Picture viewers/editors for the Pocket PC platform
Author:
Werner 'Menneisyys' Ruotsalainen, member of
the Pocket PC magazine Board of Experts 2005, owner of WinMobileTech.com, tech writer, PPCMag
forum moderator, frequent contributor to, say, PPCMag/FirstLoox/PPCT/Brighthand/PDAMania.hu
etc. forums
Last edited: 23.06.2005 16:56.
Please
note that I've completely redesigned the benchmarks - now, my results are much
more reproducable and easier to understand. I haven't had the time to
completely update the 'Testing methologies' chapter to reflect the changes yet.
However, the first section describing individual programs and the trailing
table has been thoroughly updated. I'll continue updating them, though,
particularly now that I'll write a lot on batch modes.
This
version has a lot of new benchmark and EXIF compatibility info; also info on
the latest Resco, XnView etc. versions.
Picture
viewers/editors for the Pocket PC platform
PDA's as Digital Photo Wallets and In-the-field editor /
uploader tools
The Pictures application in WM2003+
Avantgarde Digital Digivue 1.1
Glass Lantern's PocketLoupe 1.71b
Additional system tools/utilities
Small,
but otherwise good picture viewers without editing features
Advanced slideshow capabilities, excellent speed &
picture quality - Resco and Spb Imageer
Advanced
adjusting capabilities; on-the-field digicam support
Standardized EXIF reading and compatibility test results
Main
feature & non-EXIF-benchmark table
PDA's as Digital Photo Wallets and In-the-field editor / uploader tools
PDA's are extremely good Digital Photo Wallets, especially now that VGA devices have hit the market and flash memory prices have plummeted. A PDA with an 1+ Gbyte memory card can hold even tens of thousands of VGA-sized JPEG pictures of acceptable (40-50% JPEG quality) quality. Think of it: the depth of some 20-30 standard photos stacked together can even be bigger than the depth of a VGA PDA, the latter holding tens of thousands of photos.
Another good usability area of PDA's is image quick post-processing/uploading/sharing, just after taking the photos, still on-the-field, without using any desktop computer. No, or, very few digital camera offer for example image cropping, image adjusting (not even the simplest brightness / contrast adjustments), red-eye removal (except for some automatic red-eye removal algorithms in, for example, the latest HP PhotoSmart R series) and the like. Advanced features are completely missing like applying filters to photos, drawing on them or adding IPTC caption information and/or EXIF UserComment and/or ImageDescription. And, a digicam won't have a 3.5+" touch screen :)
What's the point in all this "in the field" picture editing, you may ask. Why not wait for a desktop computer, or lugging around a notebook? The answer is simple: today's connected (!), powerful, preferably VGA PDA's are very good alternatives to desktop/laptop computers, especially at quick editing / cropping and sending/sharing images. The reader is referred to the "Benefits of Pocket Phojo Compared to a Laptop" section at http://www.idruna.com/pocketphojo.html to get a picture of the advantages and possible usage areas of the "in-the-field" pic editing (and, incidentally, uploading). (Please note that I'm in no way associated with Idruna. It's just that I've found their ads the "best fit" for what I wanted to say.)
I've planned the test to simulate both uses of a PDA. I didn't really pay attention to the third use, the painting programs - the only exceptions I've made are two freeware applications. I've only included them so that readers know whether a given image editing app is worth buying alone for its image editing, filtering etc. capabilities.
First, the in-the-field use of a PDA to browse unedited, uncompressed (and, therefore, big) JPEG files on a memory card, straight taken out of a digicam. I've paid special attention to the ability to read (and correctly display) EXIF thumbnails, the speed of accessing pictures, the various editing/image touching capabilities of the apps. Also, I've scrutinized their online capabilities: do they support easy distibution of the images over a Wi-Fi, or, worse, a GPRS/EDGE/3G connection?
One of the most important questions is compatibility and EXIF thumbnail reading speed. I've tested the apps with images from 41 different camera brands to test their compatibility; 36 of these cameras have hit the shelves in the last 12 months.
Another, very important question is whether the application is able to save high-resolution (say, 16 Mpixel) images at all, or it downscales (generally to 2 Mpixel) during saving. Unfortunately, very few image editor applications are capable of this.
Second, the "classic" usage of a
photo wallet: several hundred pictures converted into VGA size (I used 40%
quality; therefore, the average sizes of the files were between 6k and 63k;
converted mostly with the freeware PictureTray ( http://picturetray.com/ )) and put all of
them in a directory, of which I've watched a slideshow. It's probably the most
common usage of PDA's when used as digital photo wallets.
Several hundred? - you may ask. Yeah, it was one of my "torture tests". Very few people would do the same. Actually, neither would I (I keep my images on my PDA's in a strict directory structure, with no more than 200-300 pictures in one directory). It was still good to see that most of the applications still didn't crash upon stepping into directories and/or reading the thumbnails. Furthermore, this was the only test, in addition to the 14 Mpixel Kodak test where I didn't use images with (standard) EXIF thumbnails. This is why most pic viewer applications spent even 8-10 minutes to create the thumbnail images of them.
Because most applications can be used as both in the field editing tools AND (semi-)automated picture viewers, I didn't create two separate categories for them. However, upon introducing a given application, I've emphasized its capabilities and whether it's usable as either an editing tool or a slideshow'er or both.
Now, I introduce the applications and then, I elaborate more on the actual tests I've done.
(Please note that I haven't reviewed IA Album because it is no longer sold.)
The Pictures application in WM2003+
The operating system of new(er) Pocket PC PDA's, WM2003(SE) already comes (except for some, including WM2003 Professional - as opposed to Premium - devices - e.g., the iPAQ 1930/1940, where they have to be separately installed into RAM) with a built-in picture viewer, Pictures, which can be a handy tool in some cases. A sample image of the app is here. Its greatest advantage that it is always available, even after a (maybe unwanted, spontaneous) hard reset, because it's a ROM-based program. It's also free. It, however, isn't the fastest image viewer and offers very few adjustment / image editing capabilities. For example, it is only able to export JPG files in one quality setting; its adjustment capabilities are restricted to manual brightness / contrast adjustments and the only two other functions it has are cropping and rotating. It, however, supports saving even 14-16 Mpixel images (on a decent, 128M RAM device; on my 2210 with 64M RAM, I wasn't able to save images of that size), in which it is clearly better than most of the other image viewer/editor apps.
Its real strength
lies in being the best free WM2003SE application to set a Today wallpaper that
is immune to the problems plaguing other wallpaper setters resulting from the
VGA mode and the two orientations (tiling problems, wrong DPI etc.).
Because of the overall sluggishness and the lack of real painting/ drawing/ adjustment capabilities of Pictures, I have always been interested in 3rd party solutions for the PPC. Fortunately, there're quite a few such Pocket PC applications out there, with greatly varying capabilities. My goal was to give you a comprehensible and, most importantly, comparative review of them, so that you know what to expect from a given application and how it fares against the competition.
ACDSee Mobile 1.0 http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Products/WinCE/index?LAN=englishX10
Dithering- and shrink quality-test (forced VGA mode; taken of a downscaled, 800*600, 70% JPG quality image because of ACDSee's incompatibilities.)
(Please note that I've used this picture to give a shot of all the programs because it clearly shows whether the givem app uses dithering even in 16-bit screen mode (the default for all current PDA's) - check out the subtle color grades of the sky! Also, it shows whether there is some kind of an advanced shrinking algorithm, which can be very important in Image Wallet-type functionality to avoid jagged lines. Compare, for example, Resco's, Aidem's or Spb Imageer's rendition of the same image to this and you'll see the difference. The original was taken with a Nikon Coolpix 2000 by me in middle-Finland, July 2004 and can be downloaded from here. Also note that I've also mentioned in what mode the image in question has been captured. If I had to "force" the given application in plain SE mode to display the image in with VGA resolution, I've said so. The same stands for the "true" VGA mode with PQV. In other cases, when the given application is VGA compliant even in SE, I haven't mentioned anything additional.)
Who does not know ACDSee on the desktop? Few people. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the PPC version, which is almost useless. It's very hard to find any image that doesn't cause this program to crash. For its price, this app is definitely a no-go.
Pros:
- some additional basic image editing functionality (resize/crop/ adjust, but no drawing)
- the only program, in addition to Pocket Artist 3.0, that uses the standard EXIF ImageDescription, without recompression, to add textual notes. All the other programs either add nonstandard headers and/or put the notes into separate files and/or recompress the file after adding the header. Now if only it could read ANY real-world camera file...
Cons:
- can only be used to check out small (generally under 100 kbytes) images. It immediately exists upon loading larger size (>100k) files. Reads 640*480 small (!) test pics w/o probs. Should, therefore, only be used with pre-converted small pics, NOT to check your freshly-taken digicam memory cards.
