I've been using Bibble Pro 4.9 for over a year now and I've just started using CS4 along with ACR 5. I've had to do a lot of tweaking with ACR 5 to get the results I like. I even ran a calibration script with a GretagMacbeth color checker with Pro Photo 16bit color depth and the results were horrible. So I've manually tweaked my calibration in ACR 5 using sRGB 16bit. I like the the ACR 5 version of these balloons a bit better, what do you think about the color and hues? Which one do you like best?
One last note...if you download these and open them in a viewer that shows the color histogram, you'll notice that the ACR 5 version has a more robust curve (aka more data) whereas the Bibble version has less; however, what's strange is that the ACR 5 version is considerably smaller in file size...humm go figure?
#1 Version rendered from a Canon 30D RAW in ACR 5 16bit sRGB and using the latest Camera Standard beta 2 Camera profile from Adobe with only Red Saturation at -14, all other sliders for color at zero. Normal exposure settings used such as brightness set at 50 and contrast set at 20 (normal for ACR right?). Then opened in CS4 and one default pass of Noiseware Pro and USM of radius 1 amt 35% (I like using USM in CS4 more than in ACR):
Can't offer advice, only observation which, of course, is only valid for my eyes: Calibrated monitor, old, uncalibrated eyes.
#1 looks slightly more vibrant to me in balloons but sky of #2 seems slightly more appealing if that makes any sense. A dust-bunny is visible in #2 (center, very top) whereas it is not in #1.
What matters too is which is closer to your recollection of the scene?
I'm a Capture NX2 user so 'don't have a dog in this fight'. However I have been following the coming(?) release of Bibble 5 and look forward to trying it.
regards,
Bob
<EDIT>
Well, being obsessive I pulled #2 into LightZone and just clicked the WB tool using a star on the blue balloon with "color dodge" blending mode and about 85% opacity:
Bob, thanks for helping out. I like the WB of the 3rd option you provided...I should give that a try. I forgot to mention, in the ACR version I did remove that dust bunny and used the new ND Grad filter tool...really nice feature...so it gave the sky a darker gradient from top to bottom.
I agree that #1 ACR version is slightly more vibrant. I'm just doing some tests to get my ACR calibrated to it best. I will also try a few lab prints too to compare. Again, thanks for the input here.
Thanks, glad I could be of help. I'm intrigued about Bibble 5 because the demo shows selection and masking tools nearly identical to those in LightZone. I find them far superior to CS3 as its masks and selections really frustrate me. I don't think NX2 allows as fine a granularity for selection as LZ but really have not tested for that.
Too, the WB feature in LZ is a no-brainer but, as with all these apps, no one tool does it all extremely well. Thus I marry up NX2, LZ, Neat Image, and even CS3 (for cloning) at times. The real story - I'm a post-processing junkie
