Corel Releases Professional Linux Photo Software

[liam]

Version: Ubuntu darktable oneiric package v0.9-1. So, looks like it's not the newest one there yet. The updated versions of darktable must not have gotten into 11.10 due to their release dates compared to oneiric version freeze. Perhaps I'll try the PPA version later and compare again.
Processor: Intel i7 950 with 12GB DDR3 RAM

Anyway, the ease of Bibble's lens correction, noiseninja integration, really well working image adjustments, speed of generating previews and processing image in batch output, with the predefinable output profiles also, keep me pretty well still using now AfterShot, I mean Bibble Pro. Corel may have renamed it to fit better into their naming portfolio but I still consider it as Bibble Pro.

It is good that there is darktable, don't get me wrong but having already paid for Bibble and gotten used to that one on Linux, I like it and I might like darktable if I hadn't already gotten used to Bibble. The GUI in darktable 0.9-1 felt badly ordered compared to Bibble to me but perhaps I'm just used to doing things in the Bibble way and couldn't get enthusiastic about doing things the darktable way.

We'll have to see what Corel does to the software in the future but if Bibble Labs employees still do the actual work and are allowed to support the way they used to, the software has great support crew and community behind it who react to problems well and instruct even in harder issues with distributions that aren't actually supported.

Besides, the upgrade price of 18? to AfterShot Pro that earlier Bibble Pro customers had to pay, was not that bad. Although, it remains to be seen how that pricing will be with Corel once the first new paid upgrade comes. Bibble used to give all minor upgrades for free and major updates had to be bought unless if you happened to buy close to next version release when you got the upgrade for free as well. Personally I would have considered Bibble Pro 5 -> Aftershot Pro as a minor upgrade but they decided to request a payment from the upgrade. Luckily the pricing was reasonable for old customers though.

Yeah, obviously if you've already paid for something, and it works for you, then changing doesn't make sense, and I think you're using a recent enough version (assuming you're driver is able to handle OpenCl) that the recent OpenCL work should've come down.
I found an interesting thread in the ubuntu forums where there was discussion about darktable as compared to lightroom/BP/RT/etc. This guy in particular (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...4&postcount=95 ) seemed to really like DT as compared to everthing else (except lightroom), but obviously if you've invested significent time into a particular workflow getting to a similar level of productivity with alternate software can take awhile, assuming such is even possible.
Still, glad to see you giving DT a look.

Best/Liam

[jpalko]

I'm curious as to what version you were using since the darktable website (http://www.darktable.org/features/) states a number of optimizations. Now, maybe you didn't have an opencl enabled stack, or your processor didn't support the simd, but I would expect it to be extremely fast.

Version: Ubuntu darktable oneiric package v0.9-1. So, looks like it's not the newest one there yet. The updated versions of darktable must not have gotten into 11.10 due to their release dates compared to oneiric version freeze. Perhaps I'll try the PPA version later and compare again.
Processor: Intel i7 950 with 12GB DDR3 RAM

Anyway, the ease of Bibble's lens correction, noiseninja integration, really well working image adjustments, speed of generating previews and processing image in batch output, with the predefinable output profiles also, keep me pretty well still using now AfterShot, I mean Bibble Pro. Corel may have renamed it to fit better into their naming portfolio but I still consider it as Bibble Pro.

It is good that there is darktable, don't get me wrong but having already paid for Bibble and gotten used to that one on Linux, I like it and I might like darktable if I hadn't already gotten used to Bibble. The GUI in darktable 0.9-1 felt badly ordered compared to Bibble to me but perhaps I'm just used to doing things in the Bibble way and couldn't get enthusiastic about doing things the darktable way.

We'll have to see what Corel does to the software in the future but if Bibble Labs employees still do the actual work and are allowed to support the way they used to, the software has great support crew and community behind it who react to problems well and instruct even in harder issues with distributions that aren't actually supported.

