RAW Quality

Bibble Labs has been at the forefront of RAW file decoding and conversion for over a decade, so its no wonder that Bibble 5 has at its core broad RAW file support. But Bibble 5 is designed to work quickly and efficiently with JPEG and TIFF files as well - unifying your photographic workflow.


What is RAW? Does it really matter?

“RAW” files contain the data direct from your camera's sensor, with very little in-camera processing applied to them. These files have extensions like CR2, NEF, RAW, PEF, ORF, and several others, and typically can't be viewed or printed without some level of post-processing.

RAW files will always provide higher quality than an in-camera JPEG, and the difference is most noticable under more difficult shooting conditions like low light, high ISO, harsh lighting, multiple light sources and others. The more you manipulate your photos, the more you'll appreciate RAW.

What is RAW?

RAW files are different from JPEG files in several important ways:

  • Higher bit-depth - means that more data is saved from the sensor. 12-bit RAW files contain 16 times as many shades of colors as a JPEG.
  • Unprocessed - in-camera settings for things like white balance, sharpening, color space, and many other settings are not applied to RAW files.
  • Lossless Compression - preserves all the data from the sensor while still reducing file size.

Click the chart below to see how your camera's sensor captures and records JPEG or RAW files.

The RAW Advantage

Shooting RAW isn't required to use Bibble 5, but there are distinct advantages to a fully RAW workflow: higher quality, more flexibility, and more tools.

  • Higher Quality comes from the additional data in a RAW file that isn't present in JPEG's, like more color information, and from custom color and noise profiles tuned specifically for your camera.
  • More Flexibility is possible because less non-reversable processing is being performed by the camera, so your photo is in a more pristine state when you start your post-processing. This means more latitude for highlight recovery, fill light, noise reduction, white balance and most other adjustments as well.
  • More Tools are enabled for RAW files, providing you with more control. Highlight Recovery isn't possible with JPEG or TIFF files, and other tools like White Balance are more limited when working on JPEG's than with RAW files.

Not Shooting RAW?

If you are not shooting RAW files, or have older photos in JPEG or TIFF formats, there's no need to worry. Bibble 5 supports those as well. All images in Bibble 5 are edited non-destructively, which means that Bibble 5 will never alter your original photo. This ensures that you can always come back later and see the original, straight-from-camera image or make other adjustments without losing quality or detail.

RAW Support

RAW files differ in contents and format from camera maker to camera maker and even from model to model, using different encoding methods, compression methods, and storing differing amounts of shooting information.

Properly supporting RAW files requires more than just being able to decode the RAW file itself. It also requires custom color and noise profiling, and other image quality tuning to ensure that every photo will look its best. This means that to properly support a specific camera model, we need to get our hands on one and perform our custom calibration process.

Visit the specs page to see the latest list of supported RAW file formats.



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