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Image Viewers and Databases
Image viewers which store their thumbnail galleries in databases can be disk
hogs - so if your hard disk space is at a premium, this is an issue you
should pay close attention to with this class of software.
ThumbsPlus is an example of the database-driven class of image
viewing software (ie it stores its thumbnail galleries in a database).
The big advantage of this approach is that these galleries persist
from one session to the next (ie once you've built your thumbnail galleries
you don't have to burn any time recreating them the next time you
use it).
This can be a big time-saver if you use an image viewer multiple times
a day (as we do).
IrfanView, by contrast, is an example of the opposing school of thought.
It creates its thumbnail galleries on the fly.
This means that you do burn a little time recreating thumbnails
every time you use it. But the trade-off is that you don't have to
give over any hard disk space to a big thumbnail database (our own ThumbsPlus
database runs to around 200Mb).
All image viewers use one approach or the other, and what's right
for you depends very much on how much disk space you have; how
many images you have; and how often you think you're likely to
use an image viewer to locate particular files.
We know several people who use "on the fly" image viewers without
difficulty because they store their images in an ordered way.
But we know others who don't, and they find "on the fly" viewers a
nuisance to use because they can't quickly step through pre-existing
thumbnail galleries to locate an image of interest.
This means choosing the right image viewer really comes down to
knowing yourself and your work habits as much as it does to
software features.
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Other Image Viewer Resources
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 Image Viewers
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Background: An image viewer (sometimes also called an image
browser, thumbnailer or cataloger) is a program that allows
you to view and manipulate images stored on your hard drive.
Many graphics programs have image viewers built into them (for example,
PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro). And Windows users also have several default
image viewers that come bundled with the operating system (eg: Windows
Explorer's file manager and Windows Picture Viewer).
But the reason most people use dedicated image viewers is that they provide
far more facilities for sorting and manipulating images on the fly
than bolt-in programs do.
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Typically, a good image viewer will allow you to:
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View images in thumbnail galleries, with the ability to select any
image to view it at full size
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Sort images based on criteria you select (eg: size, type, weight,
colour)
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Convert images between different file formats (eg: .BMP to .JPG)
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Perform basic graphic manipulations on images (eg: crop, enlarge,
reduce, rotate)
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Perform basic graphic touch-ups (eg: brighten, darken, invert)
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Apply special effects (eg: blurring, sharpening)
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Create contact sheets
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Create HTML picture or thumbnail galleries
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Perform batch operations (eg: convert all BMPs in a directory to JPGs
in a single pass)
Because of the quick-and-easy access that image viewers provide, people who
work with images on a daily basis (eg: webmasters, graphic designers etc)
have generally regarded a good image viewer as an essential tool for
more than a decade.
But the rise of digital photography in recent years has extended the
need for good image viewers out into the general population too.
So if you don't have a good image viewer yet - or if you're unhappy
with the one you currently have - here are six truly excellent (and
completely free) image viewers that can revolutionise the way you
handle images on your hard drive:
Popular Image Viewers
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ThumbsPlus
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Cerious Software's ThumbsPlus is a simple to use but extremely
powerful image viewer that we've used on a daily basis for more than
a decade. This marvellous software will catalogue every image on your
hard drive ( including fonts) and put them all into thumbnail galleries.
You can then click on any image to view it at full size and - from there
- crop it, resize it, rotate it, apply effects to
it, convert it to any of a dozen common image file formats, carry
out batch operations, reduce the image's weight (eg: for web graphics),
create a web page gallery or do just about anything else you can imagine.
ThumbsPlus lets you set the amount of detailed information you'd like
displayed in your thumbnail gallery (eg: image weight, type, pixel dimensions
- you can change this at any time) and it has a number of extremely useful
graphics "touch-up" functions built in too (eg: adjustments for
brightness, contrast, hue, saturation etc). These can make it very easy to
improve the quality of your images "on the fly" without needing to
boot up your graphics editing software. And since you can preview
the effect of each adjustment before you commit to it, these functions are
simple enough for anyone to use whether they've had any graphics training
or not. ThumbsPlus was originally a shareware product but from Version 4
onwards it became fully commercial software, and it usually retails for US$50
to US$90 (depending on whether you buy the Standard or Pro version). And
if you use Windows (98 to XP/2003) you can get a free, fully-functional
30 day trial of the latest versions of either of these from Cerious'
site. However, Cerious still have unlimited use shareware versions
of ThumbsPlus 3.3 available, and this also runs on any version of
Windows from Win95 to XP. So if you want a completely free copy,
this is the one to get (though if you like it and use it as often as we do,
we encourage you to buy a copy and/or pay the shareware fee). What we
particularly like about ThumbsPlus - apart from its ease of use - is that
it's extremely well programmed. We haven't had a single bug or problem
in over a decade of use, and it's a tool we use every single day.
Get ThumbsPlus
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IrfanView
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Another image viewer that's won as many fans as ThumbsPlus over the years
is IrfanView, a freeware/shareware image viewer that was created
by Irfan Skiljan of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996. Unlike ThumbsPlus,
IrfanView creates thumbnail galleries "on the fly" so it
doesn't build a big database like ThumbsPlus does. This certainly
helps conserve disk space (and the entire program is only a few megabytes).
