XnView Software

Hello dear XnView Team,
as a photographer I really would love to have a greyscale (black and white) view mode. The Google Picasa PC client was the only thumbnail program I know of who had this, even in thumbnail view.

here is how it could work:
Just change the view in full screen and may be even thumbnail view mode from normal colours to greyscale with just one button-press (and back),
without editing the pictures or asking me if I want to keep the changes or anything, just as a view.

I sent several mails to faststone begging for this, they didn't even answer one, so I try my luck here. =)
Picasa isn't supported by Google any more and I did not like it much to begin with.

Am I missing something? Please let me know if you know an already existing solution to this problem.
(and no, I don't want to change my graphics card color settings, every second when I want to see a photo without color)

greetings, carni

Hi cami!

Welcome among us!

I see now two methods:

1. Usually I drag the Saturation slider to 0 (zero).
There is already a button on the the toolbar in Viewer mode called „Enhance Colors”. You have the Saturation slider there.

2. Another method is to use the Change Color Depth action (button). This button isn't visible by default, hence you need to add it to the toolbar - right click on the Toolbar and choose Customize. Find Change Color Depth and add it to toolbar.
Click on it and select Grayscale. It should give you a pretty accurate representation. It will remain selected for the next time.

In both methods above you will press [Cancel] when you'll close the window.

Of course you can assign keyboard shortcuts to both actions. Go to Tools | Settings | Interface | Shortcuts

It isn't one-click but pretty close.

Hi and thank you for your quick answer.
Sadly, (if I understand it right) both methods need to tell the picture to be greyscale with some clicks and later cancel confirmation. Then the same for the next one. Imagine doing this for several thousand photos.

Even changing the gpu-color settings is better here. Or to have like a second copy of the picture folder in greyscale. Also, the thumbnails view is still in color.
I hope this doesn't sound to harsh, and thank you again for the ideas.

Perhaps a user defined ICC colour profile could be used (Tools » Settings | General | ICC) but I don't know how to setup such a colour profile and I'm not sure whether this will really work efficently.

carni is talking about Display/View Mode:
click on image (it's 3 frames animated gif) to see how it works in Picasa.
Entire interface is going grey - possibly this is fasted method (?)

tboy wrote: carni is talking about Display/View Mode:
click on image (it's 3 frames animated gif) to see how it works in Picasa.
Entire interface is going grey - possibly this is fasted method (?)

So much yes. This mode in Picasa is like a wonderful workflow-dream. =)
Please, if anyhow possible implement this in XnView.

helmut wrote:Perhaps a user defined ICC colour profile could be used (Tools » Settings | General | ICC) but I don't know how to setup such a colour profile and I'm not sure whether this will really work efficently.

Well, I couldn't find a greyscale-only ICC profile, but even then I have to change to profile every time.

I don't even need an entry in the main menu, just a key-shortcut to change between greyscale and color in fullscreen mode on the fly at any time would be fine.
To have this also in thumbnail mode would be great, but is optional.

Ok I Searched again for a while and found a solution (at least for Windows 10):

NegativeScreen lets you change the color output of your monitor on the fly with "win+alt+n".
Since this is not possible on Mac and Linux I would still recommend to implement it in XnView MP (and may be with with just one button to press and not three).

Thanks for your ears and help so far and best wishes ~

Hi there,
just a small update, for everyone still searching for a greyscale view solution for XnView, there still seems to be no greyscale shortcut sadly, (please correct me if I missed something).
But at least on windows 10 you can press windows+control+C for a complete Windows 10 greyscale. (You might have to turn on the color filters shortcut key in the windows settings)

MacOS users have it worse, command + option + F5 shows accessibility settings and then you have to manually turn on greyscale (and off), its terrible for turning off and on colors in photos for comparisons.

Linux users seem to have it even worse, depending on your distro. May be there are new view mode tools I missed.
So a greyscale view shortcut would still be highly appreciated =)