A plug-in for the camera RAW image processing program Bibble.
Author: Sean Puckett (seanmpuckett@gmail.com).

Bibble 5 note: All plug-ins will be rebuilt for B5. No upgrade fee will be charged. However, the price of plug-ins may rise when B5 is released. Purchase now to lock in your ownership of a plug-in.

What does Brenda do?

Brenda creates colour styles -- alterations to the colour feel of an image -- by shifting the shade and brightness of up to 24 colour "patches." Brenda is designed to enhance the look of the image as a whole, and can very easily and quickly build a unique colour treatment to give a special look and feel to your photography.

Download Freeware Now

The freeware version of Brenda is available now.

Brenda freeware does not contain the Light, Similar or Power sliders, or the Chart feature.
Windows, Linux and Mac versions included in the same download. Read the Brenda Release Notes, then access the download area.
You'll find installation instructions as INSTALL.txt in the zipfile.
Please provide feedback at the email address above.

Purchase BrendaPRO Professional Version Now

Windows, Linux and Mac versions included in the same download. BrendaPRO is now available for purchase at $20 USD.

Already purchased, but need an upgrade? Click Here.

Sample Output

brendabefore Info

brendaafter Info

This "style" shifts the whitepoint to a warm orange while moving the blackpoint to a deep blue. Skin tones were warmed slightly. This change used just three patches and took less than a minute to develop.

brendaflower1 Info

brendaflower2 Info

A quick adjustment, punching up the yellows and making the background just a little more blue. Brenda+AndyPRO in RGB mode.

Brenda for Tweaks

Brenda is also excellent for subtly adjusting colour tones and shades in your images. From punching up flowers and foliage to tweaking skies and skin, Brenda gives you 24 different ways to gently alter your photographs.

Brenda User Interface

brendamap2 Info

Enable Checkbox

Turns on/off the Brenda plug-in effect.

Map Checkbox

Shows, via "paint-by-numbers" overlay, which patch is most similar to a region of the screen. Match the number shown to the button number in the patch palette.

Chart Checkbox (BrendaPRO only)

Shows how the colours of the image are changed by Brenda. Will not display correctly if image is cropped or if you are zoomed in. The chart is for information only, and has no real purpose other than amusement.

Reset Button

Resets all patches to null effect and turns off the plug-in.

? Button

Displays version number of the plug-in.

Patch Palette

Each of these 24 coloured buttons is a colour patch. Click on a patch to adjust the colour applied to pixels that are similar to that patch. (Patch colours chosen are similar to those found in the Gretag MacBeth Colourchecker chart.)

Default patches. Brenda presets patch 41 (white) and patch 46 (black) to be enabled with no alteration with a power of 1.0. This causes both white and black to be anchors so that other patch changes do not overwhelm.

Effect preset. When you click on a patch that has not been used, Brenda will preset the sliders for that patch according to the adjustments already taking place according to other patches in use.

Patch Adjustments

Settings in this box affect only the currently selected patch.

On Checkbox

Enables the alteration of the patch shown by name. To see the effect of a particular patch, click this checkbox off and on repeatedly.

Patch Name Field

Shows the name and number of the currently selected patch. If no patch is selected, shows "--".

Colour Slider

Adds (positive) or subtracts (negative) colour to the patch. In general, adding colour to a patch makes it more saturated without changing its hue significantly. Removing colour makes the patch less saturated, but also can add the patch colour compliment for strong effects. White and grey patches will become redder when colour is added.

Tint Slider

Alters the colour of the patch. In general, shifts the colour to a warmer or cooler version of itself. If you modify both colour and tint sliders, it is possible to alter the hue of a patch to any colour. It may, however, require some experimentation to find the one you want.

Light Slider (BrendaPRO only)

Adds or removes lightness (luminance) from the patch.

Similar Slider & Checkbox (BrendaPRO only)

When similarity is increased, colours near the patch are drawn towards the patch hue, making them more similar to the patch colour. When similarity is decreased, those nearby colours are pushed away, making the patch colour more unique. When used on white and grey patches, the effect is similar to a saturation adjustment. When the Similar checkbox is checked, the patch luminance is also altered by the similarity slider, creating a contrast adjusting effect.

Power Slider (BrendaPRO only)

Controls how strongly this patch effects the colours in the image. A combination of colour range and intensity controls. For moderate adjustments, a value of 0.5-0.8 is adequate. Values of 1 and greater will impact the entire image to some degree.

Notes

Whole image adjustment. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that Brenda changes everything in the image to some degree. All adjustments smoothly blend into each other, creating a unified colour style. A non-obvious but very useful effect of this is that you can change just the white patch to effect a wide-reaching colour shift -- because every part of the image has a little bit of white in it -- some more, some less. Similarly, changing the black patch will change much of the image as well, but more in the shadows, as opposed to highlights. Get used to thinking of patch adjustments as "suggestions" rather than "commands" -- as if you were stretching a rubber band rather than bending a wire -- and you will have a better understanding of Brenda's behaviour.

Start with good images. Do not use Brenda to correct bad exposures. For a colour style to have a consistent effect from image-to-image, images used with Brenda should be well exposed and white balanced before Brenda is used. You can use Bibble's exposure control, Siggy or Shady to adjust exposure for Brenda. You cannot use Ansel to adjust exposure with Brenda 0.9, as Ansel processes images after Brenda.

Use Brenda appropriately. Use Brenda to create a style and/or tweak images subtly, not to correct big mistakes. Other tools and plug-ins are better suited for correcting mistakes -- Brenda creates moods by adjusting everything at once.

Save your styles. When you create a style you like, save it using the blue down-arrow at the upper right corner of the Brenda tool panel. Give your image style a useful name. You can then reload this style in another session to create a consistent look and feel.

For More Information

Please visit the Brenda homepage at www.nexi.com/brenda to learn more about Brenda, and to check for the latest version.

Legal

Brenda is copyright 2007 Sean M Puckett, all rights reserved. Brenda may not be distributed except via direct download from its homepage.