Moving from B5 to ASP

[susanne_j]

Hello ASP-user,

we started using Bibble with version 4 and it did a great job.

The colors etc. might be a bit less perfect than with capture NX with our D200 but only a bit.
Therefore the workflow with bibble was absolutely great and as a result we switched from Capture NX to bibble 4.

Than came the switch to B5 and our first expirience with the D200 color calibration was really disapointing. We send then a few NEF's as examples (which demonstrates the colors where we were disapointed with) to bibble and we thought it went better.
(just a question beside, is it possible to get the bibble 5.2.3 Version? We still have the 5.2.2 one and would like to upgrade to the latest bibble...)

Now, with my new camera (still using the D200 sometimes and with a lot of old pictures) and moving now to ASP, everything in colors changed again. And here I would like to ask a few questions.

In B5 our default-look-profile we used most often was "Product reduced". ASP doesn't have the look-profiles and the default "look" seems crispier than the normal "Product" one... Does anyone have a setting, which resembles the Product-reduced or the other look-profiles?

Perfectly clear is in my opinion in most cases not useable in ASP, is Corel aware of this problem and could it be expected to be fixed one day? (I've searched the forum for "perfectly clear", to find some answers, but all I found are some statements from users with the same opinion as me.)

Another thing is, that I think that darker areas in a picture in ASP (excuse me, that I explain that in german, hopefully someone could translate it... "Das dunkle Bereiche in den Bilder schneller "matschig" sind oder "absaufen".)
But I will have a deeper look into this over the weekend I think...

Excuse me, that I'm not really happy with ASP, but maybe someone has some solutions for my problems...

Susanne.

[afx]

Hmm, when I visit my D200 files from 2006/2007 with AS I vastly prefer the colors over the B5 colors I must admit.
Did not check the shadows explicitly though. You might want to send some to http://aftershotpro.com/AfterShotUploader/

Can't help you with perfectly clear. I refuse to use this thing, I prefer control over my images.

I used to work with product reduced as well, but always had to add vibrance and S curve. Now I do not change any image defaults...

cheers
afx

[susanne_j]

Hello afx,

thanks for your answer. I don't think, that we used your described S-curve. I think we used the plain settings, autolevels with 0,01 and 0,001 (if I remeber correctly...) and sometimes the perfectly clear.

On some pictures (depending on the motif) sometimes a bit more vibrance or contrast, but nearly never with animals and never on portraits.
(We used other settings of bibble as well, but not on a default-basis.)

I think that dark areas has more drawings (? hopefully described correctly...) But that is something I will have to check over the weekend.

Currently I missed the more "natural" look of the pictures (I noticed, that most photographers currently prefere more coloured pictures...) and - in my opinion - better representation of dark areas...

Is there somewhere still an official page, where bibble 5.2.3 could be downloaded? I would like to have the 5.2.3 version as a debian-64bit and a windows version...

Susanne.

[afx]

You might be able to find 5.2.3 in one of the referenced places of this thread:
http://support.bibblelabs.com/forums/vi ... 31#p100931

cheers
afx

[hannes_hab]

hello susanne,
I know what you mean - I sometimes (often) have the same problems with ASP.
There are also some voices about this in this forum:
http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php ... k+profiles
http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=45775
...
I tried to simulate the look profiles (product reduced or portrait reduced) with the plugin BEZ or MBlightroom (got a hint in this forum) and attached a .zip with some presets.

I hate the hard and posterized shadows in ASP too (maybe they appear only with my - old - nikon cameras) sometimes I think they look like very bad jpgs and not raw - bibble did a better job there. On some (old) pictures I also noticed less detail when reprocessed with ASP (had no time to post examples jet ...)
But ASP has some other advantages and new plugings, new cameras - so development goes on ...
Maybe the presets (/home/user_XX/.AfterShotPro/Presets) help you. Adust them to your needs.

[gregglee]

(just a question beside, is it possible to get the bibble 5.2.3 Version? We still have the 5.2.2 one and would like to upgrade to the latest bibble...)