But against this, IrfanView omits - of necessity! - some of the
database-driven functionality that ThumbsPlus provides (eg: you'll
need to regenerate your thumbnail galleries from one session to the
next). Even so, IrfanView is another simple to use but extremely
powerful image viewer and its capabilities include most of the things
ThumbsPlus can do plus the ability to view SWF and FLV files; the
ability to run many common video and audio file formats (eg: MPG,
WMV, AVI, MP3 etc); the ability to create Windows icon files (ie .ICO);
the ability to create slideshows that can be saved in EXE or SCR format;
the ability to be used in conjunction with a TWAIN scanner and/or digital
camera; and support for Adobe filters and a wide range of
plug-ins that have been developed for it. IrfanView also has it own
image editing functions, but if you find these insufficient one
particularly nice feature of the program is the ability to set your favourite
graphics program as the default editor instead. IrfanView runs on all
versions of Windows from Win95 to 2003/Vista and it's freeware
for private, non-commercial use and for charities, schools and other
not-for-profit groups. If you're using it commercially, it's shareware
and you're asked to pay a modest US$12 licensing fee. The latest IrfanView
version 4.2 was released in July 2008 and it's available in English and 20
other language versions.
Get IrfanView
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XNView
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Pierre-Emmanuel Gougelet's XNView is a third image viewer that's been
drawing a growing (and very large) fan base, though it's slightly younger
than either of its predecessors. XNView is a combination of the best
features of both ThumbsPlus and IrfanView ( see above) and it offers
nearly all the facilities that both of these programs provide plus
several more besides. For example, XNView can read more than 400
different image, audio and video file formats - including some very obscure
and little-used ones - and can also write to 50 different file formats,
which makes it the graphic file format converter of choice for some people.
It also comes in 43 language versions (for Windows users, at least).
Other nice features include HTML page generation; contact sheet creation;
TWAIN support for scanners and digital cameras; batch conversion
and image processing; full screen slide shows; image manipulation
with a wide range of in-built effects; lossless JPG manipulation;
EXIF metadata and auto rotation support; drag and drop support (in
Windows); side-by-size image comparison; and screen capture
(amongst many, may others). XNView is also very fast and the software is
frequently updated to incorporate new features suggested by users. XNView
is freeware for private non-commercial, educational and non-profit
organizational use and versions are available for Windows (from Win
3.1 to Vista); Linux and other popular flavours of Unix; and Mac
OS X. We were very pleased with XNView and we think you might be as well.
Get XNView
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FastStone Image Viewer
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The FastStone Image Viewer is similar to ThumbsPlus ( above)
- that is, it includes a fully integrated thumbnail file manager and a
database, so it can also be used as an image organizer as well
as an image viewer. But it's also a surprisingly powerful program
and while its menus contain hundreds of options, it's very easy to learn
and you can be productive with it very quickly (particularly if you've
ever used a similar type of image viewer before). It allows you to
view, convert and edit images with features that include
resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustment, watermarks, and a
broad array of other image management features. FastStone also provides quick
access to EXIF information and its thumbnail browser emerges from
a hidden toolbar when you touch the edge of your screen with the mouse
(very handy if you do a lot of image manipulation work). FastStone also offers
a batch image converter and resizer, a magnifier, and a
built-in slide show capability with more than 60 transitional
effects. It will also do lossless JPG transitions, add drop-shadow
effects and image frames, and it has scanner and digital camera
support and a histogram function. FastStone supports all major graphics
file formats (ie BMP, JPG, JPG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO, and
TGA) along with Adobe's PSD format, and will play video files (ie
AVI, WMV and MPG) in slideshows. FastStone runs on Windows (Win98
to XP/2003/Vista) and it's freeware for home and personal use (for
commercial use it's shareware and you'll need to pay a US$35 registration
fee). We were impressed with FastStone's design and programming - in fact,
we think it's a robust, fully-featured package easily the equal of
any commercial image viewer you could buy. But go see for yourself.
Get FastStone Image Viewer
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11View
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If you're looking for a quick, lightweight but powerful
image viewer another product well worth considering is Stratopoint Software's
11View. Stratopoint have discontinued the development of this
freeware program - the last update was the Version 3.0 release - but
that's only because they need to concentrate on their commercial products:
11View itself has won many awards and loyal users rave about it. Like
other image viewers reviewed on this page, 11View allows you to view,
print and convert your images to different file formats, and
to do so with the highest possible quality. But 11View's special features
include numerous viewing options; loading-time interpolation; color
management options; gamma correction and am extended batch
converter. 11View also offers the usual file management tools, a high-quality
print function, an acquire function, and even a Send by E-mail function
(which we thought was quite nice). 11View isn't a large program
in comparison to some of the others reviewed here - the download is less
than 1Mb - but if you don't have highly demanding image management tasks
and/or you're looking for a powerful editor that's easy to port across
different machines (eg: your desktop and laptop PCs) we can certainly recommend
this dynamic little powerhouse. 11View runs on all versions of Windows (from
Win95 to XP/2003).
Get 11View
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Photoscape
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Finally, if the main reason you're looking for an image viewer is to manage
your digital photo collection, then it may be well worth your while to take
a look at Mooie Software's Photoscape. Photoscape occupies a unique
spot in the landscape that straddles pure image viewers and photo editing
software packages and successfully combines the best features of both. As
with all the other software we've reviewed above, Photoscape lets you view
your images and carry out basic editing on them (eg: resizing,
brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames,
balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters,
red eye removal, blooming etc). But then it goes beyond this by adding
in additional functions that allow you to make supersize photos by
tiling extra pictures vertically or horizontally (see examples on
Mooie's site); to split up photos into multiple parts; and to create
photo animations (as animated GIFs) from multiple photos. In addition
to its normal print operations, Photoscape's print function also allows you
to print portrait shots, carte de visite and passport
photos; and it has a screen capture function built in as well.
Photoscape allows you to carry out batch processing on your images,
and it also has an in-built RAW converter as well (RAW to JPG). Photoscape
has been around for several years (Mooie were founded in South Korea in 2001)
and has won numerous gongs. We think they're well-deserved. The software
runs on all versions of Windows (from Win98 to Vista) and it's
freeware.
Get Photoscape
This page last updated: 18-Sep-2008
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