[Update] FastStone Image Viewer Version 2.27 beta 3 (2005-10-25)

[Buzzy]

FastStone Image Viewer
http://www.faststone.org/

FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly
image browser, converter and editor.

Version 2.27 beta 3
Last update:2005-10-25.

my 2 cents worth.............

http://www.buzzys.net/faststone.html

HTH
Cheers,
Buzzy

--
--- Buzzy's Stall Wall ---
www.buzzys.net
"The World Wide Web's Rest Area"
Warning: This site contains MY
version of freeware! All are welcome!

 

[TedK]

my 2 cents worth.............

http://www.buzzys.net/faststone.html

HTH
Cheers,
Buzzy

Great review Buzzy! I sent it along to a family member who had asked me
for info on a freeware image editor. (Usually I would refer to
Irfranview, but FastStone sounds very good, in addition to the other two
programs they offer.)

And cheers to you,
Ted

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Total Commander is as quick as Firegraphic.
Immediately useful even before it has built an index.
Firegraphic 6 is freeware but not so easy to find.

I've heard good reports of TC, and you're clearly a fan of it. Do you
use it as well as Windows Explorer/My Computer? One of the reasons
I've not used it myself is that I assume it's duplicating the inbuilt
application. As far as I know, you can't uninstall Explorer!

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Firegraphic 6 is a lot faster, it takes two seconds before
the thumbnails are visible and you can scroll to 70% of
the file list and it shows thumbnails for that part of the
list.

Just downloaded and spent 5 minutes playing with Firegraphic 6.

Seems to be some bug with Save As > JPG? I pasted a new image from
clipboard with Ctl+V, which made a BMP file named PHOTO00001.bmp.
(Unfortunate choice of name IMO; not immediately clear how many zeros.
And this wasn't a photo.) I then used File > Save As (which has the
non-standard shortcut of Ctl+Shift+S; only just getting used to 'S' in
IrfanView!) and selected JPG. On clicking OK, I get message saying
"...\PHOTO00001.bmp already exists. Do you want to replace it?" That's
untrue of course; it doesn't exist. After clicking Yes, it just saves
as BMP, not JPG. In contrast, choosing PNG *does* work.

Also, should I have an icon in my system tray (right hand end of
taskbar), as well as the usual button in the taskbar? (I do not have
any of the 4 top boxes checked under Tools > Options > System.)

 

[Roger Johansson]

I've heard good reports of TC, and you're clearly a fan of it. Do you
use it as well as Windows Explorer/My Computer? One of the reasons
I've not used it myself is that I assume it's duplicating the inbuilt
application. As far as I know, you can't uninstall Explorer!

It does the same as explorer but does it a lot better.
It also does lots of other things, which you need other
programs for if you use another file manager.

Try it yourself, it is a free download from www.ghisler.com.
There is a nag screen when it is started, but most people
re-start it only when rebooting, so it is fully usable even
before being registered. No time limit, it just keeps on working.

The lame explorer was the reason for the development
of Norton Commander and PC-Tools a long time ago.

Those programs have been developed for many years and
the best two pane file manager now is TC.

TC is supported by a whole armada of freeware addon authors
who create new functionality. Ghisler cooperates with them
and now installation of addons is automatic.

With the addons installed I can go into any kind of archive,
like iso files, cab files etc.. like it was zip files.

I like to have file names color coded, so exe files are red,
text and html files green, media files purple, etc..

It takes years to realize all built in functionality in TC.
I hope that TC will go open source or freeware one day,
just like Opera. Considering all fraternizing he does with
all the freeware authors who help developing TC it sounds
like the logical next step to take.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Just downloaded and spent 5 minutes playing with Firegraphic 6.

Seems to be some bug with Save As > JPG? I pasted a new image from
clipboard with Ctl+V, which made a BMP file named PHOTO00001.bmp.
(Unfortunate choice of name IMO; not immediately clear how many zeros.
And this wasn't a photo.) I then used File > Save As (which has the
non-standard shortcut of Ctl+Shift+S; only just getting used to 'S' in
IrfanView!) and selected JPG. On clicking OK, I get message saying
"...\PHOTO00001.bmp already exists. Do you want to replace it?" That's
untrue of course; it doesn't exist. After clicking Yes, it just saves
as BMP, not JPG. In contrast, choosing PNG *does* work.

