Review: Imaginate 1.0

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Adkins
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Bob Adkins

Having a digital camera for years and lots of family, I keep looking for
that "Perfect Picture Viewer". Of course, my criteria is different from
everyone else's, but based on speed and convenience. Here's what I think a
pure picture viewer should do:

*View pictures only! No music, no movies, no thumbnails, no browser.
*No graphics editing.
*Converting, rotating, cropping, and a slide show are OK.
*1-key exit with the ESC key.
*ESC key ALWAYS exits with 1 click.
*Easy toggling, preferably with the SPACE bar and scroll wheel.
*Zoom with + and - keys.
*Full screen viewing.
*Shrink large pictures to fit while showing small pictures actual size.
*Easy file association to restore stolen associations
*1 File Wonder
*Compact and fast.

I recently gave Imaginate 1.0 a whirl, and it satisfies most of the above
requirements.

The good:

Has a gaggle of picture viewing features
Good keyboard shortcuts
Toggle through pictures with mouse scroll wheel
Compact and stable
Excellent association and de-association
Simple, nothing but picture viewing features
Very nice context menu with all commands and functions


The Indifferent:

No converting, rotating, cropping, or slide show features
Has install program, but it's not needed.
Uses PGDN and PGUP to toggle through pictures
HOME key returns to the first picture in the folder

The Bad:

Does not allow viewing small pictures actual size while shrinking large
pictures to fit the screen.
Space Bar does not toggle through pictures
Does not allow starting over when coming to the last picture in the folder.

Deal Killers:

None

Summary:

A very nice picture viewer that works great for habitual Windows Explorer
users. It's very fast, clean and simple, and not packed with useless fluff.
It does 1 job and does it well. Digital camera owners with hundreds or even
thousands of photos will doubtless find it useful! Have I found my "Perfect
picture viewer"? Well, in a word, no. But Imaginate is the closest thing I
have found yet!

Grab it here.

http://www.geocities.com/thexagon/

Bob

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Bob said:
Having a digital camera for years and lots of family, I keep looking
for that "Perfect Picture Viewer". Of course, my criteria is
different from everyone else's, but based on speed and convenience.
Here's what I think a pure picture viewer should do:

*View pictures only! No music, no movies, no thumbnails, no browser.
*No graphics editing.
*Converting, rotating, cropping, and a slide show are OK.
*1-key exit with the ESC key.
*ESC key ALWAYS exits with 1 click.
*Easy toggling, preferably with the SPACE bar and scroll wheel.
*Zoom with + and - keys.
*Full screen viewing.
*Shrink large pictures to fit while showing small pictures actual
size.
*Easy file association to restore stolen associations
*1 File Wonder
*Compact and fast.
Click to expand...

If that's what you want, it looks fine, but I still prefer Irfanview which
does all this and more, much more.
 
If that's what you want, it looks fine, but I still prefer Irfanview which
does all this and more, much more.
Click to expand...

Imaginate is a picture viewer. What exactly is Irfanview?

Can you press ESC 1 time and exit from a full (clean) screen? If so, I'll
try it out. ;)

Bob

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Bob said:
Imaginate is a picture viewer. What exactly is Irfanview?

Can you press ESC 1 time and exit from a full (clean) screen? If so,
I'll try it out. ;)

Bob

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Click to expand...

Irfanview is a graphic viewer, check out http://www.irfanview.com/
Description from the pricelessware.org:

The first graphic viewer with Multiple (animated) GIF support, one of the
first graphic viewers with Multipage TIFF support and the first graphic
viewer with Multiple ICO support. Features: Thumbnails, Preview, Drag and
Drop Support, fast Directory View (fast moving through directory), Print
Support, Scan (TWAIN) Support, Slideshow, Batch conversion, change the color
depth, audio CD player, Capturing, Cut/Crop, Effects (Blur, Sharpen etc.)
and many many more ... other features: Many supported file formats,
Thumbnail/preview option, Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to
CD), Drag and drop support, Batch conversion (with image processing), Email
option, Multimedia player, Print option, Change color depth, Scan (batch
scan) support, Cut/crop, IPTC editing, Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Photoshop
filter factory), Capturing, Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs, Lossless JPG
rotation, Many hotkeys, Many command line options, Many plugins, Only one
EXE-File, no DLLs, No registry changes without user action/permission! and
many more

803Kb download
 
Imaginate is a picture viewer. What exactly is Irfanview?

