Bibble won't read my Canon G15 RAW CR2 files

[quixote]

I had a Canon G9 and processed its CR2 files using Bibble 5.2.3. (I use Linux (Debian Wheezy/testing), so Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom won't work for me.) When buying a new camera, I carefully checked that its format was supported by Bibble, since I have a workflow I'm very comfortable with. I settled on the G15, Bibble reads CR2, everything should be fine.

Wrong, of course. I didn't realize that a G9 CR2 is a different animal than a G15 CR2. Bibble was bought by Corel, which apparently has no intention of ever updating anything. They call it "Aftershot Pro," and even if I bought it, it doesn't support the G15.

Off to exiftool in hope of a solution!  I thought maybe if I substituted a G9 model name, Bibble would understand. I tried this:
/home/quixote/Image-ExifTool-9.22/exiftool -model="Canon Powershot G9" -canonModelID="PowerShot G9" IMG_0016a.CR2
Bibble then does display the image file, but with a green overlay. I guess it's not reading any of the magenta in the image? ?? Is there any fix for that?

The Canon G1 X and Canon S100 both have a Digic5 processor, like the G15, and they're in the list of AfterShot Pro-supported cameras. But I'm super-reluctant to shell out $60 or $100, only to find out that model substitution won't work for me.

I'm crushed to find out that my shiny new camera, which takes gorgeous pics, seems to mean a total overhaul of my software. Is there any hope? Anything I can try?

[Phil Harvey]

I'm really no expert on Bibble support or developing raw images. You should probably ask this question in a Canon or Bibble forum.  But looking at my collection of CR2 images, the G15, G9, S100, S110 and SX50HS all have the same 4000x3000 raw image size.  Does Bibble support the S100, S110 or SX50HS?  If so, maybe you could try changing the model tags to these.  Alternatively, you could use the Adobe RGB converter to convert everything to DNG first, assuming Bibble supports DNG.

- Phil

[quixote]

Bibble doesn't support the S100, but AfterShot Pro does (i.e. Corel's version of the software after it acquired Bibble). They do have a free trial option, so I downloaded it. Changing the Canon tag to S100 using exiftool does make AfterShot Pro read the G15's CR2 format. So that's a sort-of solution. Corel's contribution seems to be limited to messing up the user interface, so I'd much rather get it working in Bibble if I could.

Still, exiftool does at least allow a workaround.

Bibble does say it supports DNG. I never paid any attention to it since I had no idea what it signified. I'll be trying that Adobe RGB Converter. Thanks for that suggestion too!

[quixote]

Well, here's the result of exploring all the options. (Summary: no really good solution.)

1) Bibble lists .dng as a usable format, but it turns out they mean only camera-native dng. In other words, if you convert something to dng using Adobe's Raw Converter, it won't read it. (Curse, mutter, mutter.) There's a nice long thread on the old Bibble forums beseeching the developers to get their act together on this. They never did.

2) Canon provides software with the camera, including DPP (Digital Photo Processing?). It does a nice job post-processing the G15 CR2 files, but the workflow aspects are atrocious. It takes about 50x longer to process one image. Forget it. Another showstopper for me: only works in Windows.

3) After being reminded how horrible it is to deal with the Windows world, I didn't follow through on my project to also give Adobe Lightroom a whirl.

4) Only solution: use Corel's dis-improved Bibble/AfterShot Pro after running photos through exiftool to make it think they're Canon S100.

Without exiftool, there wouldn't even *be* any solution!  Thanks again for a great piece of software.

[Phil Harvey]

Sorry you didn't find a better solution.

I agree that Canon's DPP sucks, but there is an OS X version (I know, I have it on this system).

[complaint mode=on]

I have similar problems and gripes.  I'm running OS X 10.7.5 on this computer and the Apple camera raw updates won't install on older systems, and the 10.7.5 camera raw doesn't support all of my cameras.  Same with Photoshop CS4, which I own.  Both companies want me to pay for upgrades when all I want is to support my new camera.  I got around the Mac problem by using Pacifist to manually install the 10.8 camera raw updates on this system (they work fine, it's just the install scripts that won't run on the older systems).  I get around the Photoshop problem by using Lightroom to develop my raws, but it is the wrong application for me because it wants to maintain an image library but I have my own system for that already.  (I would NEVER use proprietary software to keep my image library because it makes it far too easy for the library to become obsolete -- similar to the problems you are having with Bibble being unsupported.)

[complaint mode=off]

- Phil

[quixote]

"it wants to maintain an image library but I have my own system for that already"

Exactly! I didn't realize that was a Lightroom "feature." That makes it another non-starter. Who came up with that nonsense idea? As far as I can tell, it's only purpose is to corral the user. It offers nothing that isn't better achieved by naming image files and their directories. And then you can use any software you want.