Fast Picture Viewer
Encyclopedia
FastPictureViewer is a commercial 32 and 64-bit image viewer
for Windows 7, Vista
and XP
. Its aim is to facilitate quick review, rating and annotation of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow, with an emphasis on simplicity and speed.
As of v1.6, a basic version is available cost-free for personal, non-profit or educational uses, while requiring a commercial license for the professional version with additional features (the basic version starts as a full version trial).
database (it uses the system-provided thumbnail cache on Windows Vista or later), on the other hand it can browse deeply nested folder/subfolder trees containing many thousand images quickly and in a simple manner; the user interface is kept to the strict minimum. The software has been dubbed "the Porsche
of image viewers" and described as "unbeatably fast" by German magazine c't Magazin für Computertechnik
(the program also appeared in the magazine's software collection and in a subsequent article on Adobe DNG raw workflow software roundup).
According to the publisher the program features full color management, including support for custom-profiled wide-gamut monitors and ICCv2 and ICCv4 profile formats. Image rating is supported using industry-standard conventions (Adobe XMP), along with image pre-loading and caching if computer resources allows (the 64-bit edition of the program takes advantage of the memory than can be present beyond the 4GB boundary). The program can make use of multi-core CPUs
for parallel image loading. It uses DirectX
hardware acceleration when available to accelerate zooming and panning, and can also downsize very large images (e.g. astronomic pictures) to make them fit in video memory or computer RAM if necessary. The software also features an IPTC
metadata editor letting users annotate pictures (add or edit headline, caption, keywords, author and copyright information) in a way that is compatible with established industry standards.
New images can be added to the browsed folder(s) and the program catches them on the fly, allowing continued browsing without the need to exit and reload the folder(s), while a tracking mode can automatically displays that last image added to the folder tree, useful when photographing in tethered mode or with a Wi-Fi
enabled camera that transfers images to a computer using PTP or FTP, so images can be displayed as they are shot. An automatic advance mode (simple slide show) is also provided, along with a navigation slider that can be used to jump to different places in the current image list (under Windows Vista or later, the navigation slider displays a thumbnail image picturing the target location; a thumbnail strip is also displayed at the top of the program's window).
The program supports the Unicode
international character set (so it can browse images and folders whose names are written in any language) and features a multi-lingual user-interface. It integrates with the Windows shell, for example for context menus and AutoPlay events. It provides a simple external program launcher and a file copy function that copies (or moves) the image currently displayed to a pre-set folder, by pressing a hotkey, along with a file renaming function. Real-time RGB histogram and EXIF information (shutter speed, F-stop, ISO speed, exposure compensation, ...) can be displayed in floating windows. The program adapts to screen resolution and supports large fonts and high-DPI display modes, as well as relatively low resolution Netbooks and sub-notbooks LCD screens. Starting from build 106 (Aug-18-2009) the program integrates with the Windows 7 taskbar and exposes a list of recently used folders through a mechanism introduced in this version of Windows.
An entry-level version of the program is available free of charge for home, non-commercial use. This free version supports the JPEG
and Microsoft HD Photo / JPEG-XR image formats and can read/write Adobe XMP
rating metadata in external sidecar file
s (*.xmp) or embed it within JPEG (JFIF), HD Photo and TIFF containers.
FastPictureViewer is extensible via COM
-based plug-ins, whose specifications are available from the software publisher upon request. The software adopts the user's language automatically (currently available for Brazilian/Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish).
In addition to the core functionality of the cost-free version, the commercial version is said by its publisher to have exclusive features, such as:
-enabled image decoders providing access to RAW formats
from more than 380 digital camera models, Rawzor
compressed Raw images, and DNG
. The bundled raw image decoders also extends the Windows operating system by providing thumbnail views, metadata search integration and full viewing to Windows Explorer, Photo Viewer, Photo Gallery and, on Windows 7 or later, Windows Media Center.
3.x/4.x and Windows Presentation Foundation
applications.
