IrfanView or FastStone?

"John Navas" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:02:37 +0000, Terry Pinnell
wrote in
:

I'm experimenting with FastStone seriously for the first time and
rather like it. But as a long time IrfanView user I'm unsure about
switching to it as my preferred viewer. Apart from other factors, I
have quite a few macros written which integrate IrfanView with other
applications, which would need re-writing.

So, while continuing my own comparison, I'd be very interested to hear
opinions from those who have used both please. Any really compelling
advantages of one over the other?

Free Image Viewers Challenge
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-Image-Viewers-Challenge-29851.shtml

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John


I see from that review that FastStone uses a database to store thumbnails.
If you use multiple PCs that might be a problem.

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:43:02 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

"John Navas" wrote in message
.. .

Free Image Viewers Challenge
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-Image-Viewers-Challenge-29851.shtml

I see from that review that FastStone uses a database to store thumbnails.
If you use multiple PCs that might be a problem.

Why?

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John

"John Navas" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:43:02 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

"John Navas" wrote in message
. ..

Free Image Viewers Challenge
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-Image-Viewers-Challenge-29851.shtml

I see from that review that FastStone uses a database to store thumbnails.
If you use multiple PCs that might be a problem.

Why?

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John


For example, in my case, I store all my images on my desktop and back that
up to a backup up unit. I do most of my editing on the desktop.

If I want to take some images anywhere to show others, I put them on my
laptop. When I'm away from home, with the laptop, all new images go onto
the laptop and get copied to the desktop when I get home.

While at home, I often use the laptop to show images from the desktop, or
the backup unit.
I also use my media PC to show images that are on the backup unit.

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:52:20 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

"John Navas" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:43:02 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

I see from that review that FastStone uses a database to store thumbnails.
If you use multiple PCs that might be a problem.

Why?

For example, in my case, I store all my images on my desktop and back that
up to a backup up unit. I do most of my editing on the desktop.

If I want to take some images anywhere to show others, I put them on my
laptop. When I'm away from home, with the laptop, all new images go onto
the laptop and get copied to the desktop when I get home.

While at home, I often use the laptop to show images from the desktop, or
the backup unit.
I also use my media PC to show images that are on the backup unit.

I'm pretty sure it builds the database as needed, so at worst it's as
fast as any other program, and has a reputation for being faster.
..

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:52:20 +1100, "N" wrote:

"John Navas" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:43:02 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

"John Navas" wrote in message
...

Free Image Viewers Challenge
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-Image-Viewers-Challenge-29851.shtml

I see from that review that FastStone uses a database to store thumbnails.
If you use multiple PCs that might be a problem.

Why?

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John


For example, in my case, I store all my images on my desktop and back that
up to a backup up unit. I do most of my editing on the desktop.

If I want to take some images anywhere to show others, I put them on my
laptop. When I'm away from home, with the laptop, all new images go onto
the laptop and get copied to the desktop when I get home.

While at home, I often use the laptop to show images from the desktop, or
the backup unit.
I also use my media PC to show images that are on the backup unit.


I have no idea why you think FastStone would be a problem in this
usage. FastStone views whatever image files you have on your
computer. In the above case, with FastStone installed on both
computers, it will allow you to view whatever image files you have on
either computer.

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

"John Navas" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:52:20 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

"John Navas" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 09:43:02 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

I see from that review that FastStone uses a database to store
thumbnails.
If you use multiple PCs that might be a problem.

Why?

For example, in my case, I store all my images on my desktop and back that
up to a backup up unit. I do most of my editing on the desktop.

If I want to take some images anywhere to show others, I put them on my
laptop. When I'm away from home, with the laptop, all new images go onto
the laptop and get copied to the desktop when I get home.

While at home, I often use the laptop to show images from the desktop, or
the backup unit.
I also use my media PC to show images that are on the backup unit.

I'm pretty sure it builds the database as needed, so at worst it's as
fast as any other program, and has a reputation for being faster.
.

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John


I use Adobe Bridge with the cache set to distributed, so the cache gets
copied along with the images. That'll do me for now and I'll hold off on
the upgrade to CS4 until I see a compelling reason to spend the money.

I use Bridge to do all my keywording (tagging) and titling, keeping the
keyword lists on the desktop.

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 10:38:50 +1100, "N" wrote in
:

"John Navas" wrote in message
.. .

I'm pretty sure it builds the database as needed, so at worst it's as
fast as any other program, and has a reputation for being faster.

I use Adobe Bridge with the cache set to distributed, so the cache gets
copied along with the images. That'll do me for now and I'll hold off on
the upgrade to CS4 until I see a compelling reason to spend the money.

