Hello.
Today, in order to view photographs and pictures, it is far from necessary to use third-party programs at all (in modern Windows 7/8 operating systems, Explorer does a good job of this). But its capabilities are not always enough and not for everyone. Well, for example, can you quickly change the resolution of a picture in it, or view all the properties of the picture at once, trim the edges, change the extension?
Not long ago I had to face a similar problem: the pictures were archived in an archive and in order to view them, I had to extract it. Everything would be fine, but there were hundreds of archives and packing and unpacking was a very tedious task. It turns out that there are programs for viewing pictures and photographs that can show you images directly in the archives without extracting them!
In general, this is how this idea for this post was born - to talk about such user “helpers” for working with photos and pictures (by the way, such programs are often called viewers, from the English Viewers). So, let's begin…
1. ACDSee
One of the most famous and popular programs for viewing and editing photos and images (by the way, there is both a paid version of the program and a free one).
The program's capabilities are simply colossal:
Support for RAW images (professional photographers save images in them);
All kinds of file editing: changing photo size, trimming edges, rotating, captioning pictures, etc.;
Support for popular cameras and images from them (Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Olympus);
Convenient presentation: you immediately see all the pictures in the folder, their properties, extension, etc.;
Russian language support;
A huge number of supported formats (you can open almost any image: jpg, bmp, raw, png, gif, etc.).
Result: If you often work with photos, you should definitely be familiar with this program!
This program combines minimalism with great functionality. The program window is divided (by default) into three areas: on the left is a column with your drives and folders, in the top center are thumbnails for the files in a given folder, and at the bottom is an enlarged view of the image. Very convenient, by the way!
It should be noted that this program has a large number of options: multi-converting pictures, editing images, changing the extension, resolution, etc.
By the way, there are a couple of interesting notes on the blog with the participation of this program:
Converting photos from one format to another:
Creating a PDF file from pictures:
XnView programs support more than 500 formats! This alone deserves to have this “software” on your PC.
3. IrfanView
One of the oldest programs for viewing pictures and photographs, its history dates back to 2003. Purely in my opinion, this utility was more popular before than it is now. At the dawn of the advent of Windows XP, there was nothing to remember except it and ACDSee...
Irfan View is characterized by minimalism: there is nothing superfluous here at all. Nevertheless, the program provides high-quality viewing of all kinds of graphic files (and it supports several hundred different formats), allowing you to scale them from very large to small.
It should be noted that there is excellent support for plugins (and there are quite a lot of them for this program). You can add, for example, support for viewing videos, viewing PDF and DJVU files (many books and magazines on the Internet are distributed in this format).
The program does a good job of converting files. I'm especially pleased with the multi-conversion (in my opinion, Irfan View implements this option better than many other programs). If there are a lot of photos that need to be compressed, then Irfan View will do it quickly and efficiently! I recommend you check it out!
4. FastStone Image Viewer
According to many independent estimates, this free program is one of the best for viewing and working with pictures. Its interface is somewhat reminiscent of ACDSee: convenient, concise, everything is at hand.
FastStone Image Viewer supports all major graphic files, as well as some RAW files. There is also a slideshow function, image editing: cropping, changing resolution, expanding, hiding red-eye (especially useful when editing photos).
It is impossible not to note the support for the Russian language right out of the box (i.e. automatically after the first launch you will have Russian selected by default, no third-party plugins, such as, for example, need to be installed on Irfan View).
And a couple more features that are not available in other similar programs:
Effects (the program implements more than a hundred unique effects, a whole visual library);
Color correction and anti-aliasing (many people note that pictures can look much more attractive when viewed in FastStone Image Viewer).
5. Picasa
This is not only a viewer of various images (and the program supports a large number of them, more than a hundred), but also an editor, and not a bad one at that!
First of all, the program is distinguished by the ability to create albums from various images, and then record them on various types of media: disks, flash drives, etc. Very convenient if you need to make several collections from different photos!
There is also a chronology function: all photos can be viewed as they were created (not to be confused with the date of copying to the computer, by which other utilities sort).
It should also be noted that it is possible to restore old photographs (even black and white): you can remove scratches from them, color correct them, and remove “noise.”
