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Preview alternative?
- Thread starter SinisterPower
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Preview works just fine. Since you aren't articulating the problem at all, you probably just haven't explored it's capabilities very much.
I just look at all files in their binary code. Much easier, and I can open every file in the terminal.
Seriously, Preview opens about 20 different formats. You should at least say which function you want to replace with a different program.
Seriously, Preview opens about 20 different formats. You should at least say which function you want to replace with a different program.
I like Preview for pictures, too, but I use Xee for viewing .gif files. I haven't seen a way to make Preview show the animation.
how do you skip forward and backward to the next/previous picture when using preview to view pictures?
Select all the pictures you want to view in Finder, then right-click and Open With: Preview. They will all open in Preview with thumbnails on the sidebar. Then you can use arrow keys to navigate through the list. This also helps if you have a lot of pics to change orientation between portrait and landscape. Just arrow through the list, pressing Command-L or Command-R to rotate to the left or right. You can also resize, crop and make any other changes to any of the pics. When you're done, either use File > Save All or simply close Preview and it will prompt you to save or discard the changes to all photos.
i use the quicklook choice in the context menu to look at GIFs. they should build that into preview.
Sorry to resurrect old thread..
I really like Xee as a replacement for viewing images. There are some other suggestions here. I use Picasa as a full replacement for iPhoto.
To all the
what's wrong with preview? people --
I recently upgraded from Leopard to Lion.. in Leopard I had some minor gripes with preview but it was adequate. On Lion it seriously takes >30 seconds to open and Finder locks up while waiting, even to view the smallest image.. longer if I select multiple images to view together.
It also automatically quits when I close the window. I'm a web developer.. often when building sites I'm taking brief looks at small images which don't reside in the same folder.. in the past I could leave Preview open so it wouldn't relaunch for each image.
It also often re-opens things I previously viewed.. so I go to open one small image and it goes ahead and loads the large PDF I was reading yesterday too. Thanks!
Today I went to open a less-common image format and Preview seized my computer yet again. After I finished commiserating with the beachball, I compressed a backup and deleted Preview.app completely. To check what would happen, I then opened a PDF.. and it opened in ColorSync Utility pretty quickly. I am happier now.
I really like Xee as a replacement for viewing images. There are some other suggestions here. I use Picasa as a full replacement for iPhoto.
To all the
what's wrong with preview? people --I recently upgraded from Leopard to Lion.. in Leopard I had some minor gripes with preview but it was adequate. On Lion it seriously takes >30 seconds to open and Finder locks up while waiting, even to view the smallest image.. longer if I select multiple images to view together.
It also automatically quits when I close the window. I'm a web developer.. often when building sites I'm taking brief looks at small images which don't reside in the same folder.. in the past I could leave Preview open so it wouldn't relaunch for each image.
It also often re-opens things I previously viewed.. so I go to open one small image and it goes ahead and loads the large PDF I was reading yesterday too. Thanks!
Today I went to open a less-common image format and Preview seized my computer yet again. After I finished commiserating with the beachball, I compressed a backup and deleted Preview.app completely. To check what would happen, I then opened a PDF.. and it opened in ColorSync Utility pretty quickly. I am happier now.
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Preview Sucks
I don't understand how people find this app satisfactory as an all purpose image viewer. This is the one case I can think of where Windows has a far better alternative built-in, and that's damn embarrasing.
Why does it suck?
* When an image is opened, there's no way to navigate other images in the same folder from within the viewer, which is expected behavior with any image browser/viewer
* The "workaround" of having to pre-select all desired images for viewing in advance is ridiculous, especially given the annoying behavior of displaying different formats in separate windows. Who in their right mind wants to work like this?
* An unintuitive, 3-key keyboard shortcut for toggling full screen mode is retarded when this could be toggled with a single intuitive key like "F", or the "SPACE" bar, or at least, Command-F. I don't want to have to go into my global keyboard shortcut settings to rectify this and risk messing up some shortcut for another app. This should be simple by default.
* Opening an animated GIF file displays every frame in the app's dumb thumbnail sidebar instead of playing the animation like the user intended
The closest thing to a simple, light and useful image player on the Mac is Xee, but it lacks basic editing tools aside from crop and rotate and doesn't support color profiles so images aren't always displayed accurately.
It's unbelievable that a) Apple can't get a handle on such a basic utility and b) there are no viable third party alternatives.
Note: Please do not suggest clearly unsuitable alternatives, especially full blown image managers and editors. I need a fast, light default image viewer/browser. For heavy lifting I use Aperture.
I don't understand how people find this app satisfactory as an all purpose image viewer. This is the one case I can think of where Windows has a far better alternative built-in, and that's damn embarrasing.
Why does it suck?
* When an image is opened, there's no way to navigate other images in the same folder from within the viewer, which is expected behavior with any image browser/viewer
* The "workaround" of having to pre-select all desired images for viewing in advance is ridiculous, especially given the annoying behavior of displaying different formats in separate windows. Who in their right mind wants to work like this?
* An unintuitive, 3-key keyboard shortcut for toggling full screen mode is retarded when this could be toggled with a single intuitive key like "F", or the "SPACE" bar, or at least, Command-F. I don't want to have to go into my global keyboard shortcut settings to rectify this and risk messing up some shortcut for another app. This should be simple by default.
* Opening an animated GIF file displays every frame in the app's dumb thumbnail sidebar instead of playing the animation like the user intended
The closest thing to a simple, light and useful image player on the Mac is Xee, but it lacks basic editing tools aside from crop and rotate and doesn't support color profiles so images aren't always displayed accurately.
It's unbelievable that a) Apple can't get a handle on such a basic utility and b) there are no viable third party alternatives.
Note: Please do not suggest clearly unsuitable alternatives, especially full blown image managers and editors. I need a fast, light default image viewer/browser. For heavy lifting I use Aperture.
How about iPhoto? I agree Microsoft made the most simple and easy to use photo viewer, but there are always going to be compromises. The fact that you're using OS X presumably means you prefer it for many reasons.
There are a bunch of things we'd all love to get Apple to add to OS X, but they're not really the sort of company who listens & implements. They're usually the ones to tell us we want something, and a lot of the time they are right!
If all you want to do is view images, you can easily do this with Quick Look.
That's only necessary if you want to edit the photos. For viewing, use Quick Look.
That's because, as already stated in this thread, Preview is not a .gif viewer.
This was always my one irritation with Preview. I had no idea you could do this. Thanks for the tip!
You missed my point. iPhoto is an image manager/editor. It can't "browse" images within a folder on the fly without first importing them into its database. For this purpose I have Aperture.
What I need is a default app viewer that functions like I expect it too at the basic level. Apple clearly understands the difference, hence their inclusion of Preview. The issue is that Preview's basic handling of image viewing and navigation is inherently flawed. I find it remarkable that I don't see more complaints about this.
Quick Look is a terrible alternative.
* It doesn't have a full screen view that can be toggled via keyboard shortcut
* It doesn't allow you to navigate across images while in full screen view
* It doesn't let you navigate across all images within a folder by simply tapping left and right arrow keys - instead you need to tap arrow keys in the direction that the next icon appears in the folder, requiring a series of taps like "right, right, down, left, left, down, etc." which is ridiculous
* It doesn't let you zoom in and out of an image using keyboard shortcuts
* It doesn't give you the option of viewing two or more images simultaneously in separate windows
* It doesn't let you perform very basic editing such as losses rotation, which you often want to do in the fly without opening a full blown image manager/editor.
It doesn't properly handle GIF files, and GIF files are common IMAGE files, so they should be supported - this isn't rocket science
Preview (or its future replacement) is the app for the job. This functionality should not rely on third party solutions. Apple needs to fix it.
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Having to first select all desired images for viewing before opening up the viewer? How is this efficient or intuitive? No other image application works in this manner. it's neither customary nor efficient. it's just dumb.
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You can't flip though images in a folder when full screen with quick look right? I miss windows
Try installing Xee as your default app for image files. With minor tweaks of its preferences it can work exactly as you'd expect it to, with the exception of the few limitations I noted.
But this is a poorly supported and seldom updated app that doesn't support features like GPU acceleration or color profiles - hence the need for Apple to fix the flawed Preview app to work the way it's supposed to.
I realize I'm a nitpicky guy, and I'm open to someone suggesting an alternate workflow for quickly viewing and browsing image files (without importing into a database or starting up a clunky large app), provided the suggestion is at least as intuitive and efficient as what I'm suggesting.