News and Reviews > Image Manager Shootout

Pre-review Discussion for Graphics Viewers Review

<< < (7/13) > >>

Scott:
Thumbnail storage seems like an arbitrary distinction to me, especially since it can be switched off in any decent application that supports it.

mouser:
i agree with scott.
i think what you really mean is,
does the program focus on being able to work with large catalogs of pictures (which necesitates a database),
or is it really just an image viewer with possibly some minor functions for browsing directories of images.

Scott:
I think there should be one category.  What good is a graphics viewer that can't handle multiple files well?  If it chokes when showing thumbnails, it sucks as far as I'm concerned, but it's still an image viewer.  (Sorry for stepping on the toes of a freeware fave, but I am addicted to truth.)  Breaking off a category just for the ones that can't thumbnail well is grading on a curve.

mouser:
well..
i have a lot of pictures, but i spend 99% of my time using a quick image viewer (freeware irfanview), rather than inside one of the image browsing apps like acdsee.

now i know that acdsee has an image viewer, but im more interested in having a really super fast and convenient image viewer that shows images when i double click them from windows explorer.  so i am not so much interested in all those nice datatbase thumbnail browsing features (at least not for my main choice of image viewer), and i'm more interested in a clean fast tiny viewer with some crop, enhance, and save as functionality.

not that im not interested in having a good image browser/cataloguer, im just saying that for me i view these as two very different kinds of tasks.  ultimately it will all be up to nudone whether these should be different reviews, different categories, or all the same thing.  i'm just saying i definitely see two distinct kinds of uses.

now maybe the best cataloguer/browser also includes the best small image viewer, but that wasn't my impression last time i checked.

i love the speed and convenience and featureset of irfan view when just quickly viewing pictures.

nudone:
i can see the distinction and i can see the need to look at both types. i admit, i would only have looked at the 'proper' database image file managers for the review if the other 'quick' single image viewers hadn't been mentioned so much during this post.

maybe the review should be split between the types?

i was under the impression most people would be using things like ACDSee but now i don't know.

which you use it perhaps down to habit. i use ACDSee for all image viewing - multiple files and single clicks on a jpeg. this definitely isn't the quickest way to view things on my machine but it's the way i work out of habit - that's why i'm prepared to do this review. i'm genuinely curious as to what i'll find and may well conclude that i've been doing things wrong for all these years.

anyway, the intention is to look at both viewer types for the moment. i can sort things out with mouser at a later date as to what should be included. if there are more opinions similar to Scott's then i'll reconsider as i don't want to use time looking at programs that definitely won't be in the review.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page