The program allows you to add watermarks to pictures: this is a small inscription or picture (logo) that protects your photo from being copied (or, at least, if it is copied, then everyone will know that it is yours). This function will be especially useful for owners of sites where they have to post photos in large quantities.
I think that the presented programs are enough for most tasks of the “average” user. And if not, then most likely there is nothing to recommend other than Adobe Photoshop...
By the way, many may be interested in how to make an online photo frame or beautiful text:
That's all, happy viewing of the photos!
Enjoy useful features every day.
The Preview app that comes pre-installed on every Mac has its advantages and disadvantages. Most users are not aware of some of the application's features that make working with the system easier and more convenient.
View photos in full size
The simplest and most useful function of the application is viewing photos in original resolution. When switching between files, the application automatically adjusts the window size to the size of the photo, but if the photo resolution is larger than that of the computer screen, the file will be viewed at a reduced scale. To quickly see the real proportions of the picture, just click ⌥ when viewing.
Viewing multiple photos at once
If you need to see small previews of several pictures at once, do the following:
- select the necessary files;
- press “Space” to view;
- press the combination ⌘ + Return (Enter).
The resulting window will contain thumbnails of all selected images. You can use the cursor or arrows to move between them.
Full screen photo viewing
To open the View application in full screen mode, just click ⌥ + “Space” when selecting any photo. If several files were selected, a full-screen slide show will start. Keystroke ⌥ at this moment it will enlarge the photo to full screen.
In full-screen viewing, you can also display all the pictures in a grid. For this purpose, there is a special button on the bottom panel or the already familiar combination ⌘ + Return (Enter).
What secrets of the standard viewer do you know?
Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Today I want to talk about a rather useful utility called FastStone Image Viewer. In fact, this is an analogue, but applied only to images.
From the name, it probably becomes clear that this is definitely a viewer (), but the functionality is not limited to this. Although even regarding its main functionality, it is ahead of many of its competitors.
In addition, even a novice computer user can easily post them on the Internet (digital cameras generate photos of monstrous sizes), crop them if necessary (for example, crop them to fit the photo paper format), and also reduce their weight (compress).
Download and configure FastStone Image Viewer to suit your needs
Do you know Photoshop or any other graphic editor (for example, his)? Then this will not be a problem for you.
But I, for example, still use raster graphics on “You” and therefore for me FastStone now serves to a greater extent not as a viewer, but as a the simplest graphic editor, which helps me reduce the size of images (even in batches), optimize their weight or add watermarks, if necessary. Yes, and inserting inscriptions or any other explanations into a photo using it will also not be at all difficult. But let's talk about everything in order.
The latest current version of the program is number 4.8 and you can download it completely free from the following link:
True, in the case of commercial use of this program, you will have to enter into an agreement with the author and pay a certain amount. But this, naturally, does not threaten us. In addition to the regular version, you can download from the official website FastStone Image Viewer 4.8 Portable, which does not require installation into the operating system, and can be placed on a flash drive to work with photos in a convenient and familiar viewer on any computer (and so that your photos do not fall into the wrong hands if it is lost or stolen).
If you still remember what the first versions of ACDSee looked like (modern incarnations of this viewer are monstrously bulky and clumsy), then the Faststone interface will seem very familiar to you. It appears (the similarity will become even stronger if you select Settings - Interface Theme from the top menu and change the skin to classic).
Almost identical actions for switching to full-screen mode for viewing individual photos (double-click) and switching between images from an open folder in this same full-screen mode (mouse wheel or arrows). Well, exiting full-screen mode is done using the same Enter or Escape keys.
However, the developers of FastStone Image Viewer significantly improved the usability of your viewer and added four full-screen pop-up panels on each side. Actually, the first time you try to open a photo in full screen, the helpful program will inform you about this:
When you move the mouse cursor to the top edge of the screen (assuming that you are currently viewing the picture in full screen mode), a panel will appear with thumbnails of all the photos that live in the same folder as the one you are viewing. But not only that.
