I ended up spending my entire evening with my WinPro 8 tablet in
front of me trying out all the various image organizing packages to
try to figure out the good from the bad. Here's what I've learned...
The first thing I will warn everyone is, always always always choose
Advanced Install or Custom Install with this stuff. Even stuff from
Sourceforge is going to try to sneak some toolbar or system optimizer
into the installer if you aren't careful. (I was really surprised
Sourceforge is doing that kind of crap these days!)
The good:
FastStone Image Viewer - It's freeware and does a great job. I don't
like how it handles favorites - a dropdown menu versus an
explorer-like list. It also won't create folder thumbnails
recursively, so you only get folder thumbnails on folders that
contain images, not other folders. It's fairly configurable, didn't
crash at all, and has no problems with network folders. Absolutely
worth a shot.
ACDSee Pro 8 - I honestly haven't touched ACDSee since probably when
Windows NT 3.51 was out. I was shocked at how far it's come. It's a
very nice piece of kit. Certainly the most professional-oriented
package I tested. I didn't have a lot of time to try it out, but it
played video fine, had no issues with the network, had plenty of
configuration options and looks like it'll do everything I need.
Unfortunately it did completely lock up while I was trying to change
it's temp folder and it never recovered - I had to kill the task &
restart it.
Picasa - It's serviceable. Much more oriented towards snapshots and
home movies, but it's functional and free. You have to import
folders, you can't navigate, but it hooks into all of Google's
service, which can be good or bad depending on your viewpoint.
Zoner Photo Studio 17 - I was almost completely wrong about this
one. It's very flexible, stable, and rock solid. It did not crash
once. It has some pro-sumer things about it that still give me the
vibe that they're going to sell my email address to spammers, but
that's just a feeling. I would say it's my #2 choice at the moment
and could be #1.
The bad / ugly:
I didn't realize there was now not only XnView, but also XnViewMP. I
believe MP is the replacement, since it's at v0.69 at the moment.
Unfortunately it suffers from the same problem as XnView - when you
point it to a network folder that contains a lot of images, it
crashes. XnViewMP looked like it would be the solution to organizing
everything. It supports a ton of file formats and has some great
organizing features, but it's completely unstable.
Pictomio came highly rated, yet it crashed the moment I tried to
launch it. I tried various compatibility settings & when it finally
ran I was greeted with a pile of JSON errors. It appears to be
nothing more than a wrapper on Internet Explorer. The interface has
a very Windows Media Player vibe to it and there's no way to change
it. Your choices are dark skin or light skin. It doesn't seem to
be able to see anything related to your network at all. There's no
way to navigate outside your local drives. It also has banner ads
at the bottom of the screen.
BonAView - another one that just gave me a bad vibe. Their website
just seems aimed at my mom more than anyone looking for a
professional tool for organizing images & video. The program itself
is an homage to Windows XP, I guess. It's an all gray interface, but
everything is glossy and candy looking. Rather than letting you
build your own directory structure on your local machine or server,
it has it's own system of organization. It also has a gimmicky "3D
viewer". Personally I hated it.
Phototheca - looks like iTunes and Lightroom had a baby. It doesn't
let you browse your system or the network like most packages do, but
instead like Lightroom or Picasa, you need to import your materials
and create new Libraries. The interface is very nice to look at, but
I don't like being forced to import everything into their system
rather than browsing, organizing & tagging things. Also, it does not
support video as far as I can tell.
MAGIX Photo Manager 12 - pissed me off right away with trying to be
sneaky with their installer. Rather than having you UN-check the
crapware they want to install, their installer says "Please check the
3rd party products you do NOT want to install." Sneaky sneaky! The
interface icons look a bit like they were designed by the person who
makes the Baby Einstein videos. And although it shows a Network
Paths drop-down in the explorer window, it's using some bizzaro
ancient way to access a Microsoft Workgroup, so I can only see my
local machine in the network and therefore the software is useless.
That's about all I could do between dinner and sleep last night.
Hopefully that helps someone. I personally like to have really
organized and easy-to-find files, so having a good image/video
organizer is really important.
-Paul
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:58 PM, James De Colling
<james.decoll...@gmail.com <mailto:james.decoll...@gmail.com>> wrote:
XNview here, previously acdsee. ive tried zoner and ifran and
bridge, xnview just works well for me. remap the mouse to scroll
images, put thumbnails at 192x192m change background to dark grey
(turning off thumbnail shadow etc) and its quick too.
I purely use image viewers as just that though, screaming through
large collections of textures / ref images etc, then drag/drop
into photoshop. I dont use any of the editing features etc.
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Paul Griswold
<pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com
<mailto:pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com>> wrote:
I might be taking back what I said about Zoner.
I've been testing it & FastStone today, along with continuing
to use Bridge. Zoner honestly does a really good job of being
not just a fewer, but an organizer. It's basically a cross
between Bridge, Lightroom and XnView.
It handles video, vectors, and all the normal bitmap
formats. It also doesn't choke on HDRs - which Bridge can
do. And, it has no problem with network drives.
Although their website looked very spammy, I'm fairly
impressed with it. The only real negative I can come up with
at the moment is, the organizational options are limited to
just "favorites". I'd like to be able to create collections
the way you can in Bridge. But beyond that, it's certainly
worth a look.
-Paul
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 7:01 PM, Stephen Davidson
<magic...@bellsouth.net <mailto:magic...@bellsouth.net>> wrote:
For quick video viewing, I use DJView
http://windjview.sourceforge.net/
I leave it on my desktop as an icon, and just drag the
video file from my file browser onto the
DJView icon. The reason that I like it, is because it
will deal with a series of stills (even Softimage .pic files)
I hope you find that useful.
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Paul Griswold
<pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com
<mailto:pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com>> wrote:
Doing a little research this afternoon. Xnview has
one big problem as far as I can tell. If you try to
favorite a network folder, it favorites it, but when
you click on the favorite it freaks out and takes you
to SkyDrive instead. Since all my images, textures,
etc., are all on a server, that puts Xnview out of
the picture.
Irfranview doesn't seem to have any organization
tools at all, but it's still a great little image viewer.
Zoner Photo Studio came up in some searches. The
first negative I see is, they require you to sign up
to their website just to get the free version. It
feels very pro-sumer in how they present it, but
maybe that's just my impression. It's got a nice,
Lightroom-like interface, but I'm just concerned it's
one of those programs that attaches adware to your
system, sells your email address, etc.... again -
that's just the vibe I'm getting.
FastStone Image Viewer was listed as an alternative
to ACDSee. I've never heard of it & have no
opinion. I might give it a try. It can be found
here: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Paul Griswold
<pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com
<mailto:pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com>> wrote:
I forgot about Xnview. I think it has some
decent features. I'm not sure if it handles
video, though.
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Martin Yara
<furik...@gmail.com <mailto:furik...@gmail.com>>
wrote:
A few years ago I was using Windows Photo
Gallery or Live Gallery or something like
that, can't remember the name, a free app
from Microsoft.
It was interesting. I was creating my own
texture library with tags, keywords and
categories, but I couldn't finish it. It's
just too much work.
For just visualizing images I use Irfanview too.
Martin
--
Best Regards,
* Stephen P. Davidson**
**(954) 552-7956 <tel:%28954%29%20552-7956>
* sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com
/Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic/
- Arthur C. Clarke
<http://www.3danimationmagic.com>
