XnView Software

http://www.insidetonic.com/2007/02/17/f ... vs-xnview/

It's not very "deep going" comparison, but some may find it interesting.

ckv wrote:http://www.insidetonic.com/2007/02/17/f ... vs-xnview/

It's not very "deep going" comparison, but some may find it interesting.

Thanks ckv for the link.

A few points supplemented to information at the above link are:

1) Both will retain the pictures in their original place, unlike Picassa, Photomeister and a few others.

2) Both allow for opening with multiple external programs.

3) Both will give a facility to dragNdrop and auto renaming of files, though to different degrees.

It is by these three features, I have shortlisted my image viewers to these two.

And the race goes on on my desk top too! My preference is XnView as in this forum, where you can openly discuss and the author always willing to incorporate the features by consensus.

I take this opportunity to thank Pierre for his piece of excellent software.

I don't think Faststone supports the IPTC format -- or at least it didn't 6 months ago and browsing their site, I still don't see any referance. To me that was the major deciding factor to go with XnView.

I used to use an older version of ACDSee. With it, I spent a little over a year scanning and cataloging thousands of pictures (Mom and Dad's pictures they had thrown in the closet or where ever). What I didn't understand was that version of ACDSee kept all those descriptions that I entered from the back of the photos in a seperate database. My computer crashed (virus in boot sector) and I ended up reformating the hard drive -- all the descriptions gone. I know I could have done better if I had understood the ACDSee application, but it has simplified things for me to go with applications that embed descriptions into the photo files (IPTC format) as opposed to keeping it seperate.

Now when I give my sister pictures, the descriptions go with the pictures through the IPTC header information in the photo files. The IPTC information is realy great way to sort and catalog the pictures. Pierre has provided good tools for working with that information -- thanks

In addition to the IPTC, XnView has been an intiutive application for me. I actually understand most of the stuff on the menus.

FastStone is also a good graphic viewer. It's good to see a reasonable and respectful discussion, here. I'm even tempted to change the subject to "XnView and FastStone".

I looked at quite a number and XnView is outstanding. Particularly for file conversion which is what i use a lot. Excellent for all to use as it is simple, clear and fast - can't stand the amount of clutter in some software. It does just what one wants ++ from a viewer.

I did read a comment once that it wasn't so good for editing but then one should turn to a true photo editor like PhotoImpact or Gimp.

100%fan of XnView.

Just to set the record straight, Picasa does not "move" your photos. They reside in their original files, in their original folders, along with the companion Picasa.ini files (one per folder) that contain all the edits, crops, etc. you perform on the images in the folder. This means that the virtual edits you make stay with their respective images... making it easy to preserve your work AND the originals by simply copying your image folders to other media.

On the other hand, the Picasa category, album, thumbs, and preview images databases are centralized and require separate handling to protect them.

JohnFredC wrote:Just to set the record straight, Picasa does not "move" your photos. They reside in their original files, in their original folders, along with the companion Picasa.ini files (one per folder) that contain all the edits, crops, etc.
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Thanks John, for pointing out, I stand corrected.

What i don't like in picassa is that it places picassa.ini file in each folder on my hard disk. May be it will help in faster access to the images. Otherwise, it's a great program.