Besides, the upgrade price of 18? to AfterShot Pro that earlier Bibble Pro customers had to pay, was not that bad. Although, it remains to be seen how that pricing will be with Corel once the first new paid upgrade comes. Bibble used to give all minor upgrades for free and major updates had to be bought unless if you happened to buy close to next version release when you got the upgrade for free as well. Personally I would have considered Bibble Pro 5 -> Aftershot Pro as a minor upgrade but they decided to request a payment from the upgrade. Luckily the pricing was reasonable for old customers though.

[liam]

Well, as a quick test I tried darktable and Bibble/Aftershot scanning a directory of 200 CR2 files to generate their thumbnails in the GUI. Darktable was slow as molasses (around 3 minutes) to get them shown while Aftershot took about 15 seconds to check through the whole directory. Also I have to say as a long time Bibble Pro user that I wouldn't find darktable usable to my needs especially owning a license to noiseninja as well which Aftershot supports.

I'm curious as to what version you were using since the darktable website (http://www.darktable.org/features/) states a number of optimizations. Now, maybe you didn't have an opencl enabled stack, or your processor didn't support the simd, but I would expect it to be extremely fast.

[jpalko]

Anyone compared this to darktable yet?

Well, as a quick test I tried darktable and Bibble/Aftershot scanning a directory of 200 CR2 files to generate their thumbnails in the GUI. Darktable was slow as molasses (around 3 minutes) to get them shown while Aftershot took about 15 seconds to check through the whole directory. Also I have to say as a long time Bibble Pro user that I wouldn't find darktable usable to my needs especially owning a license to noiseninja as well which Aftershot supports.

[curaga]

It wasn't long ago that I got an inkscape svg file that librsvg couldn't show properly. Browsers still differ and so on.

[sorcer_r]

Michael:

I'm surprised by your lack of understanding of what the different graphics tools you mentioned in your article are about.

There's no such thing as "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom". It's either Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom, two different programs with different goals and purposes. Also, the GIMP has little to do with software like Adobe Lightroom or Corel's AfterShot Pro. The GIMP is a lot like Photoshop.

wrong!. the product is indeed called "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom". (if you really need to attack someone on a minor naming thing like this, at least make sure you are correct!).

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

[sorcer_r]

wrong

Michael:

I'm surprised by your lack of understanding of what the different graphics tools you mentioned in your article are about.

There's no such thing as "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom". It's either Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom, two different programs with different goals and purposes. Also, the GIMP has little to do with software like Adobe Lightroom or Corel's AfterShot Pro. The GIMP is a lot like Photoshop.

wrong! the product is indeed called "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom". (if you really want to attack someone on such a minor naming error at least make sure you are correct).

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

[crazycheese]

You should be blaming SVG, a standard so crappy no two programs can understand each other's SVG perfectly.

How can I blame SVG, when both Inkscape and Firefox understand it properly and 500$-heavy Coreldraw x10 does not? I think I blame corel instead

[bug77]

Uh, yes, that is one of the explicit goals of the XML standard in the first place. See goal #6 of the standard here:

That may be, but it's not the standard's fault humans can't read binary.

[Kejk_PL]

Yes and no. Depends how much back-logic is there. Cross-platform desktop applications may be exposed via HTML5 [...]

You are completely right, I was just amazed how Qt simplifies writing cross platform application in C++. I used Qt in my MA thesis, I wrote proof of concept application for Linux, Windows and Symbian. The same code, just recompile. Beside small bugs everything worked quite smoothly. Of course Qt brings some problems, Symbian port was beta-quality and had some issues with threads and input handling, but (form me) it would be impossible to write such application in very limited time.
I know that Qt is not a remedy form every problem, but it really helps in C++ applications, when usage of Java or HTML is not possible. Is not the only solution too. But (IMHO) in this case it's done great job. This application don't use platform dependent features, differences in file and network handling were solved by using Qt. Could be done in another way? Surely, but this way was chosen