This simple little image viewer and editor can handle most of my editing and viewing tasks. It has some "tricks" up its sleeves that you need to learn, and then it is very fast to use. It is very simple to go through a new photo shoot, which even works on cr2 and nef files (among others) and 16bit pgm files and built-in bayer conversion. Here's some examples of workflows:
- Sort through a new photo shoot by opening the directory from which it crates an internal ShowList (which you can save for later use, drag n drop more files to it, etc. ), and use the mousewheel or page up to see through the files. Press delete to remove a file from the list (ctrl+del to delete it from the disk). Remove all the files you dont need. You can now save all the kept files to a new album and perfect modifications (light changes, lens dedistortions, etc. ) to all images, or just copy the original files. You can also start a slideshow with a certain fps and save it as an avi file.
- If you want a new wallpaper, find your image and make the screen look like you want it to look (incl. background colour), resize "as viewed", and apply wallpaper. If you have a wallpaper which is too bright or boring, use "edit wallpaper", edit it and put it back, so you dont even have to find the file.
- Instead of layers, it has 1 undo buffer and 9 buffers where you can store versions of your image. This can be used to blend and retouch images. For example, removing spots on the skin (make a selection rectangle slightly larger than the spot and apply an oversmooth or medianfilter, then undo to switch the buffers, and "retouch from undo buffer" and start wiping out the spot.), applying saturation and light changes to parts of the image, and to take down a notch of an edit you did, like if the retouching, saturation, sharpening or noise reduction looks fake, press Z a few times to blend back the original. 5 presses on Z equals a 50-50 blend.
- The raw support is real as it allows you to tweak the development from raw 16bit to 8bit images.
I experienced a "big" problem in the past few new versions about the blank window problem. It just happened just randomly and I saw there are other users in their forum has the same problem.
If any one who come here has the same problem, I suggest you update to Avant 2012 build 21. This problem has been fixed perfectly.
Cheers!
- Sort through a new photo shoot by opening the directory from which it crates an internal ShowList (which you can save for later use, drag n drop more files to it, etc. ), and use the mousewheel or page up to see through the files. Press delete to remove a file from the list (ctrl+del to delete it from the disk). Remove all the files you dont need. You can now save all the kept files to a new album and perfect modifications (light changes, lens dedistortions, etc. ) to all images, or just copy the original files. You can also start a slideshow with a certain fps and save it as an avi file.
- If you want a new wallpaper, find your image and make the screen look like you want it to look (incl. background colour), resize "as viewed", and apply wallpaper. If you have a wallpaper which is too bright or boring, use "edit wallpaper", edit it and put it back, so you dont even have to find the file.
- Instead of layers, it has 1 undo buffer and 9 buffers where you can store versions of your image. This can be used to blend and retouch images. For example, removing spots on the skin (make a selection rectangle slightly larger than the spot and apply an oversmooth or medianfilter, then undo to switch the buffers, and "retouch from undo buffer" and start wiping out the spot.), applying saturation and light changes to parts of the image, and to take down a notch of an edit you did, like if the retouching, saturation, sharpening or noise reduction looks fake, press Z a few times to blend back the original. 5 presses on Z equals a 50-50 blend.
- The raw support is real as it allows you to tweak the development from raw 16bit to 8bit images.
If any one who come here has the same problem, I suggest you update to Avant 2012 build 21. This problem has been fixed perfectly.
Cheers!