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Pre-review Discussion for Graphics Viewers Review

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nudone:
i'm just preparing to do the graphics viewer review (just downloading all the programs at the moment) but wondered what everyone thinks to this...

how comprehensive a list of image types a 'viewer' can successfully display is obviously important but i can appreciate that many people will not need the ability to read 'Adobe Photoshop' .psd files.

my first inclination was to discard ALL viewer programs that do not support the .psd format as they obviously aren't serious applications. but i'm not sure if this is the right strategy when many people will never come across a single Photoshop file.

the question is: to make things simple, do i exclude all software without .psd viewing capability or do i make allowances for these lesser viewers that may be very useful in other areas?

as i expect the majority of users will simply need a graphics viewing program that works with jpg, gif, png, bmp and tif it seems a shame to be harsh on those programs that can't handle psd.

like i said, my reflex is to keep things 'serious' and exclude the non .psd viewers.

opinions please...

mouser:
i agree that most people won't care about .psd display.

but then for serious power users, it would be annoying to use a viewer that didn't support it.

this isn't a great answer to your question, but my attitude about these things is kind of like this.  iff it seems like these viewers that don't support psd were not going to win best commercial or best freeware image viewer anyway, whether you cared about psd of not, then there's no harm excluding them really.

the only time it gets tricky is if you have an app that would be best freeware/commercial viewer for people who don't need psd.  thats when you have to ask yourself whether someone who doesn't care about psd would have wanted to know about this program.

Scott:
Seems like another arbitrary distinction to me.  Paint Shop Pro is pretty popular too, I think, so why not act on PSP file viewing capabilities, instead or also?

But my real reacion is: What user who uses Photoshop heavily will need to read this review anyway?

nudone:
i use photoshop every day and still find it worthwhile looking at the different graphics viewer programs (there may well be a viewer built into photoshop but i still prefer to use ACDSee as in many ways it's better, but i'm not assuming it is the best). i think .psp file support is necessary also.

i didn't mention it before but i was also thinking of excluding graphics viewers that don't support RAW images which would limit the review to even less programs but i think that is going a little bit too far.

i'll see how things progress as i start going through the list of apps and then will probably make a few more comments and queries here.

mouser:
it's a big category -
don't hesitate to restrict it if it gets overwhelming.

for example, if there are simply too many tools and its too hard to pick one or two best ones, then i think you should feel free to make it a review of Pro-level image management tools, and then rightfully reject any tool that cant handle raw, psd, psp, etc.

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