At the top there will be a panel with tool icons that will allow you to navigate through various folders on your computer, move or copy a given photo there, perform simple actions on an open image (rotate, delete, print, etc.), run a slideshow or compare several photos:
If you move your mouse to the right edge of the screen, you will find out all the ins and outs of the photo you are viewing - its size (weight), resolution (width and height in pixels), the name and location of the file with the image you are viewing and other information, right down to what the camera leaves when shooting .
From the bottom edge of the FastStone Image Viewer screen (when viewing a photo in full width) you can find a panel with tools, similar to the one we already had the honor of seeing when we touched the top edge of the screen with the mouse. And finally, the most delicious thing, in my opinion, lies behind the left side of the other world:
What is there? And changing the size of a photo opened in FastStone, and cropping it, rotating it, various filters and overlays. Moreover, all this is designed for novice users (like my blog, in fact), so unnecessary questions usually do not arise when mastering this program. But I’ll still try to deepen and expand my manual about this popular viewer a little.
However, it wouldn't hurt to start go to settings FastStone Image Viewer, selecting the item of the same name from the top menu, and adjust everything to suit you. Most of us have to work with photographs quite often and it would be great if the program for viewing them did not create inconvenience (little things in everyday affairs can be very annoying).
By the way, this Viewer is different in that almost all default settings correspond to my requests (unlike the old ACDSee). Or I made them so long ago that I forgot. However, you are free to experiment with the image viewing mode settings, the size and color scheme of photo thumbnails, magnifying glass settings, associations (those file extensions that will be opened in this viewer by default) and the like. Everything is in Russian and has a fairly accurate description.
At one time I really liked the opportunity to use two monitors for viewing photos, if you have them. You can open a manager with thumbnails on one monitor, and a photo in full-screen view on another, which adds clarity and ease of use. I have a large diagonal TFT TV installed as a second monitor for all the computers in the house.
So, you can set the settings so that the FastStone Image Viewer program open on your main monitor displays the slideshow you are running on another monitor (in my case, a TV), which is an extension of the desktop. Your guests will undoubtedly appreciate this when viewing new photos, although now TVs themselves are capable of playing slideshows from a flash drive, but nevertheless, five years ago it was cool.
Yes, Faststone also understands RAW formats (something like a digital negative) of almost all popular cameras, and in the settings you can set the way thumbnails are generated when viewing unprocessed RAWs. Well, also in the settings of this viewer (viewer), you can set external programs for photo editing and select musical compositions that will please the soul of the audience when viewing the slideshow.
How to reduce the size and weight of a photo (compress it) in FastStone
Changing the image size (its resolution), optimizing weight (compression), and cropping (cropping) are the most popular operations when working with photographs. More than once I came across the fact that people simply did not understand why this or that Internet site did not want to accept their wonderful photo, demanding that it be reduced in weight or dimensions.
Or rather, they did not understand where and how exactly these shamanic actions could be performed on the images. Some people use online resources for this purpose, but we will go a different route.
Personally, I do this in the Image Viewer program, because everything is implemented there quite simply and clearly. Let's start in order. Let's say we want resize an existing photo or even a whole series of photographs. In many cases, you will be able to resort to batch processing if you need to bring everything to the same format.
But we’ll start with an individual reduction of a photograph (I’m not talking about enlarging it, because in raster graphics this action leads to a serious deterioration in quality), which, for example, was obtained from a modern monstrous pixel camera. At the same time, if you are in full-screen photo viewing mode, then simply move the mouse pointer to the left edge of the screen and select one of three possible items responsible for changing the resolution:
We can say that there are only two options for changing the size of the image itself, because the third option changes the dimensions of the canvas. In this case, the resolution of the photo does not change - when you increase the size, the background area of the color you specify will increase along the edges, and when you decrease it, the photo will be cropped on the right and bottom.
If you need to get standard format photo(for example, to upload to a bulletin board or somewhere else), then the easiest way would be to use the “Quickly resize” item. In this case, you will see a drop-down list with these most standard formats:
They are given both in pixels (resolution - width and height) and as a percentage of the size of the original photo. After clicking on one of the items, the photo opened in full screen mode will change its size. If you are happy with everything, then right-click on it and select “Save As” from the context menu, and if you are not happy, then select another option from the “Quick Change” item.
