good freeware image browser

[Luke Hooft]

I'm looking for a good free image browser. It's not hard to find a free one,
but I need one with a specific feature: the ability to set any image as your
wallpaper through the browser BUT in a way that will-re-size it (bigger or
smaller) to fit your screen as well as possible without changing the aspect
ratio (i.e. distorting it).

ACDsee does this, but I want something that won't bug me to register or run
out of evaluation time, or is a hassle to find a crack for.

I just want something that does the same thing that I can use guilt-free.

I tried Ulead Photo Explorer which was otherwise good, but unfortunately
does distort an image when you set it as a wallpaper. There are lots of
other programs at download.com but it's hard to tell if they have the
neccessary wallpaper function I want without actually downloading them (and
I've tried a few)

Anyone know one that definitely has the required function?

LH

 

[Markku V.]

Cam2pc is very good.

http://www.nabocorp.com/cam2pc/freeware.php


Markku Virtanen

 

[Bob Adkins]

I'm looking for a good free image browser. It's not hard to find a free one,
but I need one with a specific feature: the ability to set any image as your
wallpaper through the browser BUT in a way that will-re-size it (bigger or
smaller) to fit your screen as well as possible without changing the aspect
ratio (i.e. distorting it).

ACDsee does this, but I want something that won't bug me to register or run
out of evaluation time, or is a hassle to find a crack for.

I just want something that does the same thing that I can use guilt-free.

I tried Ulead Photo Explorer which was otherwise good, but unfortunately
does distort an image when you set it as a wallpaper. There are lots of
other programs at download.com but it's hard to tell if they have the
neccessary wallpaper function I want without actually downloading them (and
I've tried a few)

Anyone know one that definitely has the required function?

Try FastStone Image Viewer or Cam2PC. Both are feature packed and have no
ads or nags.

-- Bob

 

[Luke Hooft]

Try FastStone Image Viewer or Cam2PC. Both are feature packed and have no
ads or nags.

Thank you. FastStone didn't do what I wanted, it still distorted the picture
to fill the whole desktop, but cam2pc, after fiddling with the settings,
does exactly what I wanted and has the added bonus of being able to rotate
the wallpaper automatically.

Thanks to both of you who suggested it. I can now uninstall all the other
ones I tried.

LH

 

[André Gulliksen]

Thank you. FastStone didn't do what I wanted, it still distorted the
picture to fill the whole desktop, but cam2pc, after fiddling with
the settings, does exactly what I wanted and has the added bonus of
being able to rotate the wallpaper automatically.

I beg to differ. I just tried cam2pc, and it DOES distort the picture. Not
the aspect ratio (which was probably what you were referring to), but it
does resize pictures in a way that causes jagged edges.

I recommend taking a look at XnView (http://www.xnview.com/) instead. It
resamples pictures when resizing, causing much improved picture quality when
resizing. This option also applies to viewing, at the cost of speed. Another
good viewer which does this (at least for viewing, not sure about
wallpapering) is IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/).

 

[\(ProteanThread\)]

Try ForceVision (i just posted a link cpl daze ago) and so far i like it.

 

[Ziba]

This is not quite what you have in mind, but it might be a workable
solution.

Webshots [www.webshots.com/] is a free wallpaper manager which includes a
screensaver. The webshots website has thousands of photos for free
download, with thousands more available in Webshots Community albums.

Webshots also allows you to create your own collections from your own
photos and it does an excellent job of resizing them to fit your screen
reolution. For best results (ie to fill the screen completely) the photos
should have a ratio of 4:3 (I think, sorry, I can't find the specification
for this). Other aspects will produce blank space above and below or beside
the photo when it's set as the desktop background. Alternatively Webshots
will centre the photo on the screen - or tile it - without enlarging it.

The Webshots program provides a couple of editing functions (rotation and
cropping), and will run slideshows.

Since the Webshots collections are stored in a proprietary format it's not
possible to extract photos once they've been imported into Webshots, so
you'd need to keep backups of your photos.