Photo previewer

[RampantAndroid]

Hi all,

Looking for a good photo previewer on OSX, and I'm not finding it. I've tried Phoenix slides, Xee and another which I cannot remember the name of. I also have used Preview...none are what I want.

I essentially want the photo previewer from Windows - double click a photo to open it. Left and right arrows then move around WITHIN the folder. Preview is exceptionally dumb in this category in that if you double click the image you can ONLY view that image. You otherwise have to go into the menu, open and open folder.

Why must OSX be so darned cumbersome? Is it just so Windows looks like an amazing OS by comparison?

 

[SKORPI0]

Open the folder that contains the pictures you want to see and change view to Cover Flow. Just use the slider to preview the pics and click on the picture to enlarge. :hmm:

 

[RampantAndroid]

Open the folder that contains the pictures you want to see and change view to Cover Flow. Just use the slider to preview the pics and click on the picture to enlarge. :hmm:

Except that STILL opens the godforsaken preview app, thanks for trying though.

I have discovered however that hitting space opens a previewer built into finder. It's still far less useful than the Windows Equiv (it tries to autosize itself, and ONLY works on the current finder window in focus. You click on your desktop and you're now previewing stuff from the desktop.)

ARGH. I'd make some comment about Apple, but apparently the majority of Apple users don't mind this awful setup, so I'll instead just go be annoyed at apple fanboys.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Except that STILL opens the godforsaken preview app, thanks for trying though.

Is it so hard to press this button while in Finder?

 

[Zaap]

ARGH. I'd make some comment about Apple, but apparently the majority of Apple users don't mind this awful setup, so I'll instead just go be annoyed at apple fanboys.

Heh. Way to ask for help then be a jerk about it.

Anyway... there's any number of solutions to what you're wanting, you just need to stop panicking long enough to find them out.

As others have pointed out, the Finder itself has all sorts of image view options. (Personally I prefer thumbnail view, choose an Arrange option, and set the slider (lower right) to a huge size.

Preview: if you want to scroll through a folder of pictures, simply select all (or selected range) and right-click open in Preview and you can scroll through the entire selection.

If you want almost exactly Windows Photo Viewer for the Mac, download JustLooking. It behaves pretty much like WPV. (Open one pic in a directory and you can page through the entire directory or play it as a slideshow. Right click an image and you get pretty much the same file/editing options as WPV gives.)

 

[RampantAndroid]

Is it so hard to press this button while in Finder?

This isn't a replacement for the Windows Image Viewer. In the Windows Viewer, I can easily zoom in and rotate, while also using the arrow keys to go forward/back within the folder. Moreover, if the folder contents change the viewer in Windows will recognize that. I've have Preview in OSX completely fail if you remove an item while it has that folder open. My requirement is simple: that I can double click a photo in a folder, then go forward/back within that folder with ease. I don't think anything built into OSX does this well - as I said, hitting space is the closest I can get but the preview there does some wonky resizing and also tries to preview everything. That's great for video files...but I really don't need to see a preview of my archive files and such.

So no, it's not hard to hit that button, it's just that hitting that button doesn't solve my problem.

Heh. Way to ask for help then be a jerk about it.

Anyway... there's any number of solutions to what you're wanting, you just need to stop panicking long enough to find them out.

As others have pointed out, the Finder itself has all sorts of image view options. (Personally I prefer thumbnail view, choose an Arrange option, and set the slider (lower right) to a huge size.

Preview: if you want to scroll through a folder of pictures, simply select all (or selected range) and right-click open in Preview and you can scroll through the entire selection.

If you want almost exactly Windows Photo Viewer for the Mac, download JustLooking. It behaves pretty much like WPV. (Open one pic in a directory and you can page through the entire directory or play it as a slideshow. Right click an image and you get pretty much the same file/editing options as WPV gives.)

The rage (well, not rage. Annoyance more like) you see in my post is not really with AT but the outcome of looking around on my own and trying MULTIPLE apps on my own. I'd just give up on OSX if I could, but bootcamp with Win8 isn't really there yet. No trackpad gestures for forward/back, and windows does not handle the retina display very well. Also, I think I'm just annoyed at this macbook in general right now...the cooling for it is pretty terrible, and that's with me forcing the fan to much higher speeds. My keyboard still gets way too hot. I thoroughly regret spending money on this, and really wish I'd just accepted a sub-par Win7 laptop. But that's another issue.

