XnView Software

Hello,

coming from IrfanView I just discovered XnView and am quite happy with the program. I have some questions that I could not find answers in the forum or the online help.

After importing my pics from the camera the first thing to do is rotate some (no problem) and sharpen all of them (problem). In IrfanView this was as simple as hitting shift-s two times and saving the file. In XnView it seems I have to crawl through the menu (Filter/Effects/Sharpen...) to find a function that shows invalid previews and thus makes me nervous. According to the big picture I should apply a value of 80 for a perfect picture, but the small preview window then already shows ugly artefacts. So preview and result are not in sync. So my questions are:

Is there a shorter way to sharpen pics? Is the preview wrong?

BTW, the value box content can get the focus (marked), but does not allow to type in a value directly, which IMHO is confusing.

Thanks in advance.

My second question is about the automatic program window size. It seems I can not configure XnView as I could with IrfanView. The behaviour I would like to have is that when I open a file by double click in Explorer or hitting Enter in TotalCommander, the program's window should be as big as the graphic. So with smaller ones (let's say 100x100 pixels) I can easily see the true size AND can easily put several windows side by side.

BUT at the same time XnView should do what it does right now with the setting 'Fit in window, big pics only'. Means bigger cam shots get zoomed down automatically with the window increased to full monitor size.

How to get this behaviour with XnView?

Third I would like to know how to optimise the start speed of XnView. About 70% I use it as single file viewer, so hit Enter, look, ESC. For this purpose XnView should be much quicker than it is now. It seems to load tons of things that it unloads at exit, then re-loads later...

These days where memory is cheap I would appreciate when parts of XnView could stay in memory to increase at least the next start. Optional, of course.

Maybe a different idea is to remove the included 400 files format support and put it as plug-ins in the plug-in folder so they can be deleted by the user. I mean, how many different formats does one REALLY have to handle? 5? 6? I personally would like to delete all the rest if this speeds up the start process significantly.

Thanks for listening.

I deleted this fourth mail and posted it in Bug Report.

Regarding 'higher start speed with program pre-loaded' - one example on how this could be done can be seen in many other programs that do not exit but minimize to the systray for this very purpose. The program is put into Autostart/minimized so that it is already loaded even after a fresh Windows boot, and is thus ready to break the speed record...

pic_viewer wrote:Is there a shorter way to sharpen pics? Is the preview wrong?

Yes, the preview is generally useless, but you can use Apply to Image to see the real effect. As an aside - avoid the basic 'sharpen' in all software like the plague, it causes extremely ugly ringing (black and white edges around objects); in xnview the better sharpers are labeled Enhance.

For doing this quickly, using batch convert is basically the only option.

For speed, turning the cache off completely might help (you might want a separate copy, one that uses cache and one that doesn't), and make sure the browser is also disabled.

foxyshadis wrote:xnview the better sharpers are labeled Enhance.

make sure the browser is also disabled.

Thanks for the advice about Enhance. How can I 'disable' the browser?

pic_viewer wrote:

foxyshadis wrote:xnview the better sharpers are labeled Enhance.

make sure the browser is also disabled.

Thanks for the advice about Enhance. How can I 'disable' the browser?

Just double click on the Browser tab.