I use Bridge to do all my keywording (tagging) and titling, keeping the
keyword lists on the desktop.

My own experience is that Bridge is painfully slow as compared to these
fast viewers.

--
Very best wishes for the holiday season and for the coming new year,
John

tony cooper wrote:
On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:02:37 +0000, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

I'm experimenting with FastStone seriously for the first time and
rather like it. But as a long time IrfanView user I'm unsure about
switching to it as my preferred viewer. Apart from other factors, I
have quite a few macros written which integrate IrfanView with other
applications, which would need re-writing.

So, while continuing my own comparison, I'd be very interested to hear
opinions from those who have used both please. Any really compelling
advantages of one over the other?

I don't know how compelling my reasons are, but I use FastStone as my
primary viewer. I like being able to see good-sized thumbnails of all
the images in the file in one screen or one screen scrolled. Other
points I like:

...I can drag images into any order for viewing and then view them in
that sequence as full-sized images.

I used ACDSee to do this for years, and then right-click rename to lock
the new order into alphanumeric sorting elsewhere. Thumbsplus is another
one people like. In my experience though, nothing is as fast as
Irfanview for routine browsing on the fly, in particular, Irfanview
launches instantly & can be dismissed with a tap on the escape key. It's
great for use with internet explorer. These other programs tend to
require re-navigating to your working folder which is annoying when you
just navigated to it in explorer.

Now I'm trying Lightroom and it has a bunch of great features, a really
slick interface, etc but is not a file browser. You have to import
things first before it will see them. So I still use Irfanview a lot.
From LR, I can launch Irfan or PS or very quickly show the folder in
explorer with the file highlighted and many file management tasks are
actually easier in LR than explorer: simple stuff like creating a folder.


...I can drag two or more images next to each other and then click
"compare selected images" and view them large-sized side-by-side.

Another thing LR does very elegantly.


...I can re-number the images to present them in the order I want to
view them. The re-numbering function is simple.

...I can right-click and click "Edit With External Program" and do a
quick edit in Photoshop or Elements. (user sets which external
program) and see the edited version in the sequence.

...I can move images, or copy images, to another file within
FastStone.

...I can tag images, sort for the tagged images only, to bring
together the keepers or the discards.

I used to use ACDSee for this, LR is also great for this task.


I recently edited 150 images shot with three cameras at a party, and
created one file of 40 images that will be uploaded to SmugMug. The
images all went into one working file, were dragged into groups of
similar shots, were compared with the other similar shots to pick the
one shot to use, were renumbered to follow in the order that I wanted,
were sent to a new file (to retain the originals in the working file)
and then were all in the new file were sent as a batch to my editor
for cropping and tweaking. All within FastStone.

I burned a copy of the original file on disk and put it away in case I
wanted to pull out an unedited image for some reason.

FastStone has some editing capabilities, but I never use that
function. I send to my Adobe editors. There are some other nice
features in FastStone, but the ones above are the ones that I use the
most.

No knocks on IrfanView. I use it sometimes, but prefer FastStone as
the primary viewer.

Hey whatever works well for you. Many many different ways to accomplish
these tasks!

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

Terry Pinnell wrote:
I'm experimenting with FastStone seriously for the first time and
rather like it. But as a long time IrfanView user I'm unsure about
switching to it as my preferred viewer. Apart from other factors, I
have quite a few macros written which integrate IrfanView with other
applications, which would need re-writing.

So, while continuing my own comparison, I'd be very interested to hear
opinions from those who have used both please. Any really compelling
advantages of one over the other?

I use both, but always seem to find Irfanview that 'go to' program for
fast, simple, and familiar. Of course years of use make it easy to use.
Fastone has some really nice features.

John Navas wrote:
On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:01:45 +0000, Terry Pinnell
wrote in
:

John Navas wrote:

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:02:37 +0000, Terry Pinnell
wrote in
:

I'm experimenting with FastStone seriously for the first time and
rather like it. But as a long time IrfanView user I'm unsure about
switching to it as my preferred viewer. Apart from other factors, I
have quite a few macros written which integrate IrfanView with other
applications, which would need re-writing.

So, while continuing my own comparison, I'd be very interested to hear
opinions from those who have used both please. Any really compelling
advantages of one over the other?
Free Image Viewers Challenge
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-Image-Viewers-Challenge-29851.shtml
Thanks. A useful comparison, although I wonder if both programs have
advanced at same rate in the two and a half years since it was
written?

More important, it reminds me that XnView is another major alternative
;-)

Also FastPictureViewer http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/

Fast Picture Viewer doesn't do 1/10 of what Irfanview, Fastone, and
Xnview can do.