I didn't realize selecting all worked for preview. I'll give that a go - what happens if a non-image is in the selection?

I'll also check out Just Looking, I don't believe I've tried that one yet.
Actually, just looking is exactly what I wanted. Thanks!

 

[runawayprisoner]

This isn't a replacement for the Windows Image Viewer. In the Windows Viewer, I can easily zoom in and rotate, while also using the arrow keys to go forward/back within the folder. Moreover, if the folder contents change the viewer in Windows will recognize that. I've have Preview in OSX completely fail if you remove an item while it has that folder open. My requirement is simple: that I can double click a photo in a folder, then go forward/back within that folder with ease. I don't think anything built into OSX does this well - as I said, hitting space is the closest I can get but the preview there does some wonky resizing and also tries to preview everything. That's great for video files...but I really don't need to see a preview of my archive files and such.

So no, it's not hard to hit that button, it's just that hitting that button doesn't solve my problem.

Command + A (select all) then double-click or Enter should also open a new Preview window but with all of the photos you want to view. If you don't like Preview, well... tough luck. It's what comes default.

The reason why people don't normally do what you do is because anyone who's half serious about managing such a large number of photos would already be using a dedicated image/photo managing app. Be it iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom. Any of which does far more than what Windows Viewer or Preview does. It's not that OSX is inferior to Windows. People just use apps that are far better at the task that what OSX or Windows offers by default.

 

[ColdFusion718]

Command + A (select all) then double-click or Enter should also open a new Preview window but with all of the photos you want to view. If you don't like Preview, well... tough luck. It's what comes default.

The reason why people don't normally do what you do is because anyone who's half serious about managing such a large number of photos would already be using a dedicated image/photo managing app. Be it iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom. Any of which does far more than what Windows Viewer or Preview does. It's not that OSX is inferior to Windows. People just use apps that are far better at the task that what OSX or Windows offers by default.

No it doesn't. Pressing Enter on a file will highlight the filename in edit mode, allowing you to rename the file. Highlighting a group of files and then pressing Enter will take you to the last file on the list and put its name into edit mode for you to rename it.

If you want to open a bunch of images using Preview, highlight them, then press CMD+O.

Don't give people directions without trying them out first. That's just annoying.

 

[RampantAndroid]

No it doesn't. Pressing Enter on a file will highlight the filename in edit mode, allowing you to rename the file. Highlighting a group of files and then pressing Enter will take you to the last file on the list and put its name into edit mode for you to rename it.

If you want to open a bunch of images using Preview, highlight them, then press CMD+O.

Don't give people directions without trying them out first. That's just annoying.

Thanks! Still getting used to the whole enter edit thing.

Command + A (select all) then double-click or Enter should also open a new Preview window but with all of the photos you want to view. If you don't like Preview, well... tough luck. It's what comes default.

The reason why people don't normally do what you do is because anyone who's half serious about managing such a large number of photos would already be using a dedicated image/photo managing app. Be it iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom. Any of which does far more than what Windows Viewer or Preview does. It's not that OSX is inferior to Windows. People just use apps that are far better at the task that what OSX or Windows offers by default.

I already keep all photos nicely maintained as I edit them on an external hard drive (why on earth did they remove r/w mounting abilities? Why must I resort to 3rd party software to do something so simple...that worked before with rearranging some mounts) I want a previewer app so I can easily go through my photos after editing and look at them, or show them off to someone. It's REALLY simple in Windows and I need no extra software. Maybe there's a better solution, but the pre-installed one works, and makes absolute sense unlike preview.

 

[Spineshank]

I use a program called JustLooking.

 

[runawayprisoner]

No it doesn't. Pressing Enter on a file will highlight the filename in edit mode, allowing you to rename the file. Highlighting a group of files and then pressing Enter will take you to the last file on the list and put its name into edit mode for you to rename it.

If you want to open a bunch of images using Preview, highlight them, then press CMD+O.

Don't give people directions without trying them out first. That's just annoying.

I had PresButan installed (http://briankendall.net/presButan/) just so I can avoid Command + Delete/Backspace whenever I needed to delete files, and apparently, it has another feature that turned the Enter/Return key into a better shortcut than Command + O.

But that doesn't mean I didn't try anything out. Please don't give false accusations.

I already keep all photos nicely maintained as I edit them on an external hard drive (why on earth did they remove r/w mounting abilities? Why must I resort to 3rd party software to do something so simple...that worked before with rearranging some mounts) I want a previewer app so I can easily go through my photos after editing and look at them, or show them off to someone. It's REALLY simple in Windows and I need no extra software. Maybe there's a better solution, but the pre-installed one works, and makes absolute sense unlike preview.

