I have tons of photos/movies I want to organize and I need a simple and fast app that will allow me to look through photos and move them around. Possibly do some very simple editing (for anything else I use Gimp). I have stopped using iPhoto when I ran out of disk space and realized that iPhoto db is humongous. And I still could not find photos from within Finder and it took sooo long to download from camera. Anyway, after brief googling I found and will be trying these (ah, yes, one other requirement: free):
XnView – ** update ** ACTUALLY I like this one too. Can do everything I need, except it does not move files within application (cannot move a photo to a different folder in the left sidebar), but can move between app and a finder window. Perfect.
ToyViewer – another viewer. be careful, if you select to open a folder that contains many large photos, it will be opening each one full size. I just had to crash the app because it was taking way too long.
ViewIt – you can either view a single photo or or thumbnails not both at the same time. No browsing of folders. a viewer, not a browser.
JetPhoto – I like the GUI, but I am not looking for another iPhoto, creating multiple copies of images, originals, thumbs…
Xee – support ended in 2007. could not see folder structure even though you should be able to browse easily. really a viewer, not a browser.
*** update ***
I ended up looking at these and a few more and settled on gBrowser. It has the left sidebar with the folder structure you can browse through; create new folder and move them around. The main window is a display of thumbnails which you can also move around the folders, you can customize what info to display (not just title – for example date photo was taken is important to me), and you can select an application to open a photo with (right click on photo). You can even drag a photo into a Finder window and move it to another folder. It displays movies too. It is fast enough for me. Would be gould if it had a basic rotate and maybe resize functions but – it is what it says – a browser. The list above were mostly image viewers with some bells and whistles but with little or no browsing capability (no folder structure). Here is a full list of browsers I looked at:
Xsee – looked like a good tool, but development stopped in 2005. I got it running but my open windows did not look at all like the screenshots – some buttons were missing…
BlueMarine – open source, a beta realease. Looks interesting but a bit much for I need (gps tracking and other bells and whistles). nice interface. not too intuitive, there is a bit of “what do I do now?”. It does not import photos but it does create thumbnails in it’s own “workspace”. I might keep it around just to play with it a bit. cannot display movies. Does not rotate.
Phoenix Slides – fast thumbnail browsing, rotating. cannot move files around. No photo data displayed on thumbnail. no movies.
GL Image Browser – would be very similar to gBrowser but can only display one folder at a time in the left sidebar. actually, thumbs are displayed in sidebar so there is no folder structure. Can show thumbs for movies. Can open multiple windows and move files around. no data with thumbnail. can rotate. their website says: “New website coming soon-ish”. downloaded from here.
*** update ***
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