Also, should I have an icon in my system tray (right hand end of
taskbar), as well as the usual button in the taskbar? (I do not have
any of the 4 top boxes checked under Tools > Options > System.)

 

[Terry Pinnell]

In contrast, choosing PNG *does* work.

Correction: That seems buggy too. Having pasted, the BMP thumbnail
appears as before, PHOTO00001.BMP. After using Ctl+Sh+S and choosing
PNG, the program offers up a filename of an existing file in that
folder, not the selected PHOTO00001.BMP.

 

[Roger Johansson]

Seems to be some bug with Save As > JPG? I pasted a new image from

It is a quick thumbnail viewer, but I haven't tried it for other
operations. Luckily I don't even need it for that anymore,
as TC is the best solution.

Also, should I have an icon in my system tray (right hand end of
taskbar), as well as the usual button in the taskbar?

I get a system tray icon too, in firegraphic.

 

[Roger Johansson]

It is a quick thumbnail viewer, but I haven't tried it for other
operations. Luckily I don't even need it for that anymore,
as TC is the best solution.

After playing with my new tool, the thumbnail view in TC
for a while I must add a few things.

I have XnView installed, with lots of plugins, and I
have allowed TC to use both installed TC plugins and XnView
and its plugins, when the built-in resources are not enough.

So some of this functionality is coming from addons and
plugins and XnView. How much, I cannot say.

I like how TC does something intelligent with each format.
Txt files are shown as a white paper with some text on it.
And I can read the text, it is a few lines from this text file.

It is easier to list the few formats it cannot show, like m3u
files, just an oversight from somebody, m3u files are text
files and can be shown in the same way as txt and ini files.

bak is another format it cannot show.
tcl, csv, hjt...

Most of these formats can easily be shown if they
were only associated with the right thumb maker.
Most of them are text files.

But these are the few exceptions, TC shows practically
all files I have as thumbnails.


Before I posted this message I fixed the formats above.
In the settings for thumbnails.
All are now shown as text files thumbnails, except csv

When I tried the internal viewer on the
csv file I came into a nice database viewer
I have never seen before. It can be a TC plugin
or some built-in function.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

It does the same as explorer but does it a lot better.
It also does lots of other things, which you need other
programs for if you use another file manager.

Try it yourself, it is a free download from www.ghisler.com.
There is a nag screen when it is started, but most people
re-start it only when rebooting, so it is fully usable even
before being registered. No time limit, it just keeps on working.

The lame explorer was the reason for the development
of Norton Commander and PC-Tools a long time ago.

Those programs have been developed for many years and
the best two pane file manager now is TC.

TC is supported by a whole armada of freeware addon authors
who create new functionality. Ghisler cooperates with them
and now installation of addons is automatic.

With the addons installed I can go into any kind of archive,
like iso files, cab files etc.. like it was zip files.

I like to have file names color coded, so exe files are red,
text and html files green, media files purple, etc..

It takes years to realize all built in functionality in TC.
I hope that TC will go open source or freeware one day,
just like Opera. Considering all fraternizing he does with
all the freeware authors who help developing TC it sounds
like the logical next step to take.

Thanks for that thorough reply. I'll definitely be trying it.

Presumably I was right about the inevitable resource duplication
though? Nothing to be done about that I suppose? It just pains me to
waste resources...

 

[Roger Johansson]

Thanks for that thorough reply. I'll definitely be trying it.

Presumably I was right about the inevitable resource duplication
though? Nothing to be done about that I suppose? It just pains me to
waste resources...

I see what you mean. Many graphics programs have their
own graphic viewers/selectors. But nothing beats having the
graphics and video browser integrated in the file manager.

Now I can forget about Firegraphics and other thumbnail
viewers. I only use the programs which can be used as graphic
effects and editing.

By the way, PSP has been bought by Corel, and the latest
version of PSP has lost in the paint side and some effects
I always use, like the histogram adjuster, are removed.

Corel are obviously going to market PSP as a photo effects
program, like photofiltre.

That means that there must be a top performance PSP
version, the last before Corel started crippling the program.

Fortunately there are freeware alternatives showing up.
For histogram adjustment I will use Image analyzer.
It is even more advanced than in PSP7 and 8.

It is called "color mapping" and I can draw the histogram
adjustment curve I like.