This Windows program is provided as a ~24MB digitally signed MSI
installation database (with uninstall) in native 32 and 64-bit flavors. Runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP SP3 as well as a dektop application in Windows 8 Developer Preview. Windows XP SP2
users may have to download and install the Windows Imaging Component (WIC
) from the Microsoft website in order to run the program. Windows versions prior to XP SP2 are not supported.
Image viewer
An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
for Windows 7, Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
and XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
. Its aim is to facilitate quick review, rating and annotation of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow, with an emphasis on simplicity and speed.
As of v1.6, a basic version is available cost-free for personal, non-profit or educational uses, while requiring a commercial license for the professional version with additional features (the basic version starts as a full version trial).
Features
FastPictureViewer is optimized for full-screen, borderless preview of digital images. It covers a limited number of scenarios, such as for example the initial pre-selection and rating of a relatively small number of images from a large set of potentially thousands ("culling"). The program has no image editing or image enhancement features and does not create and maintain a thumbnailThumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...
database (it uses the system-provided thumbnail cache on Windows Vista or later), on the other hand it can browse deeply nested folder/subfolder trees containing many thousand images quickly and in a simple manner; the user interface is kept to the strict minimum. The software has been dubbed "the Porsche
Porsche
Porsche Automobil Holding SE, usually shortened to Porsche SE a Societas Europaea or European Public Company, is a German based holding company with investments in the automotive industry....
of image viewers" and described as "unbeatably fast" by German magazine c't Magazin für Computertechnik
C't
c't – Magazin für Computertechnik is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise publishing house. Originally a special section of the electronics magazine elrad, the magazine has been published monthly since December 1983 and biweekly since October 1997...
(the program also appeared in the magazine's software collection and in a subsequent article on Adobe DNG raw workflow software roundup).
According to the publisher the program features full color management, including support for custom-profiled wide-gamut monitors and ICCv2 and ICCv4 profile formats. Image rating is supported using industry-standard conventions (Adobe XMP), along with image pre-loading and caching if computer resources allows (the 64-bit edition of the program takes advantage of the memory than can be present beyond the 4GB boundary). The program can make use of multi-core CPUs
Multi-core (computing)
A multi-core processor is a single computing component with two or more independent actual processors , which are the units that read and execute program instructions...
for parallel image loading. It uses DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
hardware acceleration when available to accelerate zooming and panning, and can also downsize very large images (e.g. astronomic pictures) to make them fit in video memory or computer RAM if necessary. The software also features an IPTC
International Press Telecommunications Council
The International Press Telecommunications Council, based in London, United Kingdom, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies and news industry vendors...
metadata editor letting users annotate pictures (add or edit headline, caption, keywords, author and copyright information) in a way that is compatible with established industry standards.
New images can be added to the browsed folder(s) and the program catches them on the fly, allowing continued browsing without the need to exit and reload the folder(s), while a tracking mode can automatically displays that last image added to the folder tree, useful when photographing in tethered mode or with a Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
enabled camera that transfers images to a computer using PTP or FTP, so images can be displayed as they are shot. An automatic advance mode (simple slide show) is also provided, along with a navigation slider that can be used to jump to different places in the current image list (under Windows Vista or later, the navigation slider displays a thumbnail image picturing the target location; a thumbnail strip is also displayed at the top of the program's window).
The program supports the Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
international character set (so it can browse images and folders whose names are written in any language) and features a multi-lingual user-interface. It integrates with the Windows shell, for example for context menus and AutoPlay events. It provides a simple external program launcher and a file copy function that copies (or moves) the image currently displayed to a pre-set folder, by pressing a hotkey, along with a file renaming function. Real-time RGB histogram and EXIF information (shutter speed, F-stop, ISO speed, exposure compensation, ...) can be displayed in floating windows. The program adapts to screen resolution and supports large fonts and high-DPI display modes, as well as relatively low resolution Netbooks and sub-notbooks LCD screens. Starting from build 106 (Aug-18-2009) the program integrates with the Windows 7 taskbar and exposes a list of recently used folders through a mechanism introduced in this version of Windows.
