Tag: image

Pictor Is An Image Editor With Unique Features

Pictor (v 1.27.0) is an interesting image editor that while basic looking has some not often seen features.

Of these more unique features are 36 predefined collage shapes that arrange 2 to 25 images in different configurations. Plus a whole set of shapes (geometric, stars, arrows etc.) that can be added to images. Perhaps more unusual is the crop and erase features where an image can be cropped using a shape instead of a rectangular crop. Free hand cropping is also a less common option. In the screenshot below Crop —> Crop by shape is chosen and drawn on the image. After drawing the shape clicking enter crops the image leaving only the parts of the image within the triangular shape. The Erase option does the opposite by erasing a (triangular) shape and leaving the rest of the image intact. The crop has a few more options as well with one being crop by text whereby a typed text remains with the the rest of the image cropped.

The Add menu adds text and other images to the existing image. This feature includes a ‘Text Circle’ option where the text entered is drawn in a within a resizable circle, a less configurable feature of something seen in the likes of Photoshop. The Replace option is like overlaying the open image with another.

Pictor also does batch (resize, rotate, add image, etc) processing plus the expected gamma, brightness, grayscale, negative, emboss and others under the Color menu. It also features various pens for drawing on images with various thicknesses.

An important limitation seems to be that the program supports only one Undo level and further changes are therefore destructive.

Pictor is portable and less than 3MB unzipped. It supports most standard set of image formats including the likes of EJPG, WebP and PGM.

February 9, 2022
New Image Viewer: Mouser’s Media Browser

Mouser at DonationCoder has restarted work on an image viewer that will be part of the site’s annual NANY (New Apps for the New Year).

Mouser’s Media Browser is not aimed at competing with well known image viewers such as IrfanView and others but when running the program it does better than most in generating thumbnails for example. Its development has been fast in recent days with many releases and it has already improved in several ways, including the speed in which it generates thumbnails and how fast it scans recursively to find images within subfolders.

The program shows a navigation tree with the user picking the folder to view, either via the tree or by browsing to a folder. It is also possible to filter files, for example showing only gifs by just typing gif in the filter bar. There is also a grid mode which eliminates the image preview pane. The program options (File —> Options) has settings with minimum and maximum thumbnail size.

By default it comes with a thumbnail strip open. Another open by default view is the virtual tree which divides images by date showing how many by month and year. Future releases may include other virtual trees that divide media by tags or other attributes. These can be turned off via the Tree menu.

The program can open an image using an external image viewer and it also integrates with Mouser’s other tools like Screenshot Captor and Automatic Screenshotter.

December 20, 2019
Seymour: Portable Freeware Image Viewer

Seymour (version:0.9.10) is a freeware image viewer with basic editing features, it is also portable.

Seymour is one of the newer entries in the image viewing world and it packs a good number of features in a lightweight download and shares similarities with XnView.

Images can be rated, categorized and tagged and a separate pane is available to view and find categorized images. Files can be grouped or filtered by filename, those tagged or not and those categorized or not and folders can be bookmarked too.

Beyond viewing many formats and moving and copying them there are basic editing features like resize, crop, rotate, grayscale, brightness, hue, auto level and format conversion to name a few. Seymour also supports scripts with some included like listing of images ready to copy into the clipboard, saving views or layouts, moving files based on properties and replacing text in file names and extensions.

One additional features is Search for images online (under Tools menu or right click the image) which uses google images to find similar images, this is in addition to the local Find similar images which will filter and display similar images in the current folder.

The program does feel sluggish at times, especially in the preview pane (see screenshot for one example of two images being overlayed after one is clicked after the other) but also the menu structure, for example List artists is under both File and Scripts menus.

Seymour is sqlite based and works on Windows XP and newer and supports touchscreen gestures.

November 28, 2016
CLIB: New And Different Clipboard Manager

CLIB is a relative new entry in the freeware clipboard manager space. It uses a different approach than most others in that the interface and settings are within the browser. In the age of privacy violations and concerns the program emphasizes that while it uses the browser it is not using the cloud in anyway, it is only that the program can be accessed locally at http://127.0.0.1:8822/clib/dashboard.do.

CLIB supports images and text items and does automatically tag them based on source and type, clicking on a saved item shows a bigger preview with an option to delete it, edit captured text or add or change tags. Items can be starred and text copied back to the clipboard, the latter is done by clicking the orange icon beside the star icon. To view full captured images the same orange icon can be used and the image is opened in a new tab.