- price
- likes to otherwise crash too (e.g. at reverting to saved images)
- quite bad thumbnail algorithm: it is not only slow at loading, but also caches quite bad. After some minutes of loading thumbnails, only the first 60-70 image thumbnails can be instantly browsed; consequent thumbnails have to be waited for with increasing waiting time. For example, if you move to the first page of the thumbnails (which are always rendered at once), and then back to the last (say, the 840th thumbnail), it takes some 5-10 seconds for the program to render the thumbnails this area. Most of the other apps cache thumbnails in memory much better.
- unlike most other apps, can't display pictures in full screen landscape mode
Verdict:
there is no point in buying this one, mostly because of the lack of the full
screen landscape mode in slideshow mode if you plan to use it strictly as a
slideshower app. Useless for a digicam photo browser - again, it can only be
used to show heavily pre-compressed files.
Fujitsu-Siemens Album
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test
This slideshower/ pic viewer (it has no image editing capabilties at all!) app is free for Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 users. Really nothing to say - you get what you pay for. It's OK if you don't have anything else, but, in most cases, there're much better applications for both tasks. It has a big disadvantage when used as a slideshow viewer: it displays the wait symbol when loading the next image. Unless you don't do anything to completely hide the system-level wait symbol by using a one pixel-tall/wide wait symbol like the one at http://discussion.brighthand.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=635554 as described at http://www.masellis.com/wait/create.htm, it will really be annoying.
Pros:
- free for PL720 users
- one of the very few programs that DO dithering even in 16-bit-mode, making e.g. the sky's graded colors much prettier. It introduces little noise during this, unlike some other dithering applications.
- the maximal memory consumption of the program is some 22 Mbytes, which accumulates during thumbnail generating. (Accumulation this means if you go to another picture directory without exiting Album, the previous directory you've just left is still cached in memory). When the program fills all these 22 Mbytes, it swaps out the generated thumbnails that are the farest away from the currently watched one. Otherwise, there are no problems relating to the memory (no memory leaks). The caching/thumbnail algorithm is clearly better than that of some other, sometimes even hi-end programs, which, at times, don't even display thumbnails of pictures when their memory gets full.
Cons:
- not as fast as commercial-grade apps
- waiting symbol
- no image editing capabilities at all
- switching to the new picture in album mode is pretty ugly (albeit more tolerable than that of XnView, which is maybe the worst)
- as with most PPC image viewers/editors, can't load even moderately large (>3-4 Mpixel) images at their original size, so zooming into them will be pixelizated
- much worse at playing MP4 videos than the free (!) BetaPlayer
- much as it has a 'Set as Today Wallpaper' functionality, Album's implementation is pretty bad, compared to that of built-in Pictures.
- doesn't like the EXIF thumbnails of (several?) Fujifilm and HP models - owners of those cameras, use some else app if you don't like waiting
Verdict:
you get what you pay for - a basic image viewer/slideshower without bells and whistles.
(Westtek) iPAQ Viewer 2.12
(Pre-installed on iPAQ devices)
Please note that it is no longer pre-installed on current HP devices. New-generation iPAQ's (for example, the iPAQ hx4700) come with HP Image Zone, which is a snappy and very good image viewer with native VGA support and fast EXIF thumbnail loading. I've tested this version because it came pre-installed on my iPAQ 2210. It's an extremely bare-bone app: in slideshow mode, almost nothing can be configured, only how the images advance further (manual/automatic/ automatic loop). Contains no editing capabilities at all. While it's reading the thumbnails, nothing can be done, not even scrolling on the thumbnail screen. In this regard, it's clearly inferior to any decent image viewer.
It is fairly fast at reading EXIF thumbnails, however. Had only problems with two Canon digicam types (see the first conclusion table). In addition, it was able to read the 6 Mbytes test image in 8 seconds, which isn't particularly bad either.
It didn't fare well in the 14 Mpixel 'torture' test, however. While it only took Resco 5.2 2:25 mins:seconds on my 2210 to calculate and display all the thumbnails, iPAQ Viewer spent 6:32 at it. If you even take into account the speed difference between the 400 MHz PXA-255 iPAQ and the 520 MHz PXA-272, the difference is even bigger.
Verdict:
can be quite handy as an in-the-field image viewer if you don't really need
fast zooming and a reponsive GUI (and you have a supported digicam - see the
EXIF compatibility matrix). As a generic image slideshow app, however, it's not
the best.
Resco Picture Viewer 5.32
http://www.resco-net.com/picview_dwn.asp
Dithering- and shrink quality-test, using default ("Use best quality shrink") settings
Dithering- and shrink quality-test, NOT using the default settings
One of the best image viewers. It's really fast and, as with better image viewers, caches the thumbnails to storage memory before exiting. It has no EXIF compatibility problems at all, unlike with F-S Album or Spb Imageer. It is one of the fastest apps in both EXIF thumbnail display (XnView is still a bit faster) and JPEG rendering (PQV is still faster in that).
Pros:
- along with Spb and the two apps from Aidem, this app has by far the best shrinking quality
- speed
- compatibility - was able to read everything, even the 14 Mpixel 'torture' images that made Spb crash. Had no compatibility / speed problems with EXIF thumbnail images either.
- SH3/MIPS PPC2k versions
- desktop-based converter/optimizer/uploader tool, as with Spb Imageer/SplashPhoto; it is even capable of converting PowerPoint presentations
- MPEG1/2 video playing capabilties (though, limited - wasn't able to play the sound of the HP850 video)
Cons:
- isn't able to zoom into even moderately large (>3-4 Mpixel) images at their original size, so zooming into them will be pixelizated
- it also lacks the ability to export >2 Mpixel images without resizing them. Compared to its most important generic "jack-of-all-trades" alternative, Spb Imageer, this is a serious drawback.
- "only" limited editing capabilities (mostly add drawing & text/notes/ crop/resize/brightness setting).
- it has the 'Set as Today Wallpaper' functionality, but it is inferior to that of the free, built-in WM2003(SE) Pictures because of landscape tiling problems, just like the case with F-S Album. (The Start Menu background bug has been fixed in version 5.3x.)
As far as memory
consumption is concerned, it puts a 287kbyte RFileShell.dll
in \Windows; it can be directly
copied to the home directory of the application on the card. Please note that
this DLL is also shared by Resco File Explorer, so, if you move them it out of \Windows, Resco File Explorer will no
longer be able to start. Therefore, you may want to opt for including a File
Store directory in the system path (I've described this at, say, http://www.firstloox.org//forums/showthread.php?t=3752
) or, copy another copy of this DLL to the home of Resco File Explorer too.
Verdict:
highly recommended as a generic image viewer for all kinds of tasks. Only has
few drawbacks (zoom etc.) For image editig on-the-go, on the other hand, is
useless over 2 Mpixel images.Use for example XnView, Pocket Phojo, Pocket
Artist or Imageer for that.
PDAMill Viewer
http://www.pdamill.com/prod_vi.shtml
Dithering- and shrink quality-test (forced VGA)
For a free application with so small a memory footprint, this app delivers much. It has a quite quick JPG decoder algorithm (PQV is still considerably faster). Unfortunately, it doesn't even try to render thumbnails of large images (let alone native support). This is a severe problem, which renders it almost useless for in-the-field use. For simple pre-made images, it may be OK, though.
Pro:
- free
- very small memory footprint
- ideal for a lightweight pic viewer
- for images not having the 2:3 size ratio
Cons:
- can't display thumbnails of large, unmodified camera JPG's
- can "only" step into a directory with around 500 files; with more files, it just crashes
- disables all the app buttons when the program is run; no task switching etc. is possible
- "only" a picture viewer, nothing else, not even zooming / dedicated slideshow, unlike most other apps in the test
Verdict:
A good alternative if you "only" need a free lightvewight pic viewer that
is still much better than PIE.
XnView 1.31
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test (forced VGA)
This is a free, constantly-updated application. Version 1.3x delivered real EXIF thumbnail and IPCT support, which is indeed welcome - before that, the lack of EXIF thumbnail support rendered this application almost useless for digicam users. It's a great all-in-one image viewer/converter tool with great batch capabilities. However, the lack of 8+ Mpixel capabilities make it pretty useless for users using high(er)-end cameras.
Pros:
- free!
- great conversion (also in batch mode) capabilities
- has some other, unique functionalities; for example, creating EXE files off slideshows or JPEG lossless rotate - not even the most expensive apps can do that!
- working VGA screen capturer capability
- can be used to edit/resave even 4-5 Mpixel images without resizing, while most other apps can only read up to 2 Mpixel. Larger (8+ Mpixel) images, however, are not saved at all, not even resized, which is a serious drawback!
- was the fastest in the EXIF test (mostly because it loads EXIF files in one thread, unlike most of the other commercial apps)
- one of the fastest JPEG decoding algorithms (PQV is still better)
- its batch (All <transformation name> button in the transformations/adjustments available in the Tools menu; it will be visible if you choose all files in a subdirectory with File/Selection/All) mode is much more advanced than that of, say, Pocket Artist (PA): it supports JPEG quality setting, saving as not only JPEG but also GIF/BMP/PNG, defining filename pre-and postfixes. Has some of other functionality over PA too: Sharpen/Smooth/Reduce noise/Adjust (B/C/G), lossless rotate (PA doesn't support losless rotate), etc. It doesn't work on 7+ MP images, though, in this mode.