An entry-level version of the program is available free of charge for home, non-commercial use. This free version supports the JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
and Microsoft HD Photo / JPEG-XR image formats and can read/write Adobe XMP
Extensible Metadata Platform
The Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform is a standard, created by Adobe Systems Inc., for processing and storing standardized and proprietary information relating to the contents of a file....
rating metadata in external sidecar file
Sidecar file
Sidecar files, also known as buddy files or connected files, are files which store data which is not supported by the source file format.For each source file one or more sidecar files can be created...
s (*.xmp) or embed it within JPEG (JFIF), HD Photo and TIFF containers.
FastPictureViewer is extensible via COM
Component Object Model
Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...
-based plug-ins, whose specifications are available from the software publisher upon request. The software adopts the user's language automatically (currently available for Brazilian/Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish).
In addition to the core functionality of the cost-free version, the commercial version is said by its publisher to have exclusive features, such as:
- Support for web and Windows image formats such as PNG and GIFGIFThe Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
with transparency, BMP, and ICO. - Support for TIFF, MTIFF (multi-page TIFF), CMYK TIFF, TGATruevision TGATruevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
and DjVuDjVuDjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy...
. - RAW formatsRAW image formatA camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor...
previewing with color-management. - Support for persistent bookmarks working across viewing sessions.
- Support for multi-cameras tethered shooting (MTP/PTPMedia Transfer ProtocolThe Media Transfer Protocol is a devised set of custom extensions to the Picture Transfer Protocol . Whereas PTP was designed for downloading photographs from digital cameras, Media Transfer Protocol supports the transfer of music files on digital audio players and media files on portable media...
over USB 2.0 or WI-FI). - Ability to configure more than one external tool in the program launcher.
- Ability to create and use preset renaming templates.
- Batch file mark/delete function.
- Batch file management functions (copy, move, delete, save-for-web) through a multi-function rule-based plug-in.
- Batch IPTC metadata editing (apply headline, caption, keywords, author and copyright information to a set of images).
- Support for Controlled VocabulariesControlled vocabularyControlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other form of knowledge organization systems...
with assisted keyword entry in the IPTC Editor. - Support for Reverse GeocodingReverse geocodingReverse geocoding is the process of back coding of a point location to a readable address or place name. This permits the identification of nearby street addresses, places, and/or areal subdivisions such as neighbourhoods, county, state, or country...
in the IPTC Editor allowing users to fill the IPTC Location information from geotaggedGeoTaggingGeotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata...
images.
Color Management
By default the program uses the ICM 2.0 color engine (based on LinoColorCMM from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG) built into the Windows operating system since Windows 98. Users of the registered commercial version have the option to use the new WCS 1.0 color engine available on Windows Vista and later operating systems, instead of the default engine. This new color engine is based on Canon's Kyuanos technology and is said to use greater than 16-bit per channel floating point arithmetics for better gamut-mapping models that are meant to provide superior color space conversions than ICC rendering intents. FastPictureViewer Professional can optionally use the new high precision color engine available in modern versions of Windows, for potentially more accurate color viewing on profiled display monitors.RAW Formats Support
The program installs a set of WICWindows Imaging Component
The Windows Imaging Component is a Component Object Model based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 3 for working with and processing digital images and image metadata...
-enabled image decoders providing access to RAW formats
RAW image format
A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor...
from more than 380 digital camera models, Rawzor
Rawzor
Rawzor is a proprietary lossless image compression software which compresses camera raw images without any loss in image quality or meta-information. It is available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.-Features:* Supports all major raw formats...
compressed Raw images, and DNG
Digital Negative (file format)
Digital Negative is an open raw image format owned by Adobe used for digital photography. It was launched on September 27, 2004. The launch was accompanied by the first version of the DNG specification, plus various products including a free of charge DNG Converter utility...
. The bundled raw image decoders also extends the Windows operating system by providing thumbnail views, metadata search integration and full viewing to Windows Explorer, Photo Viewer, Photo Gallery and, on Windows 7 or later, Windows Media Center.
Raster Formats Support
In addition to the built-in support for standard raster image formats such as JPEG, JPEG-XR and, in the licensed edition, TIFF, PNG, BMP and GIF, support for specialists image formats such as Photoshop PSD, OpenEXR, Radiance HDR, DirectX DDS, Softimage PIC, Autodesk Maya IFF, Silicon Graphics SGI, Netpbm PMN, PPM, PBM, PGM and JPEG2000, as well as 2D previewing support for Multi-Picture Object (MPO), Valve Texture Format (VTF) and JPEG Stereo (JPS) files can be added through the installation of separate image decoders.Standalone Codec Pack for Windows
FastPictureViewer image codecs are also available as a separate product called the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack, which is referenced on the Microsoft Photography codecs download page as well as on well-known technology websites. The codec pack enables read-only support for 40+ image formats in Windows Explorer, Photo Viewer, Photo Gallery and, on Windows 7 or later, Windows Media Center, as well as a number of codec-enabled applications, such as Sony Creative Software Vegas Pro, the IMatch digital asset management suite and more generally all applications compatible with Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codecs, which includes .NET Framework.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
3.x/4.x and Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation
Developed by Microsoft, the Windows Presentation Foundation is a computer-software graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0. Rather than relying on the older GDI...
applications.
Cons
- No integrated image editing
- Hardware acceleration does not work with all graphic cards, especially on Windows XP
Versions
The first public version was released on January 15, 2008.This Windows program is provided as a ~24MB digitally signed MSI
Windows Installer
The Windows Installer is a software component used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software on modern Microsoft Windows systems...
installation database (with uninstall) in native 32 and 64-bit flavors. Runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP SP3 as well as a dektop application in Windows 8 Developer Preview. Windows XP SP2
Service pack
A service pack is a collection of updates, fixes or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Many companies, such as Microsoft or Autodesk, typically release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain ...
users may have to download and install the Windows Imaging Component (WIC
Windows Imaging Component
The Windows Imaging Component is a Component Object Model based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 3 for working with and processing digital images and image metadata...
) from the Microsoft website in order to run the program. Windows versions prior to XP SP2 are not supported.
See also
- Image ViewersImage viewerAn image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
- Digital PhotographyDigital photographyDigital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...
- Comparison of Image ViewersComparison of image viewersThis article presents a comparison of image viewers and image organizers which can be used for image viewing.-General information:Note 1: Adobe Bridge comes included in the price with the Adobe Creative Suite CS2, Adobe Production Studio and Photoshop Elements 4 for Mac OS X...
- Color ManagementColor managementIn digital imaging systems, color management is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printers, offset presses, and corresponding media.The primary goal of color...
and ICC ProfileICC profileIn color management, an ICC profile is a set of data that characterizes a color input or output device, or a color space, according to standards promulgated by the International Color Consortium...
s - Windows Imaging ComponentWindows Imaging ComponentThe Windows Imaging Component is a Component Object Model based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 3 for working with and processing digital images and image metadata...
(WIC) - Extensible Metadata PlatformExtensible Metadata PlatformThe Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform is a standard, created by Adobe Systems Inc., for processing and storing standardized and proprietary information relating to the contents of a file....
(XMP) - Media Transfer ProtocolMedia Transfer ProtocolThe Media Transfer Protocol is a devised set of custom extensions to the Picture Transfer Protocol . Whereas PTP was designed for downloading photographs from digital cameras, Media Transfer Protocol supports the transfer of music files on digital audio players and media files on portable media...
(MTP/PTP) - International Press Telecommunications CouncilInternational Press Telecommunications CouncilThe International Press Telecommunications Council, based in London, United Kingdom, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies and news industry vendors...
(IPTC) - An example of a very large image: the Orion nebula (18,000 x 18,000 pixels)