S2 files). The output is definitely better than the defaults in LR4 and have the vibrance (and speed of conversion) that Bibble users had grown used to. Possibly even better than Bibble :negativenod::negativenod: There seems to be no batch mode at the moment. Image attached is cropped (in PhotoNinja), rendered to JPG at high (lower res than "very high" and "maximum") and 72 dpi, all others at presents for the camera (D4) and lense (Sigma 180 Macro 3.5). I am more than a little impressed. Of course, LR4 is still the archiving and management programme to use) Unless anyone knows anything better? Ed Attachment: D42_0037_v1.JPG (Downloaded 14 times)
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| Posted by Constable: Sat Sep 8th, 2012 16:02 | 21st Post |
| And an insane crop Attachment: D42_0038_v1.JPG (Downloaded 22 times)
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| Posted by Robert: Sat Sep 8th, 2012 19:04 | 22nd Post |
| Thanks for posting Ed, downloaded and running... Certainly makes my i7 work for it's living, and it isn't the fastest I have seen but it seems good on a difficult image. This is one from the D200 I think, definitely the 18-105 VR. exposing almost directly against the light. Heavy shadows and bright white-water. Taken at Newby Bridge, the outfall from Lake Windermere. First the original, followed by a quick and dirty first play with Photo Ninja  
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by blackfox: Tue Sep 11th, 2012 04:48 | 23rd Post |
| my son was trying to tell me about this last night ,but it was 12pm and he always tells me stuff when i am tired out so i didn't listen properly ,i am going to look into this, robert that shadow detail recovery looks superb .
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| Posted by Robert: Tue Sep 11th, 2012 05:48 | 24th Post |
| Yes it's pretty good but a bit noisy, it was late when I did it and I was tired too! I think for 'normal' images it seems to have the subtle feel that Bibble 4 had but I have only tinkered. This needs a new thread. Apparently these threads can't be split so I will start a new thread for PhotoNinja now.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Tue Sep 11th, 2012 06:14 | 25th Post |
| Robert, The image just needs a small contrast boost and a bit of sharpening. I am having a conversation with the developers at present and there seem to be several upgrades in progress. Batch processing is coming so this will mean better workflow but no increase in speed.
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