It is also possible to search items and include # with the search term to search tags. There are two view settings, one as a grid like the screenshot above and the other just one item below the next. The program’s settings are accessed from the drop down menu on the top right. There it is possible to add a user and password to protect saved items. Also it is possible to change hot keys for toggling CLIB on and off (from the default Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B), change Ctrl+C to something else and change the program’s snipping tool hot key that is Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F12 by default.

Note that the program runs as a service. CLIB is a 6MB download, requires Windows 7 or newer and works on Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer 9 or newer.

October 30, 2014
Honeyview Is An Useful Image Viewer

Honeyview is an image viewer made by the developers of the Bandizip archiver. Therefore it is not surprising that it is possible to view images inside zip, rar, tar, alz, lzh or 7z archive formats without extracting them.

Honeyview requires the user to load a folder via a right click anywhere in the program window or the left most button on the bottom controls. Then it lets the user view the images in several way, like fit in window and fit to width but also “Smart double page” which made no difference or didn’t work in testing png and jpg files. These are probably set up to work with tiff or other formats. It is also possible to view files in a slideshow with many delay choices and limited set of transition effects. Folder bookmarks make using the program more efficient. Honeyview is also an image editor with rotate, crop, resize and change format settings via the menu and others like gamma adjustment, flip or sharpen via right click on an image. The user can choose to launch an image in an external editor as well. It is also possible to move and copy images around “Photo folders”. The folders can be defined in the program’s settings.

The program settings (F5) add a whole set of tweaks like turning off the screensaver, changing the program language, more control over navigating with the mouse and keyboard, associating the program with different image formats, caching images, using different image profile data and better using the exif data to view and manage images,

The program’s only skin is the Windows 8 looking one. Honeyview is available in both portable and exe downloads and also supports grabbing GPS data with locations looked up using Google maps.

August 18, 2014
ClipMe To Manage The Windows Clipboard

A new entry in the clipboard management software category is ClipMe (not the first software or app to use that name?). It is currently at the 0.1.0 beta stage and there is potential for development and lots more to come. At this time ClipMe is basic and does not do all that much. However it is functional even as is.

Use Windows’ usual Ctrl+C to capture text, files and images that are stored in ClipMe’s database. Bring up the manager (Ctrl+Shift+O by default, configurable via the Preferences) to view them and their size. Hover over any captured image in the list to get a preview, edit any text entry if needed. Delete any entry by clicking on the X beside it. At the bottom of the manager window there is an option to change the number of items ClipMe keeps and remembers, the default is 30.

Currently to reuse an item it is necessary to click on it in the manager window or on it via the program’s tray icon (right click the icon).

The hot key to enable or disable ClipMe’s clipboard tracking is Ctrl+Shift+E, it can be configured to use another combination. ClipMe can be configured to ignore any of the types of captures it supports so, for example, it is possible to use ClipMe only to capture images. ClipMe should run on XP and newer.

August 12, 2014
PhotoDemon Is A Full Featured Image Editor

PhotoDemon is a portable and relatively small – less than 17MB unzipped – image editor which happens to be open source too. Most, if not all, features expected when working with images are present here. Plus there is also a Batch process mode available via the File menu (or Ctrl+B). A film strip area shows all open images.

PhotoDemon can import directly from the clipboard, cameras and scanners and also from URLs. Mouse and keyboard shortcuts for zoom make it easy to view details. The Image menu features most of what is expected like Resize, Crop, Rotate, and Flip plus a few others like Count unique colours and Transparency. The latter is a bit different because it can make specific colours transparent and leave other parts of an image untouched.

The selection has some interesting extras. When making a selection various effects can be added to the selection instead of the whole image. For example the screenshot above, probably not the best image to illustrate this, shows a rectangular selection with a border (After making a selection click Select –>Border). The Adjustment options are Black and white, Brightness and contrast, Color Balance, Levels, Vibrance, White balance, Channel, Color, Histogram, Invert, Lighting and Monochrome. The Effects are also most of the typical ones expected like Artistic, Blur, Distort, Edge, Experimental, Natural, Noise, Sharpen and Stylize. There is also a Custom filter window which is a fun to play with if not necessarily needed for most. The Experimental and Natural filters include the likes of Underwater, Rainbow, Alien and Radioactive.

The Tools menu is where macros can be recorded and plugins added, the included plugins are Exiftool, pngnq-s9, EZTwain, zlib and FreeImage. PhottoDemon offers a good solution for image editing beyond what is mentioned above and probably belongs high on the list of downloads to keep.

August 5, 2014
Hornil Photo Viewer: New Lightweight Image Viewer

Hornil Photo Viewer (version: 1.0) is a new freeware for home use image viewer from the developer who brought us the very capable Hornil StylePix photoshop alternative.