-
resaves EXIF info; even EXIF
thumbnails
Cons:
- as has already been mentioned, can't save 7-8+ Mpixel images at all, not even (automatically) resized. This is a big minus nowadays that most, even lower-end consumer digicams are between 5 and 7 Mpixels and 8 Mpixel devices will emerge quick even in the low-end comsumer category
- in slideshow mode, pics are swapped far uglier and slower than in the other viewers - the scroll from the side is pretty ugly and certainly visible.
- zooming into large images, unlike with other programs, results in an error message and a gray screen - other programs are better in that they at least show a(n in most cases pixelizated) image.
Verdict:
Highly recommended for under-8-megapixel digicam freaks that want something like
an ImageMagick on their PDA - for free. Has an unmatchedly great batch mode.
For watching slideshows, though, there may be visually more pleasing
applications.
CEPicture 2.7
http://www.limelink.com/en/cepicture/
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test
(picture
taken in forced VGA; this is why the icons are so small)
An old, no longer developed application.
Pros:
- small memory footprint
- even has SH3/MIPS support
Cons:
- old and not really feature-ridden
- really slow
- no EXIF thumbnail support
Verdict: I can't really recommend this application. It, however, has some merits (animated GIF support or adding textual annotations in a standard file format.)
Spb Imageer 1.2
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/imageer/?en
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test
A tolerably fast and capable program with clearly lower EXIF thumbnail loading speeds and compatibility than with Resco, Loupe, Pocket Artist or Pocket Phojo. At the 14 Mpixel 'torture' test, it was able to read the thumbnails of two different digicam models; it crashed, however, at reading both the thumbnails and the full images of the Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n. The crash may result in some in-machine memory card-messup, but fortunately it's not physical because it really doesn't destroy the file system of the memory card. It's just that the PPC isn't able to read the card any more until reinserting it (this was enough on the iPAQ 2210) or resetting the PPC (this had to be done on the PL 720). As it seems, this bug only affects one digicam model, though - it didn't crash with the other 50+ tested cameras.
Pros:
- even resaves 16 Mpixel images at their original size, unlike Resco / most other apps
- quick JPEG decoding engine, only two times slower than that of PQV
- quite a lot image-editing/conversion functionality (XnView, Pocket Artist and the two Idruna apps are still better in this respect)
- has an ActiveSync plug-in for image uploading to the PPC, which helps in pre-rotating and resizing of pictures upon uploading, to avoid using a desktop-based (batch) resizing tool before uploading.
- Storage Card Notification - upon inserting a memory card with pictures, a notification 'bubble' is displayed to even more speed up the process of e.g. sharing the pictures on the Web
Cons:
- major memory leaks in slideshow mode. It likes just stopping before the ending picture when the memory fills in. Neither of my test slideshows did get to the last image because of this. The problem is acknowledged by Spb Software House and they're working on the fix. Until then, I don't think this app should be used as a slideshow viewer.
- while it can edit and resave even 14 Mpixel images, it can't zoom into them - sometimes it even has problems with zooming into 2 Mpixel images.
- not as sophisticated as, for example, Conduits Pocket Artist 3.0 when it comes to Photoshop-like usage (e.g. only has two filters, Sharpen and Blur, while Pocket Artist has several of them etc.). Still, has e.g. Red-eye correction, contrast/hue, red/green/blue channel adjusting - these are all missing from Resco.
-
in the
"torture test", it had problems (even without displaying thumbnails,
that is, in List mode): for example, reading a directory list of 844 files
takes exactly 2 minutes. During this, the PPC is useless and nothing happens.
The same is true of starting the program: as it reads the last current
directory, it can easily grind the PPC to halt during startup. This test also
found out that the cache algorithm, as opposed to that of, e.g., Album, is not
as bullet-proof as it could be: it wouldn't swap out currently unvisible
thumbnails to make room for new, visible ones when the pre-defined 22 MByte of
RAM is totally occupied. Of course, this is not a minus because noone will put
200+ files in one directory; still worth mentioning.
Verdict: a very good (and definitely cheaper), albeit,
EXIF thumbnail-reading speed-wise, slower alternative to Resco, with additional image
editing capabilities. The slideshow memory leakage, however, is a real
show-stopper.
Aidem Pocket Painter 2.11
http://www.aidem.com.tw/English/en_pocketpainter.htm
Dithering- and shrink quality-test
Not really meant for photo viewing (it's the job of another app of the same developer) - it has, for example, no dedicated slideshow mode, but great as an image editor for small(er) images.
Pros:
- has no problems opening large images (downscales them)
- is able to create new images; max. size around 3-4 Mpixel.
- dithering, unlike most programs
- send via E-mail and IrDA
- tons of filters (Blur / Sharpen / Average / Despeckle / Diffuse / Emboss / Find Edge / Mosaic / Trace Countour / Cool Color / Warm Color)
- good adjustments (Brightness / Contrast / Hue / Saturation / Gamma)
- basic, common generic functions (flip / rotate, even with any degree, not just multipliers of 90), Rescale, Invert, Gray, Color Level.
- tons of editing capabilities (e.g., Gradient Tool; Water / Oil / Wax/ Carbon / Mick / Color Pen, Chalk etc.)
Cons:
- only saves large images downscaled with the factor of 3.5
- BMP / GIF (no support for animated GIF's) / JPG support only
Aidem Photo Explorer 2.01
http://www.aidem.com.tw/English/en_photoexplorer.htm
Dithering- and shrink quality-test
Pros:
-
excellent
shrinking quality, unlike with most other apps
-
good
speed (PQV is better though)
-
annotations
are stored in the original image directory in the standardized format, unlike
with most other apps
- 18 transition effects
-
slideshow
is able to synchronize with sound files, to wait for their end, unlike with
most other apps
-
integration
with Aidem Pocket Painter to do the non-viewing (that is, editing) stuff.
Editing done in Aidem Pocket Painter, however, don't see at once in Photo
Explorer - the image must be saved from Pocket Painter and reloaded into Photo
Explorer.
-
settable
global display gamma; for color channels too! (see
http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=38123 on this.)
Cons:
-
no EXIF thumbnail support!
- problems in GIF slideshow with some (e.g., the Zoom) transition effects: only displays them in the left upper quarter screen; the other screen areas are filled with static. This is not a serious problem - you'll hardly display any GIF slideshows. JPG slideshows aren't affected by this bug.
-
even
a bit of zooming results in pixelizated images (a tradeoff for the very fast
JPG decoding / loading)
-
while
rendering the thumbnails, it's totally unable to open any images. Fortunately,
it only renders a page of thumbnails: after rendering them, the device becomes
responsive again.
- doesn't save EXIF info
Verdict:
not bad, especially if you use it together with Aidem Pocket Painter. Then, it
becomes a very good, albeit a bit expensive (almost as expensive as Pocket
Artist, which is still better!) tool. The real showstopper may be the lack of
EXIF thumbnail support, though.
Conduits Pocket Artist 3.0
http://www.conduits.com/products/artist/download.asp
Dithering- and shrink quality-test
A really full-fledged "Photoshop-on-a-PDA" application. Has no dedicated slideshow mode - but it's not meant to be a (lightweight, cheap) slideshower app either. Starting from version 3.0 beta 2, the very slow EXIF reading algorithm has been fixed - now, it has no problems at reading and rendering them fast. Note that up until this version, it had a very slow thumbnbail generating algorithm - do not get old versions if you plan to use it as an on-the-field digicam companion!
Pros:
- tons of image editing/filtering capabilities. Just to name a few:
o Brushes: Default / Calligraphic/ Dotted / Natural
o Pencil: Paintbrush / Pencil / Airbrush / Clone stamp / Pattern stamp/ Gradient / Paint Bucket
o Tools: Eyedropper / Eraser / Dodge/Burn / Smudge / Red-Eye Brush / Cleaning Brush
o Select tools: Select Rect / Select Ellipse / Select Row / Select Column / Magic Wand / Lasso / Select Polygon / Move / Deselect
o Drawing: Draw Text / Text Outline / Draw Line / Rectangle / Ellipse / Polygon
- by far the best color correction/histogram-wise (see 'Adjust' in table)!
- animated GIF support, even for editing (the only full-fledged generic PPC image app to also support creating animated GIF's)
- IPTC editing is non-destructive/non-recompressing and it really excels at batch-adding pre-made, file-based IPTC tags. In this respect, it's much better than Pocket Phojo.