The old Bibble download page is gone, so I think you will have to find another user who has a copy.

I have a windows version but your profile says you use Linux so mine won't help.

[spoilerhead]

http://www.application-systems.de/bibble/downloads.html

AS Heidelberg still got a mirror up

[gregglee]

Download it quickly before Corel shuts it down.

Regarding ASP, do you have the latest version? The last update didn't fix everything, but it did make a dent in several annoying issues, at least on my equipment. Autocontrast actually works about half the time.

I haven't seen anything useful from Perfectly Clear on b4, b5, or ASP.

Regarding product reduced, which I also used in B5, I suspect the settings to resemble it in ASP will depend on equipment. But I did see a thread a few months ago where someone posted his ASP settings to try to duplicate it. Might try forum search.

[susanne_j]

Thanks for all your support!

I got the versions, thanks!

I think, it has nothing to do with "old" equipment! (Which was also my first thought, because my D200 is now 6(?) Years old and I thought that those old digital-cameras are not of much interest for a new RAW-converter... But that changed, after I looked my Nikon 1 photos in B5... *thumbs up*)

AfterShot Pro behaves the same with my old Nikon D200 and my brandnew Nikon 1 (which was introduced in Bibble 5.2.3) And I don't think that opening a bug-report would change anything or sending some RAW's would change something.
I think bibblelabs have enough of them and they could best do a comparison between bibble5 and ASP... (if they want...)

After trying this evening, to achieve the same results in AfterShot than the ones from b5, I think at the moment, you could not get the same results through presets. It seems that both programs behave absolutely different.
After I got a similiar result with one photo in ASP than in B5, I switched to another photo and it looks totally different.
(But I should mention, that I only used the settings in the Standard tab!)

I'm currently short before, staying with B5...

(I already payed my license-fee to corel for ASP, so corel loses nothing but I think the overall color-rendition with B5 looks more natural to me and is a better starting point for editing than the one from ASP.)

Maybe I'll give it a try with the two plugins you mentioned. But I don't like to rely on plugins. Plugin-APIs could change and if the plugin-programmer - for wathever reason - could not catch up with the change, than the plugin is not available anymore.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I currently think, that AfterShot might be designed with the mass-market in mind, to the average user which likes a more colorized touch of his photos and a harder contrast...
A good example was a situation today. We bought a camera for a friend of mine. I adjusted some settings there. One of the settings was the jpeg-color-generation, I switched it from vivid to neutral. And after my friend photographed some days with the camera, she asked me, that the new camera is not as good as her old one, because the colors with her old one are much "nicer"... I switched it back to vivid and I think, that that is something she likes.

I'm still open to any suggestions, because I have my ASP license etc. but I'm currently a bit sad about the results.

Susanne.

[gregglee]

Be sure you don't edit the same raw file from both b5 and ASP. Copy to separate folders, one for B5 and one for ASP.

Why? ASP and B5 will read each others' .xmp settings files. Then they will overwrite, but as usual, only change the values you edit.

Not only are some tools different, which can confuse the other program, but also the same numerical value in the tools that are the same, sometimes have different effects in the two programs. So opening a file in one program that has already been edited by the other quickly creates a mess.

[afx]

I guess tastes differ widely
The first thing I noticed switching from B5 to AS was that there was more dimensionality to the images (at that time I was solely working with the D700, only looked at older files weeks later. And then I still prefer my D70 & D200 files rendered in AS compared to B4 and B4 (yup, that is still installed)).
Yes, the colors are more lively in AS but in a decent way compared to all those boosting look profiles in B5.
And they are still not as overcooked as Velvia.

If you do need to control the colors very tightly for something like product shots, you could always generate profiles yourself for B5 (and also the latest version of B5).

cheers
afx

[susanne_j]

Be sure you don't edit the same raw file from both b5 and ASP. Copy to separate folders, one for B5 and one for ASP.