Both iPhotos and Lightroom allow people to keep all of their photos wherever they want. And that's on top of allowing more advanced edit options.

But if you just want to view photos quickly, what's wrong with Command + A and then Command + O? Or the Coverflow mode in Finder? I think you're just nitpicking at this point.

If Windows was so much better, you could always install Windows on your Mac computer, or go back to using an actual Windows computer, which is actually cheaper than what you have to pay for for Apple hardware.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I had PresButan installed (http://briankendall.net/presButan/) just so I can avoid Command + Delete/Backspace whenever I needed to delete files, and apparently, it has another feature that turned the Enter/Return key into a better shortcut than Command + O.

I'll have to look that up.

Both iPhotos and Lightroom allow people to keep all of their photos wherever they want. And that's on top of allowing more advanced edit options.

But if you just want to view photos quickly, what's wrong with Command + A and then Command + O? Or the Coverflow mode in Finder? I think you're just nitpicking at this point.

If Windows was so much better, you could always install Windows on your Mac computer, or go back to using an actual Windows computer, which is actually cheaper than what you have to pay for for Apple hardware.

I have Windows installed, and due to the BIOS emulation I get no HD4000 graphics, and instead get piss poor battery life coupled with awful DPI scaling. Do I wish I'd bought a plain simple Laptop? Sure. But I wanted a good screen, decent discrete GPU, good keyboard, good build quality...something no laptop had when I looked.

Anyway: I only have lightroom for PC installed right now, and do my editing there. That's something I'll fix soon enough, but the issue for me is that I dump all my JPEG files onto my external HD in a preset folder setup. I don't see a need to crack open a heavy lifting app like Lightroom to show off photos I took of the night sky.

As for Command O, I still don't like preview. JustLooking fits what I'm used to.

 

[TheStu]

I'll have to look that up.



I have Windows installed, and due to the BIOS emulation I get no HD4000 graphics, and instead get piss poor battery life coupled with awful DPI scaling. Do I wish I'd bought a plain simple Laptop? Sure. But I wanted a good screen, decent discrete GPU, good keyboard, good build quality...something no laptop had when I looked.

Anyway: I only have lightroom for PC installed right now, and do my editing there. That's something I'll fix soon enough, but the issue for me is that I dump all my JPEG files onto my external HD in a preset folder setup. I don't see a need to crack open a heavy lifting app like Lightroom to show off photos I took of the night sky.

As for Command O, I still don't like preview. JustLooking fits what I'm used to.

Command+O is just the command to open the file, if you have JustLooking set as the default, then they will open in JustLooking.

And to be fair, if you were running Windows 8, you would have a similar list of issues with things not working as you are used to.

What did you mean by:

why on earth did they remove r/w mounting abilities? Why must I resort to 3rd party software to do something so simple...that worked before with rearranging some mounts)

OS X has never has NTFS write capabilities. And if the external is FAT32 or exFAT then there shouldn't be an issue.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Command+O is just the command to open the file, if you have JustLooking set as the default, then they will open in JustLooking.

And to be fair, if you were running Windows 8, you would have a similar list of issues with things not working as you are used to.

When I mentioned cmd + o I meant using that to open preview - just looking behaves oddly with highlighting all and opening (it opens, then goes to the last image in the list...) - I just double click to open JustLooking, which is why I love it

As for Win8 - I'm not sure I follow? Do you mean how the default is the modern photo viewer? If so, the fix there is as simple as going to the default settings manager and giving the classic photo viewer back all of its defaults. I've managed to stay out of almost all modern UI unless I make efforts to go there (only thing I cannot kill is the modern network panel.)

What did you mean by:


OS X has never has NTFS write capabilities. And if the external is FAT32 or exFAT then there shouldn't be an issue.

From what I read, in years past it did - you just needed to delete the initial mount and redo it with r/w capabilities from the terminal. However, if you try to do that on the current version it errors out stating there is no r/w capability, only ro.

I wanted to avoid exfat as I see NTFS as being superior when dealing with a 1TB drive. I'll accept FAT for a SD card, just not a hard disk.

