image viewer

[T-Fish]

can anyone recommend a good image viewer that has the ability to browse through winrar archives ?

i have so many digital photos that it started to slow down windows. you know how it is if you have a few
folders with 10k pics inside them windows bogs down for a few minutes when you open those lol

so i rared up the folders but my stone age viewer (acdsee 2.4) obviously can't view archives.
im using this old viewer because i never had the need for anything better. it should be as light
as possible. no need for any photo editing capabilities as i got photoshop for that.

features the viewer should have:

- ability to browse winrar archives
- no installation if possible (like vdub)
- light on system resources (old pc)
- fullscreen viewer / thumbnail- and detail view (basically like a windows folder, but when in detail view preferably with a preview)

bonus features: (not necessary)
- crop / resize / rotate
- convert (png/jpg/bmp)


i did some research and looked into comic viewers as those can browse renamed rar archives, but
the only one that appealed to me is apparently not available on windows (comix for linux).
so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated

[freebird73717]

Try looking at comical
http://comical.sourceforge.net/

[AlanHK]

i did some research and looked into comic viewers as those can browse renamed rar archives, but
the only one that appealed to me is apparently not available on windows (comix for linux).
so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated

Presumably you checked CDisplay?
it can do all that except convert. That's the original "Comic book archive" viewer, I use it.
But it will also be very slow if you open a single archive of 10,000 images.

Others listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Archive_file
ComicRack is one still under development.

Also you don't have to rename the archive, you can r-click and select to open with the viewer.

i have so many digital photos that it started to slow down windows. you know how it is if you have a few
folders with 10k pics inside them windows bogs down for a few minutes when you open those lol

But if this is the problem, maybe you should find how to turn off this behaviour. You can probably get a solution at MSFN forum.

[T-Fish]

thanks freebird
im gonna have a look at it

Presumably you checked CDisplay?
it can do all that except convert. That's the original "Comic book archive" viewer, I use it.
But it will also be very slow if you open a single archive of 10,000 images.

Others listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Archive_file
ComicRack is one still under development.

Also you don't have to rename the archive, you can r-click and select to open with the viewer.

thank you for the reply/info AlanHK
i haven't really tried it because its not actively developed anymore for quite
some time. im gonna give it a go though and see if its fast enough.

But if this is the problem, maybe you should find how to turn off this behaviour. You can probably get a solution at MSFN forum.

well, i do have indexing disabled, but you still get a considerable lag when
you open a folder with many images. its not really a problem to give it a
minute or two, but im concerned that it isn't exactly healthy for the hdd.

[T-Fish]

just a follow up bump :P

CDisplay would do the job once configured to my likings, but the memory leak is crazy.
i opened a rar file with 3000 images. i didnt mind the 10 seconds it takes to
open the archive but cdisplay used 200mb ram and rising :/

ill stick with my 15 year old tool that does everything but read rar archives and takes 2mb ram.

[AlanHK]

just a follow up bump :P

CDisplay would do the job once configured to my likings, but the memory leak is crazy.
i opened a rar file with 3000 images. i didnt mind the 10 seconds it takes to
open the archive but cdisplay used 200mb ram and rising :/

ill stick with my 15 year old tool that does everything but read rar archives and takes 2mb ram.

Probably because it's preparing thumbnails of the entire archive in the background.

You can just use Winrar, select your archive and open it. Clicking on any of the filenames in it should display the file in your default image viewer.

But a 3000 image RAR is going to be enormously cumbersome no matter what application you use. You'd only do that for archiving, not actively viewing. CBR files usually encapsulate a chapter, or at most a book, and 3000 pages is a bit outside the range of any book I've heard of.

Basically you seem to be trying to hide your files from Windows to prevent it indexing them, and I'm sure there are easier ways to do that.

[T-Fish]

i switched the thumb caching off, but its still pretty ram hungry.
you are right though, it was the thumbs that made it go past the 100.

the problem with using winrar is that you cant browse through them.
if id open all to browse, i might as well unpack the archive lol.

in my experience, a few rar archives with 3000 pics is less cumbersome
compared to a few folders with 3000 pics. i do understand that this isnt what
the comic book viewers were made for
also backing up rars is a lot faster over usb2, than picture folders.. yikes lol

indexing is off and thumb caching in windows too. its just if you open any
folder with many items, it reads the content of the folder and that takes time.

i realize that this is primarily a video site. i was just hoping that there might
be a member who manages large amounts of pictures. i do wonder what
professional photographs do (those who work digital anyway).

appreciate the effort mate

[vhelp]

You know, if the images are the same dimensions, you could get away by opening them inside virtualdub.

That would require you to rename the files to something more consistant (but might actually help you in the end to know that x,y maybe later on) and I actually do this a lot but my images are usually consistant like this, so it works for me. You could put black borders around certain ones that are close enough to a pre defined x,y dimension of your images.

Or, (still using the above) you could make all your photos same size thumbnails, ie:

1. image->thumbnail
2. convert->bmp, using for instance, image_00001, image_00002, ... image_10100, image_10101, ...
3. save as->avi
4. create an avs script
5. create a menu or list that points to all your {3} avi's
6. open that avs as your root image or photo catalog

I know, its crude, but works. It might take time to rethink and organize, but in the end, might help you. Maybe the above might give you some other ideas all together. Anyway.

The sky is the limit and you could get even more funky'er with the above. Maybe use xml or html with hyper links, whatever. And, with a little programming experience, you could possibly throw together an avi wrapper that assists in these things and more. Its all up to your tallents.

-vhelp 5307

[T-Fish]

thx vhelp

thats certainly a different approach. ill have to experiment with this idea..