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Tag: archive

  • Freeware Shorts: Imagine (Image Viewer)

    Freeware Shorts: Imagine (Image Viewer)

    Imagine (Version: 1.0.8 as of this post) is a full featured image viewer and thumbnail browser. It features rotate, flip, negative and other common effects and filters. Support for plugins and command line parameters as well. It also supports animation creation, a feature less common in image viewers.

    Imagine

    Via Tools —> Animation Factory one can create animations.  It supports setting delays between frames, setting transparency, resizing the animation, fliping frames horizontally or vertically and even manipulating the colors of the images. It is also possible to extract frames from an existing animation.

    Another feature often missing or incomplete in many image viewers is to not only be able to open archive files but to be able to get proper thumbnail views of the images inside. Imagine supports this in ZIP, RAR, 7Z, ALZ, HV3, CBZ, CBR and CB7 formats and in my tests supports them well.

    Imagine supports EXIF data and their retention when re-saving images. Shell extension support is here too. Via Options —> Shell Extension the preview of an image will be available when right clicking it.

    Imagine can create multiple page images, do batch conversions, show slideshows and take screenshots. The latter was a bit different as it somehow proceeded to take many screenshots, not just one, when the trigger method was set to ‘automatically after X seconds’, it thus behaved as ‘automatically after every X seconds’.

    Unicode and 64-bit versions are also available, it should run on all Windows versions and doesn’t write to the registry.

    Imagine is highly recommended.

  • Freeware Shorts: Bandizip

    Freeware Shorts: Bandizip

    Bandizip (Version: 1.03 as of this post) is an archiver that support most if not all archive formats including the popular ZIP, 7Z, TAR, CAB, RAR and ISO formats and less common ones ones like XZ and BH.

    Bandizip

    More usefully Bandizip can create executables that will join big files that Bandizip itself has split and archived separately for easier portability. Bandizip can extract automatically from its context menu or let the user choose a destination. It also features what it calls high speed archiving. Here Bandizip recognizes file formats that are difficult or impossible to compress and bypasses them for faster processing. Another speed feature, also found and enabled in its setting, is the fast drag and drop. Here a big file is directly extracted into the chosen folder instead of being extracted into a temporary folder and then copied to the destination folder as is often the case with other – and indeed with small files using Bandizip – archivers or compressors.

    Full Unicode (UTF-8) support is one other main advantage of Bandizip. It runs on XP and newer Windows and is available for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

  • kuView: The Lightweight Image Viewer

    kuView: The Lightweight Image Viewer

    kuView

    kuView is a free and opensource lightweight image viewer which tries to aid the user in collecting and managing photo and image collections. The version tested for this review, admittedly a ‘pre’ (1.7pre [178]) release, is not bug free and not the fastest. For example the thumbnail panel (available via the Panel menu) is not always populated with the images of a highlighted or chosen directory.

    kuView supports copying, moving, renaming and printing images. Re-sampling algorithms such as Lanczos and reading metadata and EXIF information associated with a photo. It can also rotate and set an image as wallpaper. One can also view directories as a slideshow, favorite a directory and move between directories, not only levels up and levels down but in ‘history’ mode as well, all using the Traverse menu.

    Two additional features less common to image viewers is the ability to manage a Picasa Web album or gallery from within kuView and also to view, complete with thumbnails, images inside an archive (*.zip, *.tar, *.gz). It also supports reading RAW images.

    kuView is unicode capable, has a set of command line interface options and is availabe either as an executable or a full blown installer. It should run on all recent Windows versions.