 

[TheStu]

When I mentioned cmd + o I meant using that to open preview - just looking behaves oddly with highlighting all and opening (it opens, then goes to the last image in the list...) - I just double click to open JustLooking, which is why I love it

As for Win8 - I'm not sure I follow? Do you mean how the default is the modern photo viewer? If so, the fix there is as simple as going to the default settings manager and giving the classic photo viewer back all of its defaults. I've managed to stay out of almost all modern UI unless I make efforts to go there (only thing I cannot kill is the modern network panel.)



From what I read, in years past it did - you just needed to delete the initial mount and redo it with r/w capabilities from the terminal. However, if you try to do that on the current version it errors out stating there is no r/w capability, only ro.

I wanted to avoid exfat as I see NTFS as being superior when dealing with a 1TB drive. I'll accept FAT for a SD card, just not a hard disk.

Command + O is OPEN. That's all, it is the same as double clicking the file, and doesn't require you to have multiple files selected.

Yes, I was referring to it kicking you to the Modern UI, and switching the default picture viewer, is no more difficult than pointing your browser at JustLooking's download page. I'm with you about the usage differences between Preview and Windows Picture Viewer, and that WPV is more convenient. I mostly got used to QuickLook though (the thing that happens when you hit space). Also, the fact that Preview supports viewing and editing PDFs, saving to PDF, and OS X's superior image resizing engine offsets that I have to hit CMD+A, CMD+O.

At least as far back as 10.4, OS X has NOT supported NTFS write. Of course Windows doesn't even support HFS+ read, let alone write so...

 

[Tyranicus]

I thought I would check out JustLooking, but then I discovered that it hasn't been updated since 2009 and does not support retina screens.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Command + O is OPEN. That's all, it is the same as double clicking the file, and doesn't require you to have multiple files selected.

We're in agreement here, I'm not disagreeing with you.

Yes, I was referring to it kicking you to the Modern UI, and switching the default picture viewer, is no more difficult than pointing your browser at JustLooking's download page. I'm with you about the usage differences between Preview and Windows Picture Viewer, and that WPV is more convenient. I mostly got used to QuickLook though (the thing that happens when you hit space). Also, the fact that Preview supports viewing and editing PDFs, saving to PDF, and OS X's superior image resizing engine offsets that I have to hit CMD+A, CMD+O.

I disagree. Even the modern viewer works much the same as the classic one iirc, it's just....the new modern UI. There's no scaling issues really.

At least as far back as 10.4, OS X has NOT supported NTFS write. Of course Windows doesn't even support HFS+ read, let alone write so...

I found articles like this one: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382

There are others, that wasn't the only method I found. It looks like the ability was there, and for whatever reason Apple left it in for a while but chose not to mount partitions as R/W by default. Perhaps lack of faith in their feature, I don't know.

 

[runawayprisoner]

I'd think exFat should be used for better compatibility between OSX and Windows.

But if NTFS was a requirement, you can still use something like Tuxera NTFS.

 

[TheStu]

We're in agreement here, I'm not disagreeing with you.

As for Command O, I still don't like preview.

Since your post left me with the impression that you were under the impression that CMD+O was some sort of special 'This launches Preview and Preview only' command, I was clarifying that it was just an 'Open' command.

I disagree. Even the modern viewer works much the same as the classic one iirc, it's just....the new modern UI. There's no scaling issues really.

I can't specifically recall right now how the Modern Image viewer acts either, I disabled it as soon as I could, also because the Modern UI in general doesn't always behave as I am expecting, so even if it did support using left/right, I'm not about to tolerate being kicked from one UI paradigm to another every time I want to open a freaking jpg.

Every version of Windows that I have used has left me wanting in the scaling department. Largely it is the unaliased edges that bug me, but also how they stretch images in certain circumstances.

I found articles like this one: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382

There are others, that wasn't the only method I found. It looks like the ability was there, and for whatever reason Apple left it in for a while but chose not to mount partitions as R/W by default. Perhaps lack of faith in their feature, I don't know.

Yes, I had forgotten that in 10.6, and I think 10.7, it was an undocumented, unsupported, and un-enabled feature in the OS. I don't know the provenance of how NTFS write support ended up in OS X, but the fact that it isn't enabled or supported should indicated it's level of stability. Especially since it seems that maybe they pulled it in 10.8.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Yes - it was pulled in 10.8. I'll just pay the cost of the app to enable it, but still - it's less than ideal.

As for modern UI - the reason I disable it is the same. I'd rather remain in classic land unless I expressly want to use a modern app. Which I only want to do if I'm either writing a Win8 app and debugging, or if I'm on my surface.