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Goldberg is a great free image viewer.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
T h e R o a d L e s s T r a v e l e d
The best free software for OS X, Part 1: Photo editing and image management
May 21, 2006
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2006, Al Fasoldt
Mac OS X spoils you. It comes with a superb image manager, and you don't have to struggle with sub-par software for months the way a lot of Windows users do. But iPhoto isn't as good at image editing as it is at image management, and it lacks one of the most importand functions of a good OS X image viewer -- the ability to quickly open an image full screen right from the Finder.
If you're a longtime iPhoto user, you might be wondering where I lost my mind. You see, older versions of iPhoto didn't do any image editing at all, and that those reading this who never upgraded to a newer version of iPhoto have no idea that later versions do, indeed, have photo editing functions. Apart from cropping, which has been part of iPhoto for some time, newer versions provide an easy way to alter color balance, perform a "quick fix" on levels of color, brightness, white balance and black level, and sharpen any image.
This works well, but offers none of the extras that a separate photo editor adds.
Unfortunately, the almost overwhelming status of iPhoto as the industry-standard image management program -- all others, whether for Macs or Windows PCs, are eventually compared to it, and they're usually found wanting in one way or another -- leave OS X users with only a few choices among freeware image programs. After all, you get iPhoto as part of the package when you buy an OS X Macintosh; why look for freeware that won't do as good a job?
So what you should do is look for freeware that does some aspects better.
The single area of weakness in iPhoto is its lack of quick-display functionality. A good image viewer should display any image full screen (if that's what you choose in the program's options, and I think you should) the instant that you double click on the image file in the Finder. You should never have to run any image app first in order to view a photo. The photo should simply show up full screen instantly, or as close to instantly as your Mac's speed will allow.
(An aside: Almost no one I know agrees with me on this. This only serves to make me more convinced that I am right. Most people seem content to spend a minute or two loading their humongo image-management program and then another minute or two finding the image they want to view and then yet another interminable period trying to see it as big as possible -- and all of this just to look at a photo. All I do is double click the image in a Finder window. I use ACDSee 1.6 for Mac OS X as my viewer -- it's not free, but it surely is the fastest image viewer on the planet and is easily set up to show all images full screen the moment they are double clicked. They always fit perfectly on the screen, too, with small images made large enough to fit exactly and large ones made small enough to do likewise. Isn't that what everyone ought to want to have happen when it's time to view an image? Not when you want to view a slide show or view five images in a row or something like that. When you want to view an image, by itself, shouldn't you be able to see it instantly the full size of your screen?)
Since iPhoto doesn't do this sort of thing at all -- it's not even good at showing an image full screen unless you run a slide show of a single picture, with a very, very long time between slides, if you know what I mean -- the best thing you can do for your download pleasure is to get a good image viewer. ACDSee 1.6 for OS X is the cat's meow, but it's a costly meow ($40, as I recall). But the odd thing is that the current owners of the ACDSee software don't even want to know about their Mac OS X version, which was developed by the company's previous engineers, so they took it off the ACDSee Web site. You can find it at another site, however. Go to www.downloadjunction.com/product/software/87225/index.html.
But enough about non-free software. An excellent free image viewer (one that has some image-editing functions, too) is Goldberg, from Opus Software at http://mypage.bluewin.ch/opus/freeware/g2/osx.html#download. All functions work without the need to pay anything, but you can send a donation if you'd like -- and you might want to, because Goldberg is as fast as ACDSee in most ways and about as user-friendly as they come. It doesn't automatically show images full screen, but is easily coaxed into coming as close as it can do a full-screen view if you press Option-Cmd-0 as soon as an image opens.
An image editor that is either the worst thing you ever came across or the most incredible piece of software yet invented is ToyViewer, from www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~ogihara/software/OSX/toyv-eng.html. The effects, to me, are fun and amazing. But you have to try this one for yourself.
Not freeware but free to try (and use, in many ways) is the standard image converter and editor for Macs of all eras, Graphic Converter by Thorsten Lemke, at www.lemkesoft.com/en/graphcon.htm. It costs $30 for a downloaded version; more for one on a CD.
The program set a standard that others never matched back in the Mac OS days and continues the trend in its OS X version. It's superb at conversions to and from practically any image format, for any kind of computer (even my old Atari's native graphics formats are represented) and even does an excellent job at image cataloging and photo editing.
My two reservations about Graphic Converter concern its more-or-less non-standard menu organization -- it can drive you bonkers if you're in a hurry -- and its odd way of dealing with image editing. The menus, I suppose, simply reflect the unusual way everything works. You might not care about the odd parts once you realize how good the software is.
A free OS X image program I find essential is Pic2Icon, which creates icons, or thumbnails, from image files, entire nested folders at a time. It can create gorgeous thumbnails very quickly. Just drag a folder full of images on the Pic2Icon icon. The developer disappeared, so you should get the program from my own site.
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