Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Free Photoscape: 5 stars from Snapfiles
patthecat:
Have been playing with Photoscape for a little bit. This has potential because in addition to being a viewer, it has several modules which a quite useful: placing text and graphic objects on the photo then combining them into one layer, preset photo collage page templates, frames, buttons for one click photo adjustment (auto level and contrast). Most of these features I typically have used another utility to perform in addition to my general graphic viewer.
It could use improvement such as consistently putting an undo/redo option in modules such as the Editor, Page, and Combine tabs. I do like context help as you hover the mouse over a control such as a button or slider.
Some annoyances I mentioned in my previous post are the automatically "calling home" for an unknown reason and also downloading of a flickr photo - but I just let the firewall deny these 4 outgoing calls. I see no options on the GUI or the cfg files to disable them.
Oh yeah and also the icon does indeed look somewhat familiar... maybe ubuntu but without the "appendage part: on the PhotoScape icon?
Curt:
Potential? Yes. But Speed? No! Maybe it just needs a lot more RAM than I can offer, but response time is far too slow - the lack of speed really was disappointing to me. However it sure has Potential, Yes.
patthecat:
Curt - which speed issue are you referring to? Is it the one in the Viewer tab where it generates all the thumbnails when you go to a folder? Maybe turning the thumbnail cache on would help. The issue is similar to other viewers such as Faststone Image Viewer which can view folder via thumbnails. One way to avoid the thumbnail preview this is go to the Editor tab and open the specific filename.
I'm just starting to see PhotoScape on the other download sites such as softpedia, download.com, softonic, majorgeeks, etc.
From the looks of it, even though it says version 3, it's either
1. the first general release and just labeled it version 3 to give it some maturity
2. OR the software was called something else before and has just undergone a name change
Anyways I'll keep my eye on the user reviews, looks good so far. Right now it's on a standalone Win98 box isolated from the rest of my stuff.
Now if only the author can do something about making the "calling home" aspect and the automatic download of flickr photo an optional feature :)
Curt:
Did Flickr ever offer something like this?
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I was merely referring to the amount of time PhotoScape will use from the moment you open the mother-program > to the chosen child-program is ready for use.
patthecat:
Hmmm, the start-up does not seem that bad on my end - isolated test machine: Win98 Pentium II 128 MB RAM
1. If your firewall automatically blocks unapproved outgoing connections, this may cause it since it tries to call home to a specific IP 3 times and then 1 time to www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com
2. OR if you're automatically allowing outgoing connections then maybe its your ISP's DNS server slow in doing the domain name resolution to flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com - Try to copy and paste the address in your browser to see if it's kind of slow...
On Flickr forums some people are noticing slowdown depending on geographical location:
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/40740/page3/
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