These days it is hard
to get along without a good graphics viewer to enjoy a wide
range of image formats. Two of the most useful are ImgView and
ACDSee. ImgView is a simple but effective freeware viewer and
ACDSee is a full featured shareware graphics viewer.
ImgView
by Jeff Prosise of ZDNET is a must have Windows Quick View
enhancement. Quick View is a windows accessory that allows you
to view text and a number of other documents up to and
including WordPad. Windows Quickview does not allow you to view
images. ImgView seamlessly enhances Quick View so that you can
quickly view these popular image formats….
- GIF (.GIF files)
- JPEG (.JPG files)
- Kodak PhotoCD (.PCD files)
- PCX (.PCX files)
- PNG (.PNG files)
- TARGA (.TGA files)
- TIFF (.TIF files)
To see if you have
Windows Quick View installed look in any directory for a text
file with a .txt extension, for example file.txt
…highlight it…and press the right hand mouse button….in
the context sensitive mouse menu that appears you will see
Quick View. If it is not there then put your Windows CD in and
go to Control Panel … then open Add and Remove New Programs
… Windows Setup….Accessories. Now Just put a check next to
Quick View and click apply. Windows will install Quick View.
Once Windows finishes go back and view that text document.
Now that you have
Quick View installed, download and install ImgView and try the
same thing on a image file and something like this should pop
up. Of course it won't be my dog Max!
ACDSee
by ACD
Systems is the best full featured graphics viewer
available. .
What makes it the best is not the huge number of graphics
formats it supports or the large number of features or even
the flawless and trouble free execution of the program. What
makes ACDSee the best is that it loads a picture almost
instantly. I don't know how they have managed to optimize
their code to perform this magic but the result is simply
fantastic! It is so slick and smooth that you won't even
notice the program. Just double click an image file and your
looking at it…no waiting. Then do another and another.
Double click on
the picture your viewing and thumbnails of all the pictures in
that directory will appear.
Double click again and
your back to a single view. While viewing thumbnails you can
order, rename, and obtain file information. You can also
create a slide show to view your images or designate a picture
as desktop wallpaper. Using this 3.0 version you can
even do simple editing of you image files. When you click on
the photo enhancement icon, you will enter an edit mode, where you
can crop, colorize, negative even emboss the picture. You can
also adjust colors, size, and change orientation. There is
even a filters and plug in directory. ACDSee is shareware
available as a 30 day demo after which it costs $ 49.95 to
register.
For many people
ImgView and ACDSee may be the only graphics program they need.
Rode
