I ended up spending my entire evening with my WinPro 8 tablet in front of me trying out all the various image organizing packages to try to figure out the good from the bad. Here's what I've learned...
The first thing I will warn everyone is, always always always choose Advanced Install or Custom Install with this stuff. Even stuff from Sourceforge is going to try to sneak some toolbar or system optimizer into the installer if you aren't careful. (I was really surprised Sourceforge is doing that kind of crap these days!) The good: FastStone Image Viewer - It's freeware and does a great job. I don't like how it handles favorites - a dropdown menu versus an explorer-like list. It also won't create folder thumbnails recursively, so you only get folder thumbnails on folders that contain images, not other folders. It's fairly configurable, didn't crash at all, and has no problems with network folders. Absolutely worth a shot. ACDSee Pro 8 - I honestly haven't touched ACDSee since probably when Windows NT 3.51 was out. I was shocked at how far it's come. It's a very nice piece of kit. Certainly the most professional-oriented package I tested. I didn't have a lot of time to try it out, but it played video fine, had no issues with the network, had plenty of configuration options and looks like it'll do everything I need. Unfortunately it did completely lock up while I was trying to change it's temp folder and it never recovered - I had to kill the task & restart it. Picasa - It's serviceable. Much more oriented towards snapshots and home movies, but it's functional and free. You have to import folders, you can't navigate, but it hooks into all of Google's service, which can be good or bad depending on your viewpoint. Zoner Photo Studio 17 - I was almost completely wrong about this one. It's very flexible, stable, and rock solid. It did not crash once. It has some pro-sumer things about it that still give me the vibe that they're going to sell my email address to spammers, but that's just a feeling. I would say it's my #2 choice at the moment and could be #1. The bad / ugly: I didn't realize there was now not only XnView, but also XnViewMP. I believe MP is the replacement, since it's at v0.69 at the moment. Unfortunately it suffers from the same problem as XnView - when you point it to a network folder that contains a lot of images, it crashes. XnViewMP looked like it would be the solution to organizing everything. It supports a ton of file formats and has some great organizing features, but it's completely unstable. Pictomio came highly rated, yet it crashed the moment I tried to launch it. I tried various compatibility settings & when it finally ran I was greeted with a pile of JSON errors. It appears to be nothing more than a wrapper on Internet Explorer. The interface has a very Windows Media Player vibe to it and there's no way to change it. Your choices are dark skin or light skin. It doesn't seem to be able to see anything related to your network at all. There's no way to navigate outside your local drives. It also has banner ads at the bottom of the screen. BonAView - another one that just gave me a bad vibe. Their website just seems aimed at my mom more than anyone looking for a professional tool for organizing images & video. The program itself is an homage to Windows XP, I guess. It's an all gray interface, but everything is glossy and candy looking. Rather than letting you build your own directory structure on your local machine or server, it has it's own system of organization. It also has a gimmicky "3D viewer". Personally I hated it. Phototheca - looks like iTunes and Lightroom had a baby. It doesn't let you browse your system or the network like most packages do, but instead like Lightroom or Picasa, you need to import your materials and create new Libraries. The interface is very nice to look at, but I don't like being forced to import everything into their system rather than browsing, organizing & tagging things. Also, it does not support video as far as I can tell. MAGIX Photo Manager 12 - pissed me off right away with trying to be sneaky with their installer. Rather than having you UN-check the crapware they want to install, their installer says "Please check the 3rd party products you do NOT want to install." Sneaky sneaky! The interface icons look a bit like they were designed by the person who makes the Baby Einstein videos. And although it shows a Network Paths drop-down in the explorer window, it's using some bizzaro ancient way to access a Microsoft Workgroup, so I can only see my local machine in the network and therefore the software is useless. That's about all I could do between dinner and sleep last night. Hopefully that helps someone. I personally like to have really organized and easy-to-find files, so having a good image/video organizer is really important. -Paul On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:58 PM, James De Colling <[email protected] > wrote: > XNview here, previously acdsee. ive tried zoner and ifran and bridge, > xnview just works well for me. remap the mouse to scroll images, put > thumbnails at 192x192m change background to dark grey (turning off > thumbnail shadow etc) and its quick too. > > I purely use image viewers as just that though, screaming through large > collections of textures / ref images etc, then drag/drop into photoshop. I > dont use any of the editing features etc. > > On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Paul Griswold < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> I might be taking back what I said about Zoner. >> >> I've been testing it & FastStone today, along with continuing to use >> Bridge. Zoner honestly does a really good job of being not just a fewer, >> but an organizer. It's basically a cross between Bridge, Lightroom and >> XnView. >> >> It handles video, vectors, and all the normal bitmap formats. It also >> doesn't choke on HDRs - which Bridge can do. And, it has no problem with >> network drives. >> >> Although their website looked very spammy, I'm fairly impressed with it. >> The only real negative I can come up with at the moment is, the >> organizational options are limited to just "favorites". I'd like to be >> able to create collections the way you can in Bridge. But beyond that, >> it's certainly worth a look. >> >> -Paul >> >> >> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 7:01 PM, Stephen Davidson <[email protected] >> > wrote: >> >>> For quick video viewing, I use DJView >>> >>> http://windjview.sourceforge.net/ >>> >>> I leave it on my desktop as an icon, and just drag the video file from >>> my file browser onto the >>> DJView icon. The reason that I like it, is because it will deal with a >>> series of stills (even Softimage .pic files) >>> >>> I hope you find that useful. >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Paul Griswold < >>> [email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> Doing a little research this afternoon. Xnview has one big problem as >>>> far as I can tell. If you try to favorite a network folder, it favorites >>>> it, but when you click on the favorite it freaks out and takes you to >>>> SkyDrive instead. Since all my images, textures, etc., are all on a >>>> server, that puts Xnview out of the picture. >>>> >>>> Irfranview doesn't seem to have any organization tools at all, but it's >>>> still a great little image viewer. >>>> >>>> Zoner Photo Studio came up in some searches. The first negative I see >>>> is, they require you to sign up to their website just to get the free >>>> version. It feels very pro-sumer in how they present it, but maybe that's >>>> just my impression. It's got a nice, Lightroom-like interface, but I'm >>>> just concerned it's one of those programs that attaches adware to your >>>> system, sells your email address, etc.... again - that's just the vibe I'm >>>> getting. >>>> >>>> FastStone Image Viewer was listed as an alternative to ACDSee. I've >>>> never heard of it & have no opinion. I might give it a try. It can be >>>> found here: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Paul Griswold < >>>> [email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I forgot about Xnview. I think it has some decent features. I'm not >>>>> sure if it handles video, though. >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Martin Yara <[email protected]> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> A few years ago I was using Windows Photo Gallery or Live Gallery or >>>>>> something like that, can't remember the name, a free app from Microsoft. >>>>>> >>>>>> It was interesting. I was creating my own texture library with tags, >>>>>> keywords and categories, but I couldn't finish it. It's just too much >>>>>> work. >>>>>> >>>>>> For just visualizing images I use Irfanview too. >>>>>> >>>>>> Martin >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Best Regards, >>> * Stephen P. Davidson* >>> >>> *(954) 552-7956 <%28954%29%20552-7956>* >>> [email protected] >>> >>> *Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic* >>> >>> >>> - Arthur C. Clarke >>> >>> <http://www.3danimationmagic.com> >>> >> >> >
