Faststone like viewer for Mac?

[ControlD]

One application that I constantly use on my Windows machines is Faststone Image Viewer. I have yet to find a better, more full featured image viewer on any platform. I would love to find something similar for Mac, but every image viewer I have found either (a) sucks or (b) sucks and costs $150. iPhoto isn't much of an alternative because I just want to browse and view images stored on my server. I don't want to import to a database, add tags, etc. just quickly view images and their properties. Ideally, I would like to be able to open any folder, browse the images as thumbnails and then quickly go to full screen mode with the ability to quickly browse through the images.

What are the Mac people using for a simple image viewer?

 

[TheStu]

QuickLook doesn't work for you?

 

[Kaido]

XnViewMP?

http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/

 

[Kaido]

Oh and there's also Xee for five bucks:

http://xee.c3.cx/

 

[ControlD]

Quicklook isn't quite what I am looking for. It just seems like a tedious way of going about it. I have thousands of photos that I have taken, so being able to quickly preview entire folders quickly is a must. Maybe it has gotten better with ML, I should upgrade and check it out at some point. XnView is OK but is extremely slow to process images compared to FS. I'll check out Xee and and see how it looks.

 

[Kaido]

Quicklook isn't quite what I am looking for. It just seems like a tedious way of going about it. I have thousands of photos that I have taken, so being able to quickly preview entire folders quickly is a must. Maybe it has gotten better with ML, I should upgrade and check it out at some point. XnView is OK but is extremely slow to process images compared to FS. I'll check out Xee and and see how it looks.

Have you tried the MP version on Mac? I would give it a whirl if not to see if it suits your needs.

 

[ControlD]

Have you tried the MP version on Mac? I would give it a whirl if not to see if it suits your needs.

The MP version is the one I tried. I did not do a very scientific test, so I might have been a little quick on passing judgement. The rendering image seems to process the images in two or three passes however with each pass taking a good couple of seconds.

Honestly I am probably just spoiled by how good Faststone is. I am half tempted to try setting up a Wine bottle for it, but I also need something "wife friendly" and that probably doesn't fit the bill.

 

[Kaido]

The MP version is the one I tried. I did not do a very scientific test, so I might have been a little quick on passing judgement. The rendering image seems to process the images in two or three passes however with each pass taking a good couple of seconds.

Honestly I am probably just spoiled by how good Faststone is. I am half tempted to try setting up a Wine bottle for it, but I also need something "wife friendly" and that probably doesn't fit the bill.

Yeah, plus there may be a performance hit, but generally WINE stuff has turned out pretty good in my experience, provided it works in the first place. You can also try Lyn, although it's $20:

http://www.lynapp.com/

Here's some more options to research:

http://alternativeto.net/software/faststone-image-viewer/?platform=mac

 

[Kaido]

Also ACDsee for Mac is $99 (not quite as bad as $150...)

http://www.acdsee.com/en/products/acdsee-pro-3-mac

 

[ControlD]

Thanks for the links Kaido. I'll start some more installs and see if I have missed anything. Lyn looks pretty good from the screenshots and I have not run into that one yet. If it works well, $20 is a reasonable price to pay. Maybe I should look at iPhoto again too. Maybe I am missing the point somewhere.

 

[Kaido]

Thanks for the links Kaido. I'll start some more installs and see if I have missed anything. Lyn looks pretty good from the screenshots and I have not run into that one yet. If it works well, $20 is a reasonable price to pay. Maybe I should look at iPhoto again too. Maybe I am missing the point somewhere.

Personally I hate iPhoto. Can't stand it. I like Picasa for Mac the most. I use Lightroom for editing, but the storage system is overly-complicated for most of what I do, so Picasa it is :thumbsup:

 

[ControlD]

Personally I hate iPhoto. Can't stand it. I like Picasa for Mac the most. I use Lightroom for editing, but the storage system is overly-complicated for most of what I do, so Picasa it is :thumbsup:

Since you brought up Picasa, let me ask you a question. Can you use Picasa as a simple viewer or does it need to catalog and organize everything? I have been self organizing my photos since sometime back in the 1990's and I just can't bring myself to allow a program to take that over. Even after editing with Lightroom I still handle the final storage of my exported phots manually.