Image Viewing

Review (1) - Captured Images 

It is difficult to judge on a small (< 2") LCD screen exactly what is out of focus and what will make a poor subject. After transferring images to the hard drive, review and discard anything that is out of focus, is a poor subject and will not be improved by cropping etc.

Once you get past this stage, it will be almost impossible to get rid of the bad stuff. It the usual "garden shed" syndrome - "I just know it'll come in handy some day". Well, it won't; dump it!

Review (2) - After Conversion

This is getting more difficult, but much of the time, it doesn't matter how much you change white balance or exposure, it still looks bad. Delete.....

Review (3) - the Final Cull

Only end up with the images you are going to catalogue, those you will print or otherwise display.

Viewing Software

AT this stage, what you need is to view the image, nothing else, so find a small footprint program that does just that. When I started, I used ACDSee, but in recent releases this has become more 'image management' than image viewing.

Now I use FastStone, which is small in memory usage, just does viewing, with ease of scrolling through a folder of images and one-click zooming to check the detail.

ACDSee
I have used this since version 4, but now it’s getting to be a bit bloated and a jack-of-all-trades, etc. One thing it does have is a good calendar function that let you see pictures taken on a specific day.

Faststone
 I found this quite recently and it’s probably the best ‘viewer’ I found so far - it’s what ACDSee should still be but ain’t.

Thumbs Plus This gets good reviews and recommendations, but I never used it so can’t comment.

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