Image Organizer or Image Viewer

[wetzel]

Hello. I have created an image archive with thousands of scientific figures that teachers can use with digital projection in the classroom,. I am giving this away as a free DVD. The figures are organized in approximately 100 folders by scientific concept.

What I am hoping for is a suggestion of a freeware image viewer (one for mac and one for windows) that can go along on the DVD as an executable file to allow the teachers to view the figures, read jpeg metadata captions, and select the ones they would like to show and easily copy into a folder.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

[LoisWakeman]

Freeware doesn't necessarily mean you can redistribute it though - so be careful!

[iamback]

Originally Posted by wetzel

What I am hoping for is a suggestion of a freeware image viewer (one for mac and one for windows) that can go along on the DVD as an executable file to allow the teachers to view the figures, read jpeg metadata captions, and select the ones they would like to show and easily copy into a folder.

For Windows, IrfanView comes to mind, or XnView. Both are free (but not open source) for private and educational use, though I'm not sure about redistribution - read the license agreements or contact their authors!

[ktinkel]

Why not save the files as PDFs? There are many readers for those in circulation, on both Macs and PCs. Among them are, of course, the free Acrobat Reader; but Preview (included with OS X) reads PDFs on the Mac, and there seem to be many free PDF readers for Windows users as well.

That way you will not risk violating a shareware (or freeware) licensing agreement.

To do this you will need a PDF-creating utility. Acrobat, though somewhat expensive, is one obvious choice. Jaws is often recommended. And there are other programs, at least for Windows. (The Mac OS X printer function has PDF creation built in.)

Acrobat (and perhaps Jaws) let you crop, rotate, and edit the PDF. But of course so will most image creation tools.

[wetzel]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

iamback, I will test Irfanview and XnView and then contact their authors, Lois, for permission before I include an executable version on the DVD.

Thank you for the PDF suggestion, Katherine. PDF is a great format, but I think I need to stick to JPEG because of metadata and compression issues. There is a web based version of the archive, and so browser display is also an issue.

Here's one more question. I was also going to include GIMP and Seashore (for the Mac) for the teachers to be able to write notes on the figures using a stylus, those who don't have Photoshop. GIMP may have more features than the teachers really need for classroom presentation, for which you really just need a nice brush and color swatches. Does anyone have a suggestion for a freeware paint program which is a lot simpler than GIMP?

Thanks for this forum.

[JVegVT]

I hope you won't forget about Linux users when you create your DVDs. XnView has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I've never used it,so can't comment, but it's encouraging that there is a Linux version.

Irfanview runs quite well on Linux under Wine. The latest version of Irfanview has some paint capabilities. I haven't investigated what they can do yet.
--Judy M.

[Andrew B.]

For Windows, take a look at FastStone.

[wetzel]

Yes. Thanks. I will make sure to include a version for Linux, although I will finally have to get it up and running on a computer to test it! Cheers!

[Benwiggy]

Originally Posted by wetzel

What I am hoping for is a suggestion of a freeware image viewer (one for mac and one for windows) that can go along on the DVD as an executable file to allow the teachers to view the figures, read jpeg metadata captions, and select the ones they would like to show and easily copy into a folder.

This sort of job is increasingly being handled directly by OS's file browsers. I use a great many CDs from image libraries, and almost all of them have folders of software which either is no longer compatible with modern computers or is antiquated and unnecessary.
OS X has excellent image previewing in the Finder; Windows has, I believe, an image browser in it. I'd be surprised if Linux didn't have something.

You may be charged to include some shareware software on your disk. And why include GIMP, which is quite a large chunk of data - when you could just have a link to the site, where people can d/l the most up-to-date version?

You say that "There is a web based version of the archive". Isn't that the neatest solution? Just have HTML pages with thumbnails in them. That will work on any platform, and be far more useful for longer than any app you could include.

[wetzel]

Thanks Benwiggy.

Yes on the file system point. Especially Leopard has gone a long way with the image preview. However, they do not present JPEG metadata as far as I know. For something like a 3D model of a protein enzyme or a photograph of a bacterium, it is important to be able to provide a detailed caption along with the figure. I am hoping the image viewer will be able to do this. HTML does of course through PHP.

Also. Although the web based version has a lot of utility, it is simply a faster process to copy figures from a file system. There is also a psychological factor in that having the DVD provides a kind of encouragement to a person, such as premedical students who might decide to volunteer tutor younger students. The DVD 'equips' a person. You can rely on it as 'your resource' in a way that a remote site does not encourage.

I will take your comment to heart, however, and detail the options to users of the DVD. No way is best for everyone. People can choose the manner of working with the archive which is best for them.

Lastly, I have received a very gracious permission from the author of XnView. Although I haven't fully investigated it yet, it looks like exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks everybody!