What do you use for viewing photos outside of lightroom?

[Energize]

So after a few years I now have a large number of dng images on my hard drive in folders that I've organised them into. The problem is the default windows picture viewer is crap and does not use the jpeg preview incorporated into the image which makes loading them even off a ssd a pain and effectively useless.

What do you guys use just for viewing images? Obviously with rotate and delete functions etc like the default viewer.

 

[Energize]

The problem is the default windows picture viewer is crap and does not use the jpeg preview incorporated into the image which makes loading them even off a ssd a pain and effectively useless.

I haven't done it for a while, but you used to be able to download a codec pack that would allow RAW viewing in the Windows Viewer.

I don't use lightroom, so I stick with adobe bridge and photoshop. Outside adobe, i still use explorer thumbnails.

Adobe Bridge requires requires another Adobe product to be installed to open raw files, and I'd rather not have to load a separate application like that every time I just want to view a picture anyway. I want to be able to just click the picture and have it displayed.

I use ACDsee, currently on version 18.
It loads quickly and allows you to do basic editing & batch actions.

http://www.acdsee.com/en/products/acdsee-18

also use acdsee and have done for many many years

That program costs money.

I export jpegs at various sizes and qualities, normally a 1080p version and something in the 8-12MP range that will print OK. Then any kind of slide show software works. I also have some on a digital picture frame and some of the best I've printed and framed around the house.

Would rather not have to export thousands of images. And I've have to re-export the files every time they were changed in order to re-computer the jpeg files rather than it being an automatic process.

 

[Energize]

If you're using a codec like the NEF codec viewer provided by adobe, the photo viewer has to read the full file from the disk, which is why lightrooms develop module takes so long to read and render the files by comparison to the preview mode, you'd need to use an application to pre-compute the jpegs first and a program that supports the features special features of the abobe dng format to read those jpegs.

ACDsee for more years than i can count but moved to using Faststone a year ago as it's free and does 99% of the same job.

Thanks, that's great, exactly what I'm looking for.