Simple Picture Program?

The Halk · 25 Dec 2008 at 19:36

I've had a look at the suggested free software sticky, however there's so many different image programs I thought I'd ask and hope someone can recommend the right one.

Ideally I'd want something small and fast, without lots of bloat. It should be able to crop, resize and adjust jpegs.

I'd also like a snappy picture viewer - i.e. I double click on an image and it brings it up full screen for me, also allowing me to move to other images with the left and right arrows.

It'd be nice if I could get both of these functions from the same program, but not essential.

mr.sly · 25 Dec 2008 at 19:42

Picasa3 is your friend.

The Halk · 26 Dec 2008 at 00:24

Mr Sly....

Thank you very much indeed!

Picasa 3 is a great program. It does exactly what I want and does it well.

No intention of using the Google side of it, but it does the cropping etc of the pictures just fine, and it handles resizing etc them nicely too.

I found a piece of software called RightLoad which is useful for sending them to the old FTP afterwards by use of a right click context menu in explorer. Together they're working a charm. RightLoad even offers to make thumbnails.

Thanks again!

VirtualAdept · 26 Dec 2008 at 00:45

See, I didn't like picasa all that much. I use Xnview, which I think is great and, lately, photoscape.

The Halk · 26 Dec 2008 at 00:54

Would you mind if I asked you to give what you felt was the difference between them and what you preferred with Xnview and Photoscape?

VirtualAdept · 26 Dec 2008 at 01:02

Sure.
Xnview, it doesn't build its own database like picasa... I've often found with Picasa I'm hunting for ages for a particular folder. With Xnview its a standard file tree, so its where you expect. At least in my case, since my camera folder is all date organised.
Its also very quick to flick (with a double click) from preview/manager to full screen/enlarged view. You can also set it to scroll through pictures with the scroll wheel on the mouse, which I've never managed in Picasa.
The resizing in Xnview is a bit hit and miss, though, as is the copy function. To the best of my knowledge it cant crop either.

Photoscape... all the good points above AND it crops, rotates, copies... and has all manner of funky effects, sepia toning, blooming which looks brilliant on portraiture, resizing is easy as pie. And the old photo filters are quite entertaining to play with.