Yes, if you forget to save a file with a thumbnail image, FastStone Image Viewer will definitely remind you of this (ask a question about its future fate). Well, if you don’t need just any size, but a specific one (for example, equal to the width of the page of your site), then select an option from the left drop-down list "Change size/dpi":
You can set the width or height of the image in pixels, a percentage of the original photo size, or in inches (indicating DPI - the number of dots per square inch). You can again select one of the standard resolutions from the list below.
In most cases, you won't want to change the aspect ratio of the image, so the "Maintain proportions" checkbox is checked by default. In this case, you can only set the desired height or width of the photo, and the second size will be recalculated automatically so that the photo is not skewed.
Well, if you have a lot of time, you can experiment with filters that will be used to perform interpolation. What it is? A raster image consists of a finite and an integer number of points. When changing its size, most likely, it will not be possible to accurately divide it into an integer number of points, which is why various reduction methods are used without any visible deterioration in the quality of the image when it is compressed.
For example, try it with text (read about how and how to do it quickly in) and clearly see my words.
Actually, click OK, and then save the photo with the resized dimensions. From the thumbnail viewing mode in Faststone, you can also get to the window shown in the last screenshot. To do this, just click once on the thumbnail of the desired image (to select it) and select the “Edit” - “Resize” menu from the top FastStone Image Viewer. The sequence of actions will be the same.
How to compress photos in FastStone Image Viewer
We'll talk about batch changes in image resolution a little later, but now I would like to dwell on the issue of image compression to reduce its final weight (measured in kilobytes). At the same time, you need to understand that there are raster graphics formats that save the original photo with loss of quality (for example, jpg) and without loss of quality (for example, png). By the way, FastStone is notable for the fact that it allows you to work with the jpg format without loss.
In order to understand which file types are best to use when saving images, check out my article about (they are the ones used for uploading photos to). Only one is correct choosing a format can significantly reduce the weight of a photo.
Such pictures saved in jpg will have color noise at the text border and to avoid this you have to use the maximum quality when saving in jpeg, which greatly affects the weight of the final file.
Therefore, screenshots with text (or any other images with sharply contrasting borders) are best compressed (have the least weight) when choosing the Png format (or Gif, but this is somewhat outdated). You will not notice any distortion (unless you later resize this screenshot). Particularly significant savings in photo weight will be achieved by choosing PNG 8 with 256 colors, but this can impair the display of smooth color transitions, so you should always look at the compression result.
But there are times when the Jpg format will be more preferable. This choice will be especially relevant when, when saving pictures, it will be possible to significantly reduce its quality (do not forget that JPG implies a deterioration in quality, which can be adjusted) without fear of the appearance of visible distortions (for example, ordinary photographs with smooth color transitions fall into this category) .
But let's talk about photo compression in relation to FastStone Image Viewer. We have already considered reducing the size (resolution), and it is this that provides significant savings in weight. One of my friends (a smart guy, but he was simply not in the know) unknowingly uploaded several photos weighing five megabytes each to the site and set the width and height of 100 by 100 pixels when inserting them onto the site (if you remember, then for , where attributes and its dimensions are specified).
Everything would be fine, but these pictures took a dozen or even more seconds to load, causing him genuine surprise. He heard that it directly affects the ranking of a site in Yandex and Google, and also affects behavioral factors (read about). He didn’t immediately understand my explanation about the dependence of the image’s weight on its physical resolution, because he thought that the width and height attributes of the IMG tag were supposed to solve all the problems.
That's why first resize the photo up to the resolution required for insertion into the site or for comfortable viewing on a computer. And we are also trying to determine in what format this miracle will have the least weight. How to do it? In Image Viewer I do this in the save dialog (right-click on the image and select “Save as” from the context menu):
As I already said, in the case of screenshots, the best compression results are usually achieved when saving as PNG. This is what I select from the drop-down list, and then click on the “Options” button to, if possible, reduce the weight of the image even more, and at the same time see its estimated weight in this format:
As you can see, by default the weight of this photo in PNG format is 52 kilobytes (if you try to save it in JPG format, the weight is the same, but distortions on the letters are already visible and further compression by reducing the quality is no longer possible), which is clearly too much to upload to website.