Hornil Photo Viewer is pretty much no frills and there are certainly many more better known alternatives available but it fills the need well enough for a basic image viewer. It features a file tree on the left, several ways to list or view images in the main section and a histogram, waveform, exif info (and the option to remove the info) and thumbnail viewer on the right.

Other features included are full screen mode, view in slideshow, image zoom, flip, rotate and convert and a launcher for any external image editor. The familiar keyboard shortcuts are available too, for example Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn to navigate through images. The supported formatted are png, jpg, tif, bmp, ico, jpc, pcx, tga, tif, ico, jpc, jp2, pcx, pgx, pnm, pgm, ppm, ras, ska, wmf and tsp. Hornil Photo Viewer runs on XP and newer.

December 31, 2013
LolliPic: More Screenshots

I have removed the link to the Lollipic site and modified/’trimmed’ its review. Why?
Lollipic, as I mentioned when posting this review, is very obviously a clone of ShareX. ShareX is an open source software and it is possible to use its source code to create another program. However, one of the stipulations in the open source GPL license is that source code remain available by whoever uses it. As of the time of the review and this note the source code is not available on the Lollipic site.
The developers of ShareX contacted me and kindly asked that I remove this review.
Eventhough a mere review, my review, is not in any way a violation of any license I have decided to not support Lollipic and while a screenshot (and a sentence or two) remain there will not be a review or a link to its site.

The choices for taking screenshots and sharing them are numerous and some even look remarkably similar as to make a person wonder if he is experiencing deja vu.

*Edited/removed*

It is clear that LolliPic is a ShareX clone and naturally both are based on the same set of tools like GreenshotImageEditor.dll just to name one.

LolliPic requires the .NET Framework.

December 27, 2013
ShareX: Grab, Upload, Share

ShareX is a multipurpose, feature rich utility geared towards sharing anything captured on a pc. At its core it is a screen grabber that does a lot more, including just uploading files.

Clipboard upload is the first in the list of its features, it auto detects urls to use a url shortener, it defaults to the bit.ly service. The Capture option features full screen, Window – with a list of open windows to choose from, monitor, rectangle, rounded rectangle, triangle, ellipse, diamond, polygon, free hand, last region, auto capture and screen recorder. The last two are configurable timed snapshots and animated gif.

After capture has options for Add image effect, Annotate image, Add watermark, Copy image to clipboard (on by default), Print image, Save image to file (on by default), Save image to file as, Copy file to clipboard, Copy file path to clipboard, Perform actions and Upload image to host. The Perform actions options is when an external program is set to open after the capture. The programs can be set in Task settings —> Actions, some of which are detected and added by ShareX.

After upload has options for Use url shortener, Post url to social networking service, Send url with email and Copy url to keyboard.

Destinations are configured per file type. Imgur.com is the default for images but they can be uploaded to imageshack, tinypic, flickr, photobucket, picasa, twitpic, twitsnaps, yfrog, imm.io, file or custom uploader. For text pastebin is the default with paste2.org, slexy.org, pastee.org, paste.ee, gist.github,com and file available. For url shortener there is the aforementioned bit.ly plus goo.gl, j.mp, is.gd, tinyurl and turl.ca and finally for social networking service twitter is the only one available as of version 8.4.1.

Almost everything is configurable, for example screenshots can be named with anything like year %y, month %mo, title of active window %t, millisecond %ms, auto increment %i, computer name %cn, random number %rn and more in their name and their default folder changed too (Application settings —> Paths). A proxy server can be added via Application settings —> Proxy. The format of the image can be changed from the default png to gif, jpg, tiff or bmp and its quality adjusted too (Task settings —> Image). The watermark and image effects are also configured via Task settings —> Image. ShareX can also watch folders and upload files placed in them automatically (Task settings —> Watch folders). The naming pattern is also available for clipboard items (Task settings —> Upload).

Hotkey settings include ones for capturing the entire screen, active window and rectangle region. Others can be added with every action configured too (see image below).

Any of the services that do not allow anonymous uploading can be setup via the Destination settings menu. The file uploader options are dropbox, mega, box, ge.tt, rapidshare, sendspace, hostr, Atlassian Jira, Google Drive, Minus, email and ftp. The custom uploader option is an advanced feature described fully at http://getsharex.com/docs/#CustomUploader. This tool uses POST and GET methods to upload and dynamically generate urls.

The program has two separate history tools to keep a log of every use. ShareX works on XP and newer and, once again, unfortunately requires .NET Framework 4 3.5.

Update: Thanks to Jaex for mentioning the correct .NET requirement

December 14, 2013