Can you press ESC 1 time and exit from a full (clean) screen? If so,
I'll try it out. ;)

Bob
Click to expand...

Latest version of IrfanView (3.91) has an option to launch images full
screen. And yes, a single ESC quits the program.
Click: full clean screen
ESC: gone
Time to try it out ;)

(you'll probably change the rules now and specify still less clicks and
keypressing!)
 
Irfanview is a graphic viewer, check out http://www.irfanview.com/
Description from the pricelessware.org:

The first graphic viewer with Multiple (animated) GIF support, one of the
first graphic viewers with Multipage TIFF support and the first graphic
viewer with Multiple ICO support. Features: Thumbnails, Preview, Drag and
Drop Support, fast Directory View (fast moving through directory), Print
Support, Scan (TWAIN) Support, Slideshow, Batch conversion, change the color
depth, audio CD player, Capturing, Cut/Crop, Effects (Blur, Sharpen etc.)
and many many more ... other features: Many supported file formats,
Thumbnail/preview option, Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to
CD), Drag and drop support, Batch conversion (with image processing), Email
option, Multimedia player, Print option, Change color depth, Scan (batch
scan) support, Cut/crop, IPTC editing, Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Photoshop
filter factory), Capturing, Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs, Lossless JPG
rotation, Many hotkeys, Many command line options, Many plugins, Only one
EXE-File, no DLLs, No registry changes without user action/permission! and
many more

803Kb download
Click to expand...

In addition it sounds like a graphics editor/movie player/capture/icon
extractor/music player/batch file converter to me. Does everything work
well? Because if it does, I can throw away a half dozen other little
programs. ;)

Bob

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Latest version of IrfanView (3.91) has an option to launch images full
screen. And yes, a single ESC quits the program.
Click: full clean screen
ESC: gone
Time to try it out ;)
Click to expand...

I practically begged Irfan for that feature for 2 years. He said it wasn't
needed. That's one stubborn guy.

I'll check it out.
(you'll probably change the rules now and specify still less clicks and
keypressing!)
Click to expand...

I can see you don't know me very well! I do not change rules in the middle
of the game. :)

Bob

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Bob said:
In addition it sounds like a graphics editor/movie player/capture/icon
extractor/music player/batch file converter to me. Does everything
work well? Because if it does, I can throw away a half dozen other
little programs. ;)
Click to expand...
Give it a try and see for yourself, you probably will throw a lot of those
programs away. Everything works pefectly for me.
 
Click: full clean screen
ESC: gone
Time to try it out ;)
Click to expand...

Found some kind of bug I think. In full screen mode, I can't get a context
menu. Even though I configured IrfanView to "show context menu on
right-click", it still won't show a context menu. The right-click instead
toggles to the next picture. If this bug was fixed, IrfanView would be a
great picture viewer.

Only other problem, it takes 20 minutes of configuring to work right. (like
ACDSee, Firegraphic, Cam2PC, and Imaginate do out of the box)

But still, I use Media Player classic for movies, MicroWav for sounds, BDV
Notepad for TXT, and XMPlayer for MP3's and will continue to do so. Even if
IrfanView is fixed.

Bob

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Give it a try and see for yourself, you probably will throw a lot of those
programs away. Everything works pefectly for me.
Click to expand...

Hey Bloned, see my post to Kapok.

Bob

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Bob said:
Hey Bloned, see my post to Kapok.
Click to expand...
Saw it. Read it. Well, I guess it's a mather of personal preferences, I like
Irfanview because it's small and powerfull, I don't have much HD-space, so
it's definetely the one for me. Still have the old and small Winamp-lite
2.81 for all audio, don't watch video's and the standard Windows notepad is
sufficient for me. But I don't think Irfanview needs to be 'fixed' , it's
fine as it is, at least for me.
 
Saw it. Read it. Well, I guess it's a mather of personal preferences, I like
Irfanview because it's small and powerfull, I don't have much HD-space, so
it's definetely the one for me. Still have the old and small Winamp-lite
2.81 for all audio, don't watch video's and the standard Windows notepad is
sufficient for me. But I don't think Irfanview needs to be 'fixed' , it's
fine as it is, at least for me.
Click to expand...


Well, I can't use it without a context menu. Just my preference.

But it has improved since I last tried it.

Bob

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