Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 07, 2006 02:36 PM
I have been playing with image browsing programs over the last few days.
I have tried XnView for both Linux and Windows. For Linux I downloaded the static RPM, converted it to a DEB and installed it. I installed the Windows version under Wine. The Windows version looked a lot better. Let's face it, Motif widgets look horrible. That said, I like the menu arrangement of the Linux version better. In the end I removed both from my system. While it supported a large number of graphic formats, it failed to support CGM or WPG. Also, on photographs, the lack of a histogram is a killer.
I ran Picasa2 under Wine. It tended to croak on large TIFF files. It also needed to be restrained from scanning my entire hard drive, and all of the others mounted via SAMBA. Once done with scanning, Picasa2 revealed itself as a photo-centric organizer; many clip art collections need not apply. What I liked about Picasa2 was its search capability, its marvelous histogram, and its simple, yet very effective editing tools. It took about five minutes for me to conclude that this was going on my father's Linux box, though it probably won't stay on mine.
Faststone Image Browser surprised me. Like XnView, it assumes you will organize your photos by directory. Unlike XnView, thumbnails appear even in the folder icons themselves. Like Picasa2, Faststone has simple but effective editing tools. It's better at checking out images than Picasa, but the editing tools are a bit scattered. For working through a directory of 100 or more digital camera images, Faststone is hard to beat.
What does Linux have to offer? For JPEGs and TIFFs, Konqueror is a good browser. It can't do raw images from cameras, but my camera supplies a thumbnail for browsing. If I want to open the raw image, I double click and the GIMP opens, which in turn passes the image to UFRaw. UFRaw does the exposure and color balance with the high bit raw file, before sending it back to the GIMP. The Gimp's sharpening is fine, but if you need to reduce noise, you need the GREYCstoration plug-in.
An alternative is Bibble. It does a bit of everything for raw files, mostly: Browse, crop, color balance, exposure, sharpen, and noise reduction (now via Noise Ninja). It's nicely done, but costs money. Bibble is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 07, 2006 02:36 PMI have tried XnView for both Linux and Windows. For Linux I downloaded the static RPM, converted it to a DEB and installed it. I installed the Windows version under Wine. The Windows version looked a lot better. Let's face it, Motif widgets look horrible. That said, I like the menu arrangement of the Linux version better. In the end I removed both from my system. While it supported a large number of graphic formats, it failed to support CGM or WPG. Also, on photographs, the lack of a histogram is a killer.
I ran Picasa2 under Wine. It tended to croak on large TIFF files. It also needed to be restrained from scanning my entire hard drive, and all of the others mounted via SAMBA. Once done with scanning, Picasa2 revealed itself as a photo-centric organizer; many clip art collections need not apply. What I liked about Picasa2 was its search capability, its marvelous histogram, and its simple, yet very effective editing tools. It took about five minutes for me to conclude that this was going on my father's Linux box, though it probably won't stay on mine.
Faststone Image Browser surprised me. Like XnView, it assumes you will organize your photos by directory. Unlike XnView, thumbnails appear even in the folder icons themselves. Like Picasa2, Faststone has simple but effective editing tools. It's better at checking out images than Picasa, but the editing tools are a bit scattered. For working through a directory of 100 or more digital camera images, Faststone is hard to beat.
What does Linux have to offer? For JPEGs and TIFFs, Konqueror is a good browser. It can't do raw images from cameras, but my camera supplies a thumbnail for browsing. If I want to open the raw image, I double click and the GIMP opens, which in turn passes the image to UFRaw. UFRaw does the exposure and color balance with the high bit raw file, before sending it back to the GIMP. The Gimp's sharpening is fine, but if you need to reduce noise, you need the GREYCstoration plug-in.
An alternative is Bibble. It does a bit of everything for raw files, mostly: Browse, crop, color balance, exposure, sharpen, and noise reduction (now via Noise Ninja). It's nicely done, but costs money. Bibble is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
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