-
resaves EXIF info; even EXIF
thumbnails
Cons:
-
definitely an overkill for users
that "only" need an image viewer app
- some users (for example, Gerard here) reported memory leakage problems
- has some restrictions in batch mode (Image/Tools), compared to, say, XnView. It's only capable of rotate, flip, transpose, add IPTC fields (this is, as has been pointed out, pretty intelligent!) and resize. The latter to given dimensions only (320*240 (QVGA), 640*480 (VGA).... 1600*1200). The biggest problem with this mode is that you can't change the saving JPEG quality (again, unlike in XnView) - batch processed JPEG images are all blocky unless you only crop them. In the latter case, PA will do a lossless transformation. However, as you can see in the summarizing table, crop can't be applied to more than one image automatically (this is why I haven't listed it in the list above). Furthermore, there is not any kind of adjustments in the batch mode either, unlike, for example, the automatic adjustments offered by Spb Imageer.
Verdict:
This program may be well situated for people that need a mini-Photoshop on the
go. Compared with the other high-quality tool capable of creating images, Photogenics
1.0, it has much more sophisticated tools and a higher maximal resolution when
creating new images. I wish it had a much better batch mode.
PHM Slideshow
http://www.phm.lu/Products/PocketPC/Plus/#Slideshow
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test (forced VGA)
This small (20 kbytes) and free program is a
very simple slideshow application. It's only QVGA in QVGA; works OK in forced
VGA mode, however. It's pretty slow at reading large images and doesn't support
any kind of rotation of them. It only has one transition effect. However, for
free, it's still worth trying out if you only need a very simple slideshow
application that is part of an otherwise great package.
The two following apps
have no separate column in the summary table below because they're just drawing
/ image creator programs. They're only included here to show that you sometimes
don't need to spend big bucks on applications like Pocket Artist or those of
Idrune for even advanced drawing/filtering capabilities (e.g., Gradation
Palette) on a PDA because there're free tools to do the same. (Please note that
I haven't reviewed some other, painting-centric PPC programs. See, for
example, http://www.mobiletechreview.com/software/ppc_paint.htm
for more info.)
Mobile Pencil 2.20
http://www1.mahoroba.ne.jp/cgi-bin/user-cgi/~nefa/ecafe.cgi?=soft_ce_nfpencil2
Free; there's also a
"Pro" version as well. Tested the free one.
Memory consumption: 545k
Supports VGA in
native VGA.
Pen: size / color /
erase. Only reads/saves BMP images.
Hardware keys
mappable to specific functions like zooming.
Verdict: If you need
a 'pencil simulator', this program is the way to go. You can draw on the screen
as if you used a real lead pencil. You can also choose 4 different types of
paper, which greatly affect how you draw. Pretty cool for what it does, but
definitely not on par with the other apps in the test.
Mobile Atelier
http://www1.mahoroba.ne.jp/cgi-bin/user-cgi/~nefa/ecafe.cgi?=soft_ce_nfcanvas2
Memory consumption: 1.9M
It's also free and
does know a lot for that. The Pro version, priced at US$ 19.95, knows even
more; but, for "basic" stuff, the free version may suffice. For
example, in the Gradient plug-in (Gradation Palette), you can only supply 2 end
colors in the free, while 4 colors in the Pro version; furthermore, you can
also save the current gradation palette to a "palette" subfolder. It
also supports layers and has quite a few plug-ins: Water Pen 10x10/ 20x20; Move
Layer; Layer Operation; the above-mentioned Gradation Palette; Color Selector;
TV like effect; Various special effects
(Brightness, Contrast, Blur, Inverse, Mono), Solids (Line/Rect/Ellipse); Texts; Random Maze Creator; File Manager; Effect
Pen; Point Pen.
It's by default VGA
on a VGA device. Seems to have problems with actual drawing, however, on a VGA
machine; haven't tested it on a QVGA one so coulndn't decide whether it's VGA
that it has problems with.
RPhoto 2.0
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test (forced VGA)
Button-only control: not reconfigurable; previous/next only.
Free, works with forced VGA and only takes 123k memory. Pretty fast at generating thumbnails. It has neither landscape nor fullscreen view. There may be cases, however, when it's of great help: it's one the very few picture viewers that display today's middle-resolution (e.g., 5 Mpixel) images well, without downscaling. It can't read 14 Mpixel images, however.
Pros:
- free
- quick at rendering thumbnails: 32 thumbnails of 2 Mpixel images are rendered in about 1.5 seconds
- one of the few programs to display 5 Mpixel pictures "as is", without downsampling
Cons:
- lack of landscape view; you have to explicitly switch to landscape on the op. system level (and, preferably, switch to VGA so that the toolbars don't take much screen estate) to achieve almost the same result as all the other viewers
- can't read 14 MPixel images
- not really suited for slideshows
- average shrinking quality
- doesn't read GIF images
Verdict:
only use it if you REALLY need to zoom into mid-sized (around 5 Mpixel) images
and don't want to pay for commercial solutions.
PQV 3.0.10
http://www.bitbanksoftware.com/PQV.html
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test (native VGA)
I really wanted to know how this application fares against the competition, because according to http://www.bitbanksoftware.com/PQV_comparison.html, it used to be the fastest app. In heavy-duty tasks like the 14 Mpixel thumbnail / picture reading 'torture' test, it certainly excelled. It has file open/save problems with WM2003SE, but with a little bit of patience, it's usable. Unfortunately, the common plaque of the inability to export images more than 2 Mpixel at their original size also applies to PQV.
The real strength of this application lies in the speed it decodes and renders JPEG images. It's even faster than the second-fastest application, Resco.
Pros:
- is by far the fastest at generating 14 Mpixel thumbnails; wasn't able to display two of them correctly, however.
- It has a fine-tunable JPEG loading options, just like Resco, to shove off loading times. If you enable this (it's not enabled by defaut!), it has by far the fastest JPEG decoding engine. Resco, the second fastest, renders images about 1.5 times slower.
- along with Spb Imageer, XnView, Pocket Artist and Pocket Phojo, the best batch mode (it's another question it can't save in more than 1.3 Mpixel mode so it's almost completely useless)
- one of the very few players to play videos and Kodak digicam videos. It's not as good as BetaPlayer, however.
- along with Resco, the only slideshower that waits for a voice note to end without stepping to the next image
Cons:
-
incompatible with original images taken by HP cameras. I've tested
quite a few models (850, R707, 935, 812); none of them worked. This app is
definitely not for HP camera users.
- on my WM2003SE device (FS PL 720), the file chooser dialog is buggy and almost grinds the PDA to halt if there's any memory card in the PDA (without memory cards, it works fast, but the drop-down menus are still not visible). It' very hard to choose any file this way (it's the best to copy all of them into \My Documents before starting the program). On my iPAQ 2210 (WM2003), however, it's perfectly OK. It may be a generic WM2003SE issue. Some screenshots of the bug:
The same under WM2003:
-
torture
test: crashes when reading the thumbnails of 300+ images in a directory
- tied too much to QVGA mode (e.g., in any VGA mode useless screen snapshot; problems with dialogs in native VGA etc)
- the biggest problem: unable to save larger (>2 Mpixel) images; always downscales them to 1280*960
- very bad EXIF support; doesn't even keep them upon saving
- much worse at playing videos than the free (!) BetaPlayer
Verdict:
pretty good (with some special features), but the buggy file open/save screen on
WM2003SE, the general QVGA-tiedness, the very bad EXIF support and the
downscaling at save (compare this to XnView/Spb/Idruna!) are a big pain in the back.
However, if you only want an image viewer application that has the fastest JPEG
decoding algorithm, this app is for you.
Dava 2.0.5
http://www.freewareppc.com/graphics/davapictureviewer.shtml
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test (forced VGA)
It doesn't have its own column in the summarizing table because of its limited capabilities.
Memory consumption: 123k
Images
read: BMP/GIF/JPG/PNG
Button-only control: not reconfigurable. D-pad: next/previous; no other buttons.
No VGA in QVGA, only in forced/native VGA.
Pros:
- free
- 330k memory footprint
Cons:
- quite slow at reading thumbnails (and only 5 is displayed at the same time, even in VGA) - 1 thumbnail of a 2 Mpixel image in appr. 0.3 seconds.
- zoom is totally useless
- slideshow mode useless because it only uses half of the screen estate
- seems that in general it is tied to QVGA
- reads pics at VGA resolution, so not even 2 Mpixel images can't be really zoomed into
Verdict:
should be avoided on a VGA machine
iView 1.0.0.1603
http://www.pocketpccity.com/software/pocketpc/iView-2003-1-17-ce-pocketpc.html
Dithering- and shrink quality-test
Button-only control: nothing at all; can be only used using the touch screen. In this respect, it's the worst in this roundup.
Pros:
- memory consumption only 89k
- native support for VGA
Cons:
- absolutely nothing: no landscape mode, no zoom, no thumbnails, slow JPEG decoding speed
- 10 (ten) US$ for this?!?
Verdict:
not even for free...
Avantgarde Digital Digivue 1.1
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test
A well-known image viewer/slideshow program. It doesn't really have anything to write home about. Has no real advantages over, say, Resco.
Pros:
· not very slow JPEG decoding
Cons:
- no EXIF thumbnail support
- very hard to navigate over thumbnails - the picture thumnail section doesn't have any dedicated scrollbar. The arrows only allow for stepping over a screenful of images. It also means the image that it'll step to will be loaded, which can be a pain in the back with large images, sometimes taking 10-12 secs to load.