Why? ASP and B5 will read each others' .xmp settings files. Then they will overwrite, but as usual, only change the values you edit.

Not only are some tools different, which can confuse the other program, but also the same numerical value in the tools that are the same, sometimes have different effects in the two programs. So opening a file in one program that has already been edited by the other quickly creates a mess.

Yes, that was something that I discovered the day before yesterday!

I remember, that it took a while after the switch from B4 to B5 to make friends with the new color-rendition in B5, it might be here the same, but blowout of bright areas and the bad display of dark areas, that could be done definetly better. The information is still there, even in AfterShot. If the bibble-folks love the new interpretation, it would be a good idea to have a selection possibility, to get a wider display of the colors...
(Maybe I should wait for Bibble7 or AS2 or whatever, the color-rendition may change then again...)

I think, starting from a picture which displays every information and adding contrast and vibrance is better, than getting a crisp picture with less information displayed and trying to make it less bad...

I will play with the plugins mentioned and try to play with the curve, maybe I find something that would come as close as possible to the b5 interpretation. The best who could do that might be the development team, because they know which parameter they screw...
At least something, that is better in handling dark and bright areas!

At least something, that is better in handling dark and bright areas!

I think, that it's the thing, where my concerns lay... (oh dear, please excuse my english...)

And it looks to me, that PC of AS is only working on bright areas, not on dark ones. The results with PC in AS is really bad and I like sometimes the results in B5...

Susanne.

[tundraquad]

Hi suzanne
I understand that you don't want to rely on plug-ins. But you should be able to get a good result and save the main tweaking as preset.
BTW, I was unhappy neither w/ the result of the D200 imgs when I switched to ASP. Specially for landscape shots, I like something a little bit softer than what ASP would give me by default. So, I had to re-work the camera default settings as well (I actually re-done them for the D300 & D700 also).
Thereby, things are easy now: The camera default settings take take of new imgs, while a preset takes care of my D200 files previously opnd in B5.
Yes, it takes a little bit of time to re-work the camera default settings & presets. But once it's done, your life is so much easy.
Take care.

[susanne_j]

Hello again,

I might have now a Preset, which might be (in my opinion) closesly to the Product Reduced from B5. Not perfect, but close to. At least with my Nikon 1 pictures. I wil test it with my D200, but with my Nikon 1 pictures it seems to satisfy me. Nevertheless, it might need some fine tuning.
Thanks to afx, that he noted, he used an s-curve in B5, which gave me the idea to try to use a curve for manipulating the color-rendition.

if someone here also misses the Product Reduced, I would be happy to hear, if it is also working for him/her...

~/.AfterShotPro/Presets/Product Reduced near 2.xmp

Code: Select all

<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="XMP Core 4.4.0">
 <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
  <rdf:Description rdf:about=""
    xmlns:bib="http://www.bibblelabs.com/BibbleToplevel/5.0/"
    xmlns:bset="http://www.bibblelabs.com/BibbleSettings/5.0/"
    xmlns:blay="http://www.bibblelabs.com/BibbleLayers/5.0/"
    xmlns:bopt="http://www.bibblelabs.com/BibbleOpt/5.0/">
   <bib:settings>
    <rdf:Description
     bset:settingsVersion="66"
     bset:respectsTransform="True"
     bset:curLayer="0">
    <bset:layers>
     <rdf:Seq>
      <rdf:li>
       <rdf:Description
        blay:layerId="0"
        blay:layerPos="0"
        blay:name=""
        blay:enabled="True">
       <blay:options
        bopt:hasSettings="true"
        bopt:cont="-50"
        bopt:vibe="-50"
        bopt:curveson="true"
        bopt:curves_m_cn="4,1,7,2,2,2"
        bopt:curves_m_cy="4,20,0,10280,23451,35338,47866,65214,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0"
        bopt:curves_m_cx="4,20,0,7724,20433,31895,44355,65286,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,65535,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0"/>
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</x:xmpmeta>

Susanne.