Understanding Basic Image Editing Tools | Top Previous Next Learn more at BibbleLabs.com

Bibble provides the following basic image editing tools to control the color hue and saturation, white balance, sharpness, crop and rotation settings of the image. Click the following links for detailed procedures on how to adjust image settings:

• | Setting RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) color levels and saturation

• | Setting the white balance, brightness, and tint levels

• | Viewing tone levels

• | Setting the sharpness and noise levels

• | Setting the Output File Size

• | Setting the rotation and crop settings

For conceptual information on image editing concepts, see the following subsections.

Understanding Perfectly Clear®

Perfectly Clear® powered by Athentech Technologies Inc., is a simple way to quickly optimize your images. Perfectly Clear® is award winning and multi-patented technology that utilizes the physics principles of light. It's the only technology that automatically and instantly optimizes the lighting for each and every pixel while maintaining true color and zero clipping. At the same time Perfectly Clear will automatically remove abnormal tint and restore faded photographs. As the final touch, Perfectly Clear utilizes patented medical imaging technology to provide photographs with optimal contrast and sharpening.

When Perfectly Clear® is enabled, Auto-levels is automatically disabled - as Perfectly Clear® implements much of what Auto-Levels was designed to accomplish. If you later decide to disable Perfectly Clear® , Bibble will not automatically re-enable Auto-Levels.

Understanding Color Levels

The tone of an image is based on the hue, saturation, and brightness of the colors. Hue measures the color reflected from objects in the image, saturation measures the strength or intensity of the colors, and brightness measures the lightness of the image. The colors in an image are stored by recording their Red, Blue, and Green components, and by mixing amounts of these colors, any other color can be created.

Understanding Saturation and Vibrance

Saturation and Vibrance are similar tools, and are both used to enhance or diminish the intensity of the colors in an image. The Saturation control acts on the entire image, adding or removing saturation and making colors more vivid. VIbrance is more selective, acting more strongly in less saturated areas.

Understanding White Balance

White balance measures the color temperature of the light on the subject in the image. Bibble provides numerous white balance settings that can be applied to the image. For example, if a shot was taken in fluorescent light, but the camera white balance was set to "daylight", Bibble can correct the colors by applying the "fluorescent" white balance setting.

Understanding Histograms

Histograms show you how the pixels in an image are distributed by graphing the number of pixels at each color intensity level. The vertical axis represents the total number of pixels. The horizontal axis represents the intensity levels from darkest (left) to brightest (right). For example, if the graph shows higher numbers of pixels in the left portion of the horizontal axis, then the image has more intensity in the shadows. Likewise, if the image shows high pixel levels in the middle or the right of the axis, the image has more intensity in the midtones or the highlights, respectively.

Understanding Sharpness and Noise Levels

Noise filters add or remove pixels with random or unusual color levels. Removing noise helps to blend the odd-colored pixels into the surrounding pixels. Digital noise often looks like dust, pock marks, or unusual patterns on the image. Noise reduction can fix these problem areas (that sometimes occur when an image is shot at high ISO levels).

Sharpening filters find pixels in an area that differ in color value from their surrounding pixels and increase the differing pixel's contrast by a value that you set. Bibble provides three pre-defined sharpening levels (High, Medium, and Low).

Understanding Output File Size

Bibble lets you specify the size of the output file as an image setting. In this case, when you add an image to a batch queue for processing, if the batch queue uses the image setting to determine the output file size, then the output file size conforms to the settings you apply to the specific image.

The Output Size tool lets you adjust the size of the output file based on the scale percentage of the image, the dots per inch, the width, or the height without changing the crop area.

Understanding Rotation and Crop Settings

Working with Rotation

Bibble defines three rotation settings (90 degrees clockwise, 90 degrees counter-clockwise, and 180 degrees). These settings enable you to adjust the orientation of the image to compensate for the position of the camera when the shot was taken.

Working with Straightening Angles

Bibble provides an image straightening feature that lets you apply a custom rotation angle ranging from 45 degrees counter-clockwise to 45 degrees clockwise.

Working with Cropping

Bibble also defines several standard crop values such as 3 X 5, 4 X 6, 5 X 7, 8 X 10, etc. The cropping tool lets you set a custom crop area and adjust the orientation of the crop rectangle (portrait or landscape). When you specify a fixed crop area such as 3 X 5, Bibble produces a 3 X 5 output image regardless of whether you increase or decrease the crop area. In this case, Bibble adjusts the DPI (dots per inch) value of the cropped image so that it fills the 3 X 5 space.

Related Topics

Managing Tool Settings