Picture Perfect 5.14s
http://www.applian.com/pocketpc/pictureperfect/index.php
Dithering- and shrink quality-test
The app is not developed any more; the last version, 5.14s, has been updated some 2 years ago, in July 2003.
It's a bare-bone image viewer / slideshower app. To load a directory of images (you can't just load individual ones based on their filename), choose Album/New/From Folder, navigate to the target folder and click OK. Then, click the thumbnail icon in the far right to see the thumbnails. If you want to wait, that is - it's very slow at loading them.
It has no editing capabilities either. Removing its support files from \My Document renders it unable to be run any more.
It has, however, dithering. The latter, however, introduces a quite large amount of noise into the images. The following thee shots, from up to down, are from Resco (default dithered mode, no dithering), Album (which uses dithering) and Picture Perfect:
It's also worth
noticing that the horizontal stripes on the guy's T-shirt are only visible on
the Resco representation of the image; on the two other images are completely
messed up.
To sum it up: I don't recommend this app at
all.
PictPocket Cinema 4.0
http://www.digisoftdirect.com/products/pictpocketcinema.html
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test
Pro:
- VGA card support
Cons:
- much worse at playing videos than the free (!) BetaPlayer
- no real image saving mode. All modifications are saved in a proprietary MAB file, which can only be processed by the same program. That is, any additional drawing / modifying an image can only be seen in the same application and nothing else. This really limits the usability of the program.
- useless for REAL quick work - loaded the 14 Mpixel images very slowly
- far worse for its very high (!) price than any other image watching / slideshow program
Glass Lantern's PocketLoupe 1.71b
http://www.glasslantern.com/products/index.htm;
see also: http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/software/pocketloupe/
Dithering- and
shrink quality-test
Specifically meant for in-the-field digicam use; therefore, it comes in two versions, a RAW-capable and a JPEG-only capable, the latter being significantly cheaper. It has quite a few pro's - excellent tool if you only want to quickly review your images and delete unwanted ones, much faster/at much higher resolution than on your digicam.
Pros:
- VGA support
- one-touch delete
- histogram
-
RAW/TIF file support; from version 1.70, a lot of new raw formats are
supported
- email send
-
very fast at reading EXIF thumbnails and has no EXIF compatibility
problems
- 159k memory consumption
- has a cheaper, LE version (without raw capabilities) for JPEG-only camera users
Cons:
-
reads all
directories from a card
- zoom range severely limited: only 2 zoom levels
- limited EXIF display
- no editing at all
- in the 14 Mpixel torture test, it was the only one app to use the non-standard EXIF thumbnails of the Kodak DCS Pro SLR/c. The rest of the thumbnails remained black, but it is still possible to click their place.
- on the other hand, when reading other (not the 14 Mpixel "torture" check) JPG's without EXIF tumbnails, it worked; it's clearly slower than other applications, though.
- doesn't read GIF images (it's not a problem with digicam users, though)
- not the fastest at JPEG decoding
It's really the best tool if you want fast image reviewing and, especially, all kind of RAW support.
Photogenics 1.0 Release 139
http://www.idruna.com/products_pocketpc.html
Idruna's first image editor program. It has very good features, especially when you take its age (over 3+ years) into account.
Pros:
- a lot of filters/adjustments, even more than that of Pocket Artist. Blur (Blur/ FireBlur/GaussianBlur/ MotionBlur/ PanBlur/RadialBlur/RollBlur); Colour (AddColour/ColourToGrey/ DifferenceRGB/ InvertBrightness/ Negative/ Posterize/Sepia /Solarize/ SubtractColour/Threshold) / Convolve (EdgeDetect / Sharpen / UnsharpMask) / Enhance (AutoContrast/AutoEnhance / RemoveColourCast / RemoveRedEye / RemoveNoise) / Map (BumpMap / ContourMap / DisplaceMap) / Retouch (Adjust / Burn / Colourise / Darken / Dodge / Lighten / HardLight / Overlay / Multiply / Screen / SoftLight / Tint) / Stylize (AddNise /BasRelief / Emboss / HoneyComb / Min / Median / Max / Pixelize / Randomize) / Transfer (Clone / ChannelFlip / FlipX / FlipY / Roll / Tile) / RubThru / Fire / Paint )
- a lot of editing capabilities (no color bars, however)
- layer-based editing; freely addable / movable image and paint layers
Cons:
- not any kind of VGA support (they haven't touched the app since 2001) and it seems that none in the work.
- there are not as fine-tuned color, histogram-based color editing/refining capabilities as in Pocket Artist.
Pocket Phojo V3.0 release 256
http://www.idruna.com/pocketphojo.html
Dithering- and shrink
quality-test
Idruna's main in-the-field image editing tool. Very pricey, but you still may find it an essential tool if you have to process images over 10-12 Mpixel and need really fast EXIF thumbnail reading, which, for example, Spb Imageer doesn't offer. It also sports the fastest. most efficient PPC-based FTP client available.
Pros:
- a REAL app for the photographer-on-the-go, especially with Canon/Nikon cameras with the Wi-Fi add-on (see below)
-
really fast EXIF thumbnail reading
-
file-to-file batch conversion capabilties
-
by far the fastest batch resizing speed; about
an order of magnitude faster than either XnView 1.31 or Pocket Artis 3.0!
Resized 237 files totalling 624 Mbyte (reading from a fast SD card, writing the
VGA-sized target files to main memory), even including 16 Mpixel ones, on a Pocket Loox 720 in 31
minutes!
-
unmatched Wi-Fi communication & automation capabilities with the Nikon
WT-1/WT-2 and Canon WFT-E1 WiFi transmitters (see http://idruna.com/pocketphojo_wifi.html
for more info)
- direct FTP upload; other apps can only E-mail, if at all.
- the only program that was able to process all the 14 Mpixel images. The only other program, Spb Imageer, capable of saving large pictures, didn't work with Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n images.
- much as it uses its own SMTP client, it's a bit more advanced than that of Windows Mobile: it has a progress bar and also shows detailed success/failure reports.
- it has built-in FTP upload capabilities (unlike other programs), and it's faster than the other FTP clients available. I've made several tests and, over a tolerably fast (USB AS; these results can be extrapolated to Wi-Fi speeds as well) connection, got the following results (you may also check out http://www.firstloox.org/forums/showthread.php?p=18741 for more info on PPC FTP clients):
· Resco Explorer's FTP plug-in: 130 kbytes/s from card; 150 kbytes/s from main memory
·
Pocket Phojo: 190 kbytes/s from card
· vxFtp: 4 kbytes/s from card; 4 kbytes/s from main memory (stunning results if you take into account that vxFtp is by far the fastest app at downloading)
·
CedeFTP: 145 kbytes/s from card; 145
kbytes/s from main memory
Cons:
- price
- upon (also batch) conversion, EXIF info is not preserved
-
an earlier
beta build had CR/LF problems with my SMTP server. The latest build, however,
used Idruna's SMTP server without problems. I haven't tested it with my SMTP
server.
-
"torture
test": the beta crashed upon reading 800 VGA file thumbnails. It read the
first 390 files in 2:20 (with a 40s initial directory catch-up, during which
the PDA became unresponsive) and then stopped. The dynamic memory consumption
varied between 26 and 28M during this. Nothing could be accessed after this,
the memory wasn't freed - had to reset.
- batch file conversion capabilities could be a bit more advanced. Now, as of release 256 is concerned, only caption editing, JPEG quality setting, resizing and manual saturation/sharpness settings are accessible, while the app also supports for example automatic brightness settings. The IPTC adding capabilities of Pocket Artist 3.0 are definitely better than the simple caption adding of Phojo. And, you can't add a caption to an image without recompressing it.
Bottom
line: the Wi-Fi capabilities, the excellent FTP upload efficiency and the
blazingly fast batch resizing/conversion capabilities make this app unique. For
casual (non-pro) users, the high price tag is quite restrictive, though.
SplashPhoto 4.32
http://www.splashdata.com/ppc/splashphoto/index.htm
Dithering- and shrink quality-test
Button-only control: not reconfigurable; previous/next only.
This app may be a good alternative to, for example, Spb for people with 10+ Mpixel machines for quick image revision. It has, however, no editing capabilities.
Pros:
- second torture test: was able to read (at appr. 3 sec/picture) and display all the 14 Mpixel thumbnails
- pretty fast at decoding 14 Mpixel images (6 secs for the 6.6 MBytes/14 MPixel image)
- no wait symbol in slideshow mode, quick delete supported
- IrDA/E-mail transfer capabilities
- native VGA support
- just like Spb/Resco, it also has a desktop-based image conversion tool to avoid using third-party solutions for converting/resizing the images before uploading to the PDA
- in-memory image (not just thumbnail!) cache - caches the last viewed images in memory (in VGA size), so that it can be seen again very fast. No other viewer is able to do the same.
