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Eric Sadoyama

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 14, 2006
24
0
Honolulu
Is there a freeware OS X image viewer program out there that's fast and also does basic file management (renaming, copying, moving, deleting)? Basic image editing (resizing and cropping) would also be nice but not essential.

I'm a veteran PC user who recently got my first Mac. I'm accustomed to ACDSee for Windows on my PC, which let me do what I just described -- rename, copy, move, and delete images as I browsed through them -- with almost no delays.

By contrast, I have been using the Finder and Preview to browse through my images, and it's a chore. Finder is quick and is great for file management, but its image thumbnails aren't big enough to be useful. Preview is gorgeous, but it doesn't allow me to do file management on the files I'm previewing, and it's slow to boot.

Surely there's a better way that I have missed. Help?
 
Is there a freeware OS X image viewer program out there that's fast and also does basic file management (renaming, copying, moving, deleting)? Basic image editing (resizing and cropping) would also be nice but not essential.

I'm a veteran PC user who recently got my first Mac. I'm accustomed to ACDSee for Windows on my PC, which let me do what I just described -- rename, move, and delete images as I browsed through them -- with almost no delays.

By contrast, I have been using the Finder and Preview to browse through my images, and it's a chore. Finder is quick and is great for file management, but its image thumbnails aren't big enough to be useful. Preview is gorgeous, but it doesn't allow me to do file management on the files I'm previewing, and it's slow to boot.

Surely there's a better way that I have missed. Help?

iPhoto?
 
I am leery of iPhoto, because I'm afraid that if I use it, it'll mess up the image storage scheme that I am currently using. I have all my photos on a remote shared drive -- not local to the Mac. When I tried iPhoto, it copied all my stuff onto the local drive, which is not what I wanted.
 
I am leery of iPhoto, because I'm afraid that if I use it, it'll mess up the image storage scheme that I am currently using. I have all my photos on a remote shared drive -- not local to the Mac. When I tried iPhoto, it copied all my stuff onto the local drive, which is not what I wanted.

There is an option in iPhoto to stop it doing that, so that you can keep your own file structure.
 
I am leery of iPhoto, because I'm afraid that if I use it, it'll mess up the image storage scheme that I am currently using. I have all my photos on a remote shared drive -- not local to the Mac. When I tried iPhoto, it copied all my stuff onto the local drive, which is not what I wanted.

In iPhoto > Preferences > Advanced, you can turn off "Importing: Copy Files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library.

With that turned off, the only thing iPhoto will do on import, is create thumbnails in its library.
 
Thanks for the tip about the advanced preferences. That helps.

However, it doesn't help my other concern, which is with the iPhoto file structure. After reading a few discussions about it, I understand the basic intent of why iPhoto does what it does. The problem is, not only do I have an established file structure that I like just fine, but the photo collection is also shared by other family members, on Windows PCs. I don't want to make everyone else change their ways just because I switched OSes.

And on top of everything... I just did a test and imported all my 2002 photos into iPhoto. The damned beachball is still spinning. :mad:
 
In iPhoto > Preferences > Advanced, you can turn off "Importing: Copy Files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library.

With that turned off, the only thing iPhoto will do on import, is create thumbnails in its library.

Thanks for the tip about the advanced preferences. That helps.

However, it doesn't help my other concern, which is with the iPhoto file structure. After reading a few discussions about it, I understand the basic intent of why iPhoto does what it does. The problem is, not only do I have an established file structure that I like just fine, but the photo collection is also shared by other family members, on Windows PCs. I don't want to make everyone else change their ways just because I switched OSes.

And on top of everything... I just did a test and imported all my 2002 photos into iPhoto. The damned beachball is still spinning. :mad:

The option that gr8tfly described means that iPhoto does not change your file structure, it keeps all your image files exactly where they are.
 
Is there a freeware OS X image viewer program out there that's fast and also does basic file management (renaming, copying, moving, deleting)? Basic image editing (resizing and cropping) would also be nice but not essential.

Although it's not exactly freeware, you might want to check out Image Browser. It's fast, it supports multiple browser windows, it can handle all of the chores on your wish list with the exception that it doesn't have built-in image editing. (it will launch your image editor of choice (Preview, for example) and load the current image you are viewing in Image Browser, ready for editing.


Finder is quick and is great for file management, but its image thumbnails aren't big enough to be useful.

FWIW, you can scale the size of image thumbnails in Finder windows by selecting show view options from the view menu then drag the icon size slider until they are as big as you can stand 'em. Also, you might want to check "this window only," otherwise you'll end up with gigantic icons in all of your finder windows
 
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