But having chosen the PNG option with 256 colors (the so-called PNG 8) I received a reduction in size (weight) photo to a modest and acceptable 14 kilobytes. Beauty. As a result, the weight decreased by more than three times, which will approximately increase the loading speed of my blog page by the same amount. And you say...
If your photo is better compressed in JPG format, then you should use it. In addition, in the Save dialog of the FastStone Image Viewer program, when you click on the “Options” button, you will have the opportunity to lower the quality (thereby reducing the final weight of the image) until the option on the right begins to look noticeably worse than the similar option on the left:
The same can be said about the GIF format - to reduce the weight of the photo, it will be possible to reduce the number of colors below the default 256 pieces. The optimal ratio is determined again by viewing and comparing the original and the compressed copy. In general, FastStone is quite suitable for photo compression, especially since, in general, you don’t really need to understand it - everything is intuitive and natural.
Other features of FastStone Image Viewer
I also promised to mention batch resizing of photos, so we’ll talk about that now. In a batch manner (for a large number of photos at the same time) you can do several things in FastStone:
- Rename image files for several types of masks (the same can be done successfully in Total Commander with even more mask options)
- Convert a whole bunch of files (you can have different formats) into any one format you need
- Batch reduce the size (resolution) of a whole bunch of photos at once
- Apply a watermark that you prepared in advance to this whole heap, or simply add some text to everything (very useful in terms of subsequent evidence for hosters or search engines when dealing with cases or
- Rotate all photos in the desired direction
- Crop all selected images to a specific size
- Enclose them all in the selected frames
- Change brightness and color depth (limit the number of colors used)
- And one more minor thing to do
In order to get into all this splendor, you need to select the items “Tools” - “Convert selected” from the top menu of FastStone Image Viewer (you can also “Rename selected”, because both of these tabs will still be present in the window that opens):
If you only need to rename a group of pictures or change their format, then all the settings are given on these two tabs. The desired photos can be selected in the left column and added to the right column using the corresponding button in the middle.
But Image Viewer also supports dragging with the mouse from another program (for example, Windows Explorer or Total Commander). Next, select a folder to save the converted files, as well as a mask for renaming or a graphic format for conversion.
If you want resize all photos in batch(or do something else from the list above), then you will have to check the “Change settings (dimensions...)” box and click on the “Advanced” button located to the right. As a result, a window will open with an even larger bunch of tabs and settings on them (here’s a simple program for viewing photos):
Make the necessary settings on the required tabs and click OK. If you plan to use the same settings again in the future, then save them to a file using the corresponding button located at the bottom of the window. And after all this, click on the “Start” button (see the previous screenshot) and go to the selected folder to evaluate the result of the batch conversion.
Also, for all selected photos you can remove meta data(Tools - Remove metadata). In addition to those described above, FastStone Image Viewer can do the following things:
- Screenshots of the entire screen or selected area (File - Screen Capture)
- Scan (File - Receive image from scanner)
- Compress the image file for subsequent sending by mail (File - Send by E-mail)
- Crop the photo (for example, removing the same watermark and putting it on the copyright), selecting the desired format for its future printing (Edit - Crop)
- Add arrows, frame selections, inscriptions to the original photo using the built-in graphic editor (Edit - Draw)
- Remove red eye (also in the Edit menu)
- In the Effects menu you will find the opportunity to add ready-made frames, your own watermarks and other ways to mock photos
- You can launch a slideshow with music and photos from the folder currently open in FastStone, or create a slideshow file with photos specially selected by you
- Create an image file with all the miniatures you need (Create - Create index list)
Well, now I will describe all of the above in as much detail as possible. Don't be afraid, I'm just joking because I'm tired. That's all I wanted to say about such a wonderful tool for viewing and editing images as Image Viewer. Hurray, comrades.
Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site
You might be interested
Graphics for the Web - how to prepare an image in Photoshop and insert a picture or photo on the site 
How to get a fast website - optimization (compression) of images and scripts, as well as reducing the number of Http requests 
How to upload photos and transfer videos from iPhone or any other phone to your computer Picasa is a program for viewing and storing photos in the cloud, editing them, searching by faces, creating collages and videos 
Extensions and themes for Google Chrome Djvu - what is this format, how to open it and what programs to use for reading files in deja vu on a computer or android 
Total Commander - the best file manager for Windows, its capabilities, installation and configuration of plugins 
How to take a screenshot using Print Screen and the Snagit screen capture program, its settings and capabilities
Tools for organization are available in almost every image program. You can often find programs that are simultaneously viewers, editors, and cataloguers. These are, for example, Zoner Photo Studio, ACDSee, Nero Kwik Media and many others. There is no doubt that all-in-one tools are convenient for many users. But if, among their many capabilities, the main ones for you are those related to organizing photos, you may want to take a closer look at specialized programs.
Firstly, such applications are not overloaded with unnecessary options - and therefore, in most cases, they work faster and more stable than multimedia processors. Secondly, specialized programs usually offer more tools for searching photos based on different criteria. Read our review about five apps that make organizing your photo collection easier.
⇡ Daminion 1.0 RC
- Developer: Daminion Software
- Operating system: Windows
- Distribution: free
- Russian interface: yes
Under its current name, the Daminion cataloger has been in development for more than five years, but its creators have much more experience in writing applications for organizing photographs. Previously, Daminion developers released the PicaJet program, but later decided to write a completely new application with multi-user access to the photo database and other interesting features. At the same time, a single-user version of Daminion is also available, which is distributed free of charge. The multi-user version is called Daminion Server.
Daminion works with catalogs - databases of photographs, and adding files to the catalog is the user's responsibility. This means that you need to manually specify the path to the folders with images. In this case, files can be physically copied or transferred to the folder that is used to store data, or they can simply be added to the directory without copying. At the same time, Daminion remembers relative paths to files, so when you transfer photos to another drive, all data in the directory will be preserved. When adding photos to the catalog, you can immediately assign tags to them, or you can do this later - everything is at the discretion of the user.
As soon as the files are added to the directory, they are displayed in the program window in the form of thumbnails with captions. In the signature you can see basic information about the file: name, resolution, size, shutter speed, ISO. In addition, each thumbnail contains tools for organization: you can quickly set a rating, tag the image, add keywords, set a color tag, and view detailed metadata. The user can change the way files are displayed, displaying only images without additional information, or, conversely, removing thumbnails and calling up a list of files with information about them.
If you select an image, you can see more information about it in the Properties panel. There is also an opportunity to supplement this information: indicate the people who are depicted in it, the event during which the photograph was taken, the location where it was taken, the category. For professional photographers, fields such as “Project”, “Client”, “Copyright” are provided. You can also fill in the fields in the “Properties” panel in batch mode - to do this, you just need to first select the necessary photos. All changes to tags are synchronized with file metadata, so information about files is always presented both in the database and in the files themselves.
If the right panel is informational and at the same time serves for data entry, then the left panel - “Tags” - is intended for search. All file search criteria are at your fingertips. For example, you can display only pictures located in the same folder, expand the “Creation Date” list and quickly find a photo by the month it was taken, display only files with the maximum rating, and so on. It is very important that, in addition to custom tools for organization, the program also offers many automatic ones. For example, it is very easy to select geo-tagged images taken with a specific camera using a specific lens. There is nothing difficult in using several conditions at once.
The program also has an advanced search that allows you to use up to fifty parameters, including operators AND, OR and others.
There are no tools for editing images in Daminion; you can only rotate the thumbnails for easier viewing. If any changes were made by mistake, you can always roll back to the previous version - the program keeps track of revisions. This is especially true when working with the application multi-user.
Daminion works not only with graphic files, but also with videos and PDF documents. At the same time, the program is optimized for working with very large collections of images (the test database consists of 500 thousand images), so you don’t have to worry about the stability of its work when adding new files. By the way, for convenience, you can use several independent directories that can be opened in the program simultaneously, each on a separate tab.
⇡ IMatch 3.6
- Developer: photools.com
- Operating system: Windows
- Distribution: shareware
- Russian interface: no
Despite the fact that the latest version of IMatch dates back to the end of last year, when looking at the program's interface, it seems that it is many years old. Indeed, appearance has always been IMatch’s weak point, and against the background of modern interface solutions, small buttons with Windows 2000-style graphics look scary. The author has long promised to redesign the appearance of the application, but has not done so yet. However, many users still prefer this program.
