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Freeware multi-platform image viewer: nomacs

nomacs

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nomacs image lounge (all lowercase? ) (Version: 0.3.2.5828 beta tested) is an open source image viewer for Windows, Linux, and Mac machines. It supports the most common image formats from jpg to gif (no animations however) and xmp to pgm and others including the raw format. It is capable of  reading and displaying exif metadata. It offers faster than most thumbnail view of images in a folder and a player to view a folder ala a slideshow.

nomacs

The program can also be viewed in full screen or various levels of transparency and in frameless mode where the image only is shown, floating over the background. The toggle between frameless and normal view is not exactly obvious but a quick search revealed it to be F10.

On the image editing side there is crop, resize and a ‘pseudo color function’ where one can play with hue, saturation and RGB color values using a slider.

nomacs also features a synchronization feature that will work on computers on the same network or LAN.

nomacs does indeed seem faster than most. It can be found in various Linux repositories and there is a Mac port as well. Its Windows version runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 and is available in both portable and installer versions.

Comments

5 responses to “Freeware multi-platform image viewer: nomacs”

  1. Asen Anastassov Avatar
    Asen Anastassov

    While still in an early phase of development (it has not yet left the beta stage), nomacs is a very promising image viewer, in fact it is very good. I like its easy hot-keys (especially T for Thumbnails and M for Metadata), its slide-show player, its neat interface and its portability. It is not as light as a feather (Qt-dependency) but it is not much heavier on resources than other image viewers. It remembers last accessed directory and support drag&drop. Nomacs also allows starting multiple instances of the application. It is being developed by three students from the Vienna Technical University, who are very responsive and open to suggestions and who seem to be real perfectionists- although nomacs is extremely stable they are not in a hurry to release the first stable release version since they want to fix all the minor bugs and add new features. I like nomacs very much and although FastStone MaxView is still my default viewer (no viewer can beat the elegance of my all-times favourite and in fact nomacs lacks file association options), I would recommend it for a free, portable, multi-platform, fast, customizable and nice-looking graphic viewer.

  2. RG Avatar
    RG

    Very good info and points, thanks Asen. I was surprised at its speed, looking forward to following its development for sure. I have been using FastStone Image Viewer for a long time and happy with it but nomacs is very promising like you mentioned.

  3. Asen Anastassov Avatar
    Asen Anastassov

    Just a little clarification- Faststone Image Viewer and FastStone MaxView are different applications from the same developer, the first one is an image browser and is free while the latter is a bare-bones image viewer and is not free (both have portable versions). I use the last free version of FastStone MaxView- 2.1 and the most important feature implemented in the next trial versions is the ability to view images inside ZIP and RAR archives (even password-protected ones!). I especially like the show/hide menus in full screen mode when the mouse cursor touches the screen borders and the extremely smooth mouse zoom.

  4. RG Avatar
    RG

    True, they are two different software from the same developer. I have always found it interesting that the developer chose not to make the more full fledged image viewer shareware.
    I have always liked the looking into archives feature. A few, but not many, file managers support that.

  5. Asen Anastassov Avatar
    Asen Anastassov

    In my opinion the guys (or the guy) from FastStone made MaxView shareware because it is designed to be an image files associated opener, it is small, light and fast and it is great for viewing images, just click and open and view the image immediately. While their Image Viewer is a sophisticated image browser for exploring, browsing and manipulating images, very similar to another great tool- XnView. I prefer both FastStone Image Viewer and XnView to all ACDSee products, much lighter and faster and not that bloated so if ACDSee was free I would not have chosen it. Anyway, there are plenty of great image viewers of different types- FreeVimager, FutirixImager, Imagine, JPEGView, kuView, MycView, NexusImage, Viu 2, WildBit Wiever to mention some, and of course, the veteran IrfanView.

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