XnView Software

Below please find a proposal for a smarter zooming of images.

- Background
Currently, we have a default zooming which changes in steps 50%, 100%, 200%. Since these steps are a bit rough, the setting 'Change zoom in fixed steps' (Options, category "View") has been introduced.

When using fixed steps, I found that these are not optimal:
When using a large value (e.g. 70), the zooming changes far too quickly for small zoom factors. When using a small value (e.g. 10), the zooming changes too slowly for large zoom factors.

- Proposal
Rather than adding a fixed step value to the current zoom factor, the factor should current zoom factor should be multiplied by a factor:

E.g. setting: Multiply/Divide zoom factor by [ 2.00]

Default is 2.0, which matches the standard zooming of XnView. When using a setting 1.50, the zooming steps (both for large and small magnification) are smoother, both for small and large zoom factors.

The only problem that I see is that people might not understand how this works.

Comments and suggestions are welcome. Perhaps I apply for an e-patent...

that could be a nice feature, but i hope that also current behaviour is kept because i prefer as it is now (i usually prefer small steps with big pictures and big steps with smaller), but adding the second option could certainly make xnview more wonderful!

I've been ranting about zoom for so long, while photoshop's one isn't as frustrating, and it's (roughly) based on that principle. One has only to find the correct explanation tooltip so as newbies can understand how it works.

pov wrote:I've been ranting about zoom for so long, while photoshop's one isn't as frustrating, and it's (roughly) based on that principle. One has only to find the correct explanation tooltip so as newbies can understand how it works.

Thanks for your comment. Good hear that Zooming issue and not just my perception.

Maybe for the average user a sort of row definition would be better: slow zooming, medium zooming, fast zooming. If you want a factor behind the scenes, maybe square root of two for medium zooming would be a good idea. so you will get 400%, 283%, 200%, 141%, 100%, 71%, 50%, 35%, 25%. In low speed zooming the suqarerrot of the square root will do.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe for the average user a sort of row definition would be better: slow zooming, medium zooming, fast zooming. If you want a factor behind the scenes, maybe square root of two for medium zooming would be a good idea. so you will get 400%, 283%, 200%, 141%, 100%, 71%, 50%, 35%, 25%. In low speed zooming the suqarerrot of the square root will do.

Good proposal. A predefined list with 'Slow', 'Medium', 'Fast' (or similar) sounds good to me. Specifying a factor is more flexbile, but then people will wonder what to enter and the zooms that one will get might be very odd numbers.