The main reason is the support for scripts, thanks to which you can connect to the program almost any function that is not implemented in it by default. For example, there are scripts for managing file versions, for finding files that have been tagged incorrectly, for checking the correctness of names, and others. Scripts do not have to be created manually - many useful additions have already been written by other users of the program and are available on the forum.
Another important feature of IMatch is its stable work with large collections of files. The program easily copes with databases containing hundreds of thousands of photos, does not slow down and works quite stably. In addition, IMatch provides a periodic reminder to create a backup copy.
Like Daminion, this program works with photo databases that must be manually populated with photographic content. The processes of creating a database and importing images are implemented in the form of a wizard, but despite this, it is difficult to call them intuitive. There are too many boxes to check along the way. By default, in the program window the database is sorted into folders. It is also possible to view by category, by saved search templates, by the history of selected files, and so on.
⇡ MyPhotoIndex 1.24
- Developer: My Photo Index
- Operating system: Windows
- Distribution: free
- Russian interface: no
MyPhotoIndex is inferior in functionality to its more advanced competitors, but the program has several important advantages. Firstly, the program is free and open source. Secondly, it is very simple, and the user does not need to rack his brain for a long time about where to find this or another option - they are all at hand.
The program offers organization of photos by categories, by tags and by rating. Tags can be added to the slice when importing images into the program database, and several tags that are used most often are already added by default.
Access to all main functions is provided through the context menu. With it, you can add and remove tags, add and edit comments, change the date the photo was taken, send photos for printing, encrypt them, and set them as wallpaper on your desktop. Separately, it is worth noting the data sharing capabilities: with one click, photos can be uploaded to Facebook, Flickr and other services.
Using built-in search tools, the user can search for photos by tags, by title and other criteria. A convenient function is to search for images that were taken between two specified dates.
⇡ Photo Event Organizer 1.3
- Developer: GearMage
- Operating system: Windows
- Distribution: free
- Russian interface: no
Of course, it’s very good when you have the time and desire to keep your photo collection in perfect order: set ratings, sort pictures by category and add tags. But, unfortunately, even a simple sorting of hundreds of photographs into folders takes months for some. Thanks to large memory cards, we don't have to worry about running out of space and often copy photos to our computer once every two months. And then all the events recorded during this time end up in one pile.
Photo Event Organizer is a simple program that helps you easily sort your running photo archives by date. Specify the directory in which all photographs are stored, and also set the time period that determines the duration of one event. After this, the program will show you what period of time the photos will go into each folder, and will offer to give a name to each event during which they were taken. If you wish, you can simply sort photos by month or year.
Once the operation is complete, you will see new folders with neat names like "October" and "November". Photo Event Organizer can both copy photos to new folders and move them, which is, of course, faster. If duplicates are found during the copying process, they will not be transferred to the new folder. Thus, the program can also help free up some space on your hard drive.
⇡ Namexif 1.6
- Developer: Digicamsoft
- Operating system: Windows
- Distribution: free
- Russian interface: no
And finally, another simple free utility that helps you organize your photos by adding information about the time they were taken to the file names. The information is taken from the metadata written to the file at the time of its creation. Once you get files with names like 2013-04-01-17h56m56.jpg, they become a little easier to navigate.
Namexif works in the form of a wizard: the user is first asked to specify files or folders. Since the program can look into subfolders, you can immediately select the root directory, and then Namexif will find and rename all photos at once.
At the second stage, you need to select a renaming format. For example, an application can leave the original name at the end or add arbitrary characters to all names.
Unfortunately, there is no function for previewing changes, as well as a rollback, so it is better to practice on small folders first.
⇡ Conclusion
Requirements for image organizing programs may vary, but the end goal for the user is always the same - the ability to quickly find the photo they need. Each of the programs discussed above helps with this in its own way, so all you have to do is choose the one that best suits you. Do not forget that photos that you cannot find are as useless as they were deleted long ago.
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