Cons:
- no dithering, average shrinking quality, no zoom of any kind
- has a wrong wallpaper setting functionality, because it just copies the file in question to \Windows\tdycust.jpg, without resizing it. Exactly how for example MultiIE or Pocket Artist behaves, though.
- unable to read only a settable directory - reads all directories at once under \My Documents in the main memory and \DCIM on storage cards (it isn't able to selectively step into a given directory); it completely ignores other directories
- has not any kind of thumbnail caching mechanism in the default listing mode - it's really a pain in the neck to browse large digicam thumbnails because, after switching back from viewing a given image to the detailed list view, it also reads the thumbnails. Fortunately, this isn't the case with the simple thumbnail view (without details) - there, it's pretty fast.
- the slideshow mode doesn't have anything special: no voice/textual annotations, no transition effects
- doesn't read GIF images
Testing methologies
I've used my Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 to run my tests. To test some bugs and the iPAQ Viewer, I've also used my iPAQ 2210. I've always soft reset the device before going on with the next program. To avoid some programs' using their own thumbnail caches, I've always measured thumbnail reading at the first reading and also checked for thumbnails files in the file system. There has always been over 100 Mbytes of free main memory, except for the 8Mpixel case, when I moved the files into main memory. The PDA had its factory settings - no overclocking took place.
I've run benchmarks and tests with the following types of images:
- "standard" EXIF thumbnail and overall compatibility tests with over 50 digicams; the list of them can be found in the table below. These tests were all done with a Pocket Loox 720 after the 712 ROM upgrade, which clearly boosted SD reading performance.
- reading a !!!!!!!!!
- torture test one: 14 MPixel images on an SD card (accessed by the Loox at about 800-900 kbytes/s - please note that these tests, along with all the other, not belonging to the EXIF tests above, were all made with the same PL720 but with an earlier ROM version). There were 54 of them, totalling 169288 kbytes. These images all had non-standard and/or non-existing EXIF thumbnail images; thus, they all forced image viewer apps to read the image files in their entirety and generate the thumbnail image. This torture test is a great simulation for cases with missing EXIF thumbnails. This is the case if you just convert your image files with ImageMagick, without explicitly instructing it to preserve the EXIF thumbnail.
- EXIF and generic full reading test: 8 Mpixel images in the main memory (so that the memory card reading speed doesn't interfere in the results). There were 17 of them, totalling 45346 kbytes; the camera was a Nikon Coolpix 8700.
- 5 and 2 Mpixel images on a CF card, accessed a bit slower than the SD card; at about 600-700 kbytes/s. 105 files, totalling 110Mbytes, on the CF. These images have all been taken by me with a Nikon Coolpix 5000 and 2000.
- torture test two: 844 small (sized 6-63k) VGA files, totalling 23Mbytes, on the CF. This was the second "torture" test. Once again, failing in this test doesn't mean the given application works bad, because it's very rare to have more than 200 files in any directory. Digicams never put more than 200 files in a directory, and, if you don't want to cause problems either, you shouldn't put so many image files in the same directory either. Actually, it's well over 300 images that the tested programs started to fail / refuse to load the images or their file listing, so in real-life situations (<200 images in a directory), they all will behave OK. As has been already pointed out, I've removed the EXIF thumbnails from these images (as with the images in the first, 14 Mpixel torture test) to find out the real thumbnail generation speed from reading in and processing/downscaling the entire image file. This is why the 'torture' test results differ so much from those of images with intact EXIF thumbs.
When measuring checking memory consumption, I've also scrutinized whether the tested apps put anything in main memory (DLL's etc). Fortunately, none of them did. Some loaded some example pictures / ads in \My Documents, but they can easily be found and deleted.
VGA compatibility: in the era of VGA screens, it is of high importance to have VGA-compliant picture viewers/editors. Fortunately, most apps were able to present a VGA GUI/high resolution picture in plain QVGA mode, without doing any additional hacking or switching the PDA to native VGA mode. I this case, there is a '+' mark denoting 'yes' in the "VGA in QVGA?" row.
There're applications, however, that only present QVGA-resolution pictures on VGA devices, but, with applying the Hi-Res resolution hack described at, for example, http://www.pc-counselor.com/How_to/index.htm#doublepixeling , are able to render pictures at their full glory - that is, at VGA resolution. Some pic viewers indeed work flawlessly in this (called "forced VGA") mode; some (e.g., PQV) don't.
Non-VGA-aware picture viewers that are unable to work with QVGA / the forced VGA hack still may work in the so-called "native VGA" mode of WM2003SE. This is the last resort of a VGA user because the QVGA screen on a VGA device is so much better unless you use a configurable 'native' VGA client like OzVGA. Still, if nothing else works, this is the only way to go to be able to see images in VGA resolution.
Unfortunately, there are still some (older) programs that still have problems even with native VGA mode. Fortunately, with a little bit of tweaking, these problems can be solved; it's only with very few programs (e.g., Photogenics) that have serious problems in this mode. I've added remarks all over the row to denote such incompatibilities.
In-the-field digicam users
The next main section, "For in-the-field digicam users" in the table discusses the uses an in-the-field digicam user wanting to quickly review / delete / comment / resize / crop / adjust / edit (by drawing) / filter images
The most important test, the EXIF thumbnail reading and compatibility test ("EXIF thumbnail compliance?"), has already been discussed and the results collected in a separate table.
The next test, "Reading a 10M 16 Mpixel image at 104 MHz", is also very important.
I've chosen a publicly available 10Mbyte-big 16 Mpixel dpreview image (be warned, the link is a direct link! Do NOT click it unless you're REALLY sure you want to download 10 Mbytes!) for this test so that it is easily reproducable. I ran my Pocket Loox 720 at constant 104 MHz so that the results can be easily benchmarked and compared, unlike running the PDA at the default 520 MHz, where loading/rendering times are about 4 times less in general, making benchmarking and comparing much harder.
Where the particular application allowed for load time optimizations, I've also benchmarked loading times using them. This way, I've managed to reduce, for example, the loading time of PQV to be clearly the best and fastest. I've also shown in this row the way to switch between optimized and non-optimized loading.
Please note that an app failing at this test alone doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. For example, Phojo spent 50 secs at reading the test image. Still, it's about an order of magnitude faster at resizing JPEG images in batch mode (which also involves JPEG loading decoding) than either Pocket Artist or XnView.
"Quick picture delete?" is moderately important. It's good to have a quick image browser that allows for quick reviewing and deleting of pictures off a memory card. Sure, you can still switch to File Explorer or some other file management utility to delete the image in question (if there's no way to do that from inside), but that's much more complicated than a Delete icon on the taskbar or in some of the menus. Furthermore, there're quite a few image browsers that don't display the name of the current file, and there may be cases (if you iterate over a series of pictures) when it's very hard to find out which the given file was. An example of this is CEPicture. The best application to offer the fastest and easiest way of deleting an image is PocketLoupe.
"Image types read": this speaks for itself.
"Button-only control": if you want to browse a bunch of images without using the stylus, it's important to have some kind of button-based previous/next functionality. Fortunately, only one of the tested programs (iView 1.0.0.1603) don't allow for any kind of button control. The ability to redefine keys is even better.
"14/8 Mpixel write (where possible)? If not, which is the max. size that is saved OK?" is important for all the digicam users that would like to save their digicam images after some modification (e.g., color/brightness/contrast adjustment / cropping / resizing) without serious downsampling (resizing). Unfortunately, very few apps were able to save images over 2 Mpixel at their original size. Resco was one of the biggest disappointments. Now, only Spb Imageer, Pocket Artist (as soon as the bugs are ironed out) and Pocket Phojo seems to be able to save any image at their original size.
The next section, starting with "EXIF display?" and ending with "Standard IPTC edit & save?", discusses the ability to read/ modify / add / resave additional EXIF/IPCT information ( more on them at http://www.pcplus.co.uk/tips/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=5695&subsectionid=390 ; I've used the EXIF/IPTC Viewer at http://www.takenet.or.jp/~ryuuji/minisoft/exifread/english/ to check whether the apps save comments in a standardized way). Unfortunately, there weren't any application to resave them all without problems, except for Pocket Artist 3.0.
I've paid special attention to quality loss thorough the entire test. It may result in quality degradation by, for example, recompression after a "simple" IPTC caption information editing (and, incidentally, that was the reason I've also checked whether the given application also supports losless JPEG rotation) upon exporting a JPEG image. So, I've checked that - aside from the mundane "Can the app display existing EXIF infos at all?" ("EXIF display?") question - the apps are able to, upon modifying their EXIF / IPTC comments ("EXIF ImageDescription comment editing?", "IPTC display?"), can they update the JPEG images without re-saving them. Unfortunately, only the bug-ridden ACDSee Mobile 1.0 was able to set the EXIF ImageDescription comment, and the apps that were able to set the IPTC fields, DIGIVUE and the two Idrune applications, did it in a non-standard way and with recompression, respectively.
In a word, for now, there is no easy way for
EXIF/ IPTC-based in-the-field image commenting. This is why I've also included
the "Comment in a separate text
file in <picfilename>.ext ?" test case. Some programs export
their (mostly slideshow-related) comments in a plain text file under the same
name as the original picture, so desktop tools have an easy time associating
comments with an individual image. Unfortunately, Resco exports its comments to
a generic, proprietary file that is pretty hard to process and Spb Imageer, the
other "killer" image viewer app, embeds them in the images
themselves, in a non-EXIF/IPTC-compliant way.
"Histogram?" is also an invaluable, and from a lot of digicams, missing feature for quickly deciding the quality of a given picture upon a quick review. Most in-the-field capable apps offer this functionality. The most easily accessible is, again, PocketLoupe.
The row "Output file formats (if any)" speaks for itself. (Incidentally, there's no input counterpart in the table; I've mentioned above if a given application sports "extraordinary" digicam formats, like plain RAW or animated GIF as well). I've paid special attention to JPEG quality settings and listed whether it's fine-tunable (1...100%) or have only few pre-defined grades. Unfortunately, big names like PQV and XnView are only capable of saving JPEG images with 25/50/75/100% quality, and ACDSee is even worse (Low/ Medium/ High quality settings only). Fortunately, the two most invaluable tools (as far as their ability to save >2 MPixel images is concerned) for the in-the-field image editor, Spb Imageer and Pocket Phojo, both offer fine-tunable JPEG compression quality. The latter is, furthermore, the only app that has image file size estimation before saving.
Incidentally, as far
as animated GIF's are concerned, which can be of interest to some people (definitely
not for digicam users, though), only Resco, the F-S Album, CEPicture, Pocket
Artist and PQV are able to read/display them (the otherwise excellent Spb Imageer
isn't). In addition to the ubiquitous smileys that can be found anywhere, I've
used 4 larger (between 100 and 200 kbytes) animated GIF's to test the animated
GIF-compliance. All the apps mentioned were able to play them all. Album only
played the sequence once; had to reload the GIF to see it once more. PQV has
the ability to set how many frames are displayed in a second; interestingly,
its 1 fps setting still displays about 3-4 frames a second.
If your particular viewer of choice doesn't support animated GIF's, you
are not lost: you can also convert animated GIF pictures to a series of static
GIF images with ImageMagick, using the following command: convert.exe <inputfilename> frame%02d.gif. Using the second, frame%02d.gif parameter creates files named
frame00.gif, frame01.gif, frame02.gif
etc.
You may also want to append these frames to one GIF image so that you
will be able to see all the frames in their entirety with the command convert.exe +append frame00.gif ... frameXX.gif outputname.
This way, the lack of the capability of reading animated GIF images
becomes less acute.
Very few applications have no GIF reading support at all; I've mentioned
this in the 'Cons' section of all of them.
"Dedicated red-eye reduction?" also speaks for itself. Note that I haven't tested whether it's worth anything. Some apps (e.g., Spb) only implement this as eliminating a given red hue color in the selected area (it still works astonishingly good); other tools may be better.
"In-program file transfer / (e.g., IrDA / BT / E-mail /FTP) capabilities?" is for people that want to send the images over the Internet/ the air as soon as possible. As far as the Internet is concerned, there're three forms of file transfer: the most ubiquitous E-mail, Pocket Phojo's built-in FTP client and Spb's "Publish to web" functionality. The two latter on a PDA with generally meager (mobile phone/dialup-based) bandwidth is by far more effective, so I paid a lot of attention to testing them. The fact that Spb is only able to batch-process images when uploading to the Web also made me turn to this feature. Pocket Phojo's FTP client has turned out to be better than any other PPC-based FTP clients when transferring files from memory cards, so it's not useless. (If it weren't better, then using an external tool to transfer files would pay off much faster.)
I've elaborated a lot on E-mail sending capabilities (next row). It's not an essential feature (it's pretty easy to manually switch to Messaging and manually collect the files to be sent from the file system), but still good to have. I've tested the following capabilities:
- How does it integrate
with WM's Inbox/Messaging/Calendar? - there are
programs that don't and, instead, even have their own SMTP client code. An
example of them is Pocket Phojo, which seems to have a buggy - it didn't
work with the test SMTP server because it only sent LF's instead of CRLF's
(see http://cr.yp.to/docs/smtplf.html
for more info). And, of course, it wasn't able to access the Contact list
either. It is sometimes pays off to depend on the built-in SMTP client
libraries :)
The other application that doesn't integrate in Inbox/Messaging, XnView, uses Messaging's libraries and puts the mail to be sent there, but it doesn't let modify the mail body / text and doesn't offer Contats accessing capabilities either. - Is it able to send
several images at once? : some, for example,
Resco, doesn't allow for this.
- Does it resize pictures?
I don't consider a program that doesn't have email transfer capabilities heavily lacking - you may want to prefer using FTP over SMTP with large pictures / over slow (e.g., dial-up) connections to save bandwidth because FTP is binary, while SMTP uses 6-bit encoding for binary content, resulting in worse throughput.
"Any kind of batch processing?" was the next usability test. It's often advantageous to be able to do exactly the same transformation to a bunch of images at once, without repeating it manually for each file. An example of this is taking a lot of pictures, putting the memory card in the PDA, and resizing them / decreasing their quality for E-mail / FTP / HTTP transfer. This is exactly how desktop-based image converters (e.g., IfranView, http://www.irfanview.com/ or ImageMagick, http://imagemagick.org/) work. Fortunately, some of the programs allows for this, to a certain degree. Unfortunately, neither the two best consumer-grade program, Spb / Resco, support writing back to file system. Actually, Resco has an almost non-existing batch mode (see remarks in the table). Prosumer apps like Pocket Artist and, particularly, Pocket Phojo do support batch (the latter supports them with severel different source/target types), however.
As an example of the usability of batch processing, assume you're abroad only with your PDA and without access to any decent desktop computers and you want to process your images there. However, usually, most shops that develop print images have lower prices on traditional 2:3 photopapers. How would you give them your originally 3:4 images in a 2:3 format to make use of this possibility?
A common trick is converting a 3:4 size-ratio image to a 2:3 one is cropping only the middle of the image and discarding the uppermost and the lowermost part of it. Assuming 5 Mpixel (2592*1952) image, you can discard the upper and lower part of all your images in the current (and all sub-) directory with the following ImageMagick call:
FOR /R %%X IN (*.jpg) DO "C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.2.1-Q8\convert.exe" -crop 2592x1728+0+112 "%%X" "%%X"
(for a 2Mpixel 1632*1088 image, the parameters of convert -crop would be -1632x1088+0+68)
This command will convert your file into 2:3 by just keeping the middle area.
How would you do this on your Pocket PC? This is where crop-capable batch mode that writes back to the file system comes into the picture. Using that, you could convert all your images on your PDA without hunting for a desktop / notebook computer.
In the "Batch examples:
converting (cropping) 3:4 digicam images to 2:3 analogue-format" section I've examined whether the given application is able to
achieve this. Unfortunately, none of the batch processing-capable apps were
able to do the above-explained trick.
The second test (see "Batch example 2: mass-resizing images to VGA size"), which "only" resized six moderately-sized images to VGA size. XnView and Pocket Artist was able to do this task, but very slowly; PQV wasn't. The real killer was Pocket Phojo in this respect - it produced an order of magnitude faster execution than the other two applications. Its speed wasn't much worse than a desktop computer running ImageMagick with the command FOR /R %%X IN (*.jpg) DO "C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.2.1-Q8\convert.exe" -resize 640 -quality 50 "%%X" "%%X" .
The third test ("Batch example 3: mass-recompress images to reduce their size")
is another real-life problem: can you just recompress all the images without
resizing / cropping. This can be easily achieved with ImageMagick with the FOR /R %%X IN (*.jpg) DO "C:\Program
Files\ImageMagick-6.2.1-Q8\convert.exe" -quality 50 "%%X"
"%%X" command.
Bottom line, as far as batch mode is concerned: ImageMagick should be ported to WindowsCE. The batching capabilities of these programs are all very weak and are nowhere near to those of ImageMagick.
"Video playing capabilities; MP4: Philips/Camera/DIGIMAX": I've also tested the video playing capabilities of the programs (where applicable). Unfortunately, all of them were considerably worse than the free (!) BetaPlayer (http://betaplayer.corecodec.org), which has a QuickTime / M-JPEG / MPEG1/2 codec built-in.
As for non-MP4-cameras, I've used four different video files, produced by four different, well-known cameras (Casio QV-2900UX (M-JPEG), HP Photosmart 850 (MPEG1); Canon Digital IXUS 40 (M-JPEG); Nikon Coolpix 2000 (QuickTime)). The video formats used by these cameras are almost always the same in the other cameras of the same manufacturer.
Additionally, I've tested the players with three MP4 files (created by some low-end digicams and a lot of video cameras with MPEG4 capabilities): the first coming with the Philips Platform4 Player for Pocket PC 3.0 (http://www.pdagold.com/software/detail.asp?s=513; the app is a generic mobile file player - AMR, 3G, MP4 etc. It has quite limited MP4 capabilities - was only able to play its own video); the second was an MP4 file created with PL720's built-in Camera app. BetaPlayer 0.95 wasn't able to play neither of them properly - it didn't include the audio codec for the Camera-created video and had green blocking-problems with the Philips one. The third was a file (http://www.digimax.com.tw/MPEG4/download/hc/Digimax_CF2.mp4) coming with the DIGIMAX MP4 suite (http://www.digimax.com.tw/MPEG4/). After increasing the buffer size, BetaPlayer was able to play the latter (unlike any other players) in full screen without major problems.
Incidentally, I
publish here something I've found out: Philips
Platform4 Player has 5MByte of memory consumption, half of it is the
program's DLL, Platform4PocketAxc.dll, in \Windows. The latter file can freely
be deleted if you only need to play local media files; or, at least, relocated
into an external Flash ROM card by using a reg editor. Just look for the first
occurrence of 'platform4' in the registry, and change \Windows\ to \SD Card\
(or the name of your card) accordingly.
"Crop" / "Rotate/flip" / "Resize": these tests speak for themselves. (For comparison, WM2003(SE)'s Pictures only offers cropping and rotating.)
"Adjust?": almost all the programs that had some kind of file (not just slideshow) export capability have some kind of adjustment capabilities. Brightness and Contrast adjustments are pretty common (Spb can even do that automatically, even in batch mode - too bad it can't convert files in the file system!). There're quite a few other adjustment possibilities; Pocket Artist has especially a lot of them. (For comparison, WM2003(SE)'s Pictures only has Brightness and Contrast manual adjustment.)
"Filters": anyone that has ever seen Photoshop know what filters are. The most common three filters with PDA-based image editors are Sharpen, Blur and Smooth. Sharpen does exactly the opposite of the other two. As with adjustments, Pocket Artist certainly excels in this area too.
"Drawing menu": if you want to write/draw anything on the image, this is where you start. Some programs (e.g., Photogenics or Mobile Atelier) even offer layering capabilities. Some have nothing (e.g., Pocket Phojo), others only have freehand only with color picker, while e.g. Pocket Artist has an entire army (gradients etc.) of them.
"Create New Image? Max. size?" if a pic editor has drawing capabilities, then it could be used not only to edit existing images, but also creating them. Two of the tested programs (except for Mobile Pencil/Atelier) were able to do this. I've also tested the maximal size of the image.
"1:1 zooming into large (2/5/8 Mpixel) pics. Lack of pixelization?" is a test of zooming (and, incidentally, file reading) capabilities. Better image viewers / in-the-field image editors are, or, at least, should be capable of zooming into images to the original (100%) size to make out even the slightest detail. Unfortunately, very few applications are able to do this.
Image Wallet/slideshow- users
This section is meant at people that "only" use their PDA's for image wallet/slideshow purposes.
"Shrink quality?": one of the most important quality issue when watching larger images on a (relatively) low-resolution is whether there's any algorithm against "jagged" lines. Because a digicam user rarely needs this functionality and because using it sometimes results in slightly worse resolution (as with Resco), it's here that I've included it and not above.
Unfortunately, only four applications contain advanced de-jagging algorithms: Spb, Resco and the two apps from Aidem. It's deactivable in Resco; this doesn't really increase file reading speeds, however. So, if you really want lines without jagging, get one of these four programs.
Of course, as has already been pointed out, it is only an issue with images that are larger than the available screen estate (or, if you deliberately decrease the zoom value). If the application doesn't need to shrink the image into the screen, no quality degradation will occur at all. In a word: if you want to do some slideshowing on your PDA using the highest available quality, make sure you convert your images exactly to QVGA or VGA size before transferring them to your PDA.
I've used, as has been already stated, http://img2.dpreview.com/gallery/kodakdcsslrn_preview/originals/g2d20888.jpg
for pointing out jagged lines. Another perfect example would have been http://img2.dpreview.com/gallery/nikoncp8700_samples/originals/040330-1145-11.jpg.
It's because of its lacking sky colors that I've gone for the former picture to
avoid having to use two test images.
"Error diffusion dithering in 16 bit mode?": along with a decent shrinking algorithm, another important feature is some kind of advanced dithering, even on 16-bit screens, to avoid discreet 'steps' in gradient-like things like the sky. Just compare the sample images of F-S Album, XnView or the two Aiden applications to those of the other image viewers - yeah, the sky is much prettier on the ones that support dithering. Unfortunately, speaking of the two most important image viewers, neither Spb nor Resco do anything to avoid 'steps' in continuous color gradients - a big minus for both of them. You can also take a look at another test image (now, posted at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=323280) two examples. The built-in Pocket Internet Explorer, which doesn't have dithering either, renders the test image this way, while F-S Album this way.
"Any advanced slideshow feature?": if applicable (the app has a slideshow mode), I've listed here the number of transition effects and the extra features like generating EXE files that can be used without any picture viewer.
"Annotating slideshows? Does it allow for HQ voice recordings? Does it wait for a loooong voice note to end before stepping to the next slide? If not, does it stop playing the file at once, or does it play to the end? File format compatible with other slideshow-capable viewers (picfilename.wav)?": these tests speak for themselves. A little bit of elaboration, though.
- All the sound-capable slideshower apps support any bit depth/sampling frequency recording mode, so you don't have to throw low-level recordings at your audience.
- Some of the sound-capable slideshower apps wait for a given voice note to be fully played before stepping to the next slide, independent of the waiting time between the slides. If you plan to play slideshows with voice annotations, make sure you check out this feature (or, the lack thereof) to save you a lot of headache.
- most slideshowers are able to play slideshows with sound if the individual sound files are put in the same directory as the image files and their name follows the <image filename>.wav format. This definitely means portability. Note that much more slideshow-capable programs are capable of this than displaying textual notes, because only few of them uses the standard <image filename>.txt to store them. (Unfortunately, Resco isn't compatible with this naming convention, either.)
"Support
for SD/CF VGA cards/ jackets/ VGA output?": if you don't have a
Toshiba e750/e800 or the Dell Axim x50v, which allow for hardware-driven device
screen -> VGA mapping, this one can be important if you want to show your
slideshows on an external VGA monitor. Unfortunately, Spb doesn't support any
external card/sleeve; Resco, on the other hand, supports several.
"Annoying clock when loading the next image?": upon development, some software houses didn't pay attention to eliminating the ubiquitous waiting symbol when, even in slideshow mode, the program loads and decodes the next image. A serious drawback; can be one of the main deal breakers with F-S Album and PDAMill Viewer.
Note that the waiting
symbol can be totally eliminated system-wide using a one pixel-tall/wide symbol
like the one at http://discussion.brighthand.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=635554
as described at http://www.masellis.com/wait/create.htm,
but this solution can cause problems in other programs so shoulnd't be used.
It's better to forget both F-S Album and PDAMill Viewer if you can't
put up with the hour sign.
Some other benchmarks
Please note that these benchmarks were the main benchmarks in the previous versions of my article. Then, when I switched to benchmarking loading a single, big image at the lowest possible CPU speed, I've moved all these benchmarks to a non-central place. That is, these rows are not as important as the main benchmarks above; I've still kept them to add more information.
The first row, "Reading a 6.6M 14 Mpixel image", lists the time the apps spent at reading the 6.6 Mbyte image at http://img2.dpreview.com/gallery/kodakdcs14n_samples1/originals/kp146309.jpg. (I've chosen a publicly available image so that the test results can be verified.) As can clearly be seen, the average loading/decoding time was 4-6 seconds for (comparatively) better and 10-14 seconds for worse applications.
The next test case, "8 Mpixel thumbnail", measured how fast the applications could read all the thumbnails of the above-introduced 17 8 Mpixel images, now, from main memory, so that the performance hit associated with accessing a memory card can be eliminated. The fastest applications (Resco, Spb, Phojo, in that order) were able to render the (here, EXIF) thumbnails almost instantly, while applications (seemingly) unable to process EXIF thumbnails (for example, PictPocket Cinema 4.0) spent orders of magnitude more time at this task.
Incidentally, as long
as memory accessing speed is considered, it indeed has a great impact on how
the pic viewer apps fare. For example, Resco, while reading & rendering the
5 Mpixel pictures in 31-32 secs off the CF card, has only spent 18 secs off the
main memory and 26 secs off the SD card. This strongly corresponds to the file
copying benchmarks I've published at http://www.firstloox.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2597
- that is, the PL720 accesses the SD card faster than the CF card.
"8 Mpixel read" follows, meaning measuring the time all applications need to iterate over the 8 Mpixel images (I didn't really want to measure the loading/rendering time of just one because of the human factor - I would have been unable to use the stopwatch very fast. Furthermore, I didn't want to reduce the clock speed of my PL720 because I didn't want to present non-real-life, simulated-only loading times). I've done this in plain image viