Fast Picture Viewer

Fast Picture Viewer

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Fast Picture Viewer

FastPictureViewer is a commercial image viewer for Windows Vista and XP. Its aim is to facilitate quick review and rating of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow.

As of v1.0, 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.

Features
Versions
See also
References
External links

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 thumbnails, 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.

According to the publisher the program features full color management, including support for custom-profiled wide-gamut monitors. Image rating is supported using industry-standard conventions, along with image pre-loading and caching. The program can make use of multi-core CPUs and DirectX hardware acceleration when available and resizes huge images to make them fit in video memory or computer RAM.

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 thetered mode or with a Wi-Fi enabled camera that transfers images to a computer, so images can be displayed as they are shot. An automatic advance mode (simple slide show) is also provided.

The program supports the Unicode international character set and integrates with the Windows shell, for example for AutoPlay events. It provides a file copy function that copies (or moves) the image currently displayed to a pre-set folder, by pressing a hotkey. Real-time RGB histogram and EXIF information (shutter speed, F-stop, ISO speed, exposure compensation, ...) can be displayed in floating 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 write Adobe XMP metadata in external sidecar files (*.xmp) or embed it within JPEG (JFIF), HD Photo and TIFF containers.

The program is extensible via COM-based plug-ins, whose specifications are available from the software publisher upon request.

In addition to the core functionality of the cost-free version, the commercial version is said to have exclusive features, such as:

Support for web and Windows image formats such as PNG, GIF, BMP, and ICO.
Support for TIFF, MTIFF (multi-page TIFF), DjVu and DNG, along with previewing of a number of RAW formats^[1] through WIC-enabled codecs from Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic and Sony. The current list of supported RAW formats includes Canon CR2, Nikon NRW, Nikon NEF, Panasonic RW2 and Adobe DNG through separately available coder/decoders.
Support for Canon CR2, Nikon NEF and Adobe DNG on 64-bit platforms through 3rd party decoders.
Support for persistant bookmarks that work across viewing sessions.
Support for multi-cameras tethered shooting (MTP/PTP over USB 2.0).

Versions

The first public version was released on January 15, 2008.

This Windows program is provided as ~1.6MB digitally signed MSI installation database (with uninstall). Runs natively on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP with Service Pack 3, all in 32 or 64-bit editions. Windows XP SP2 users must download and install the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) from the Microsoft website in order to run the program on XP SP2. Windows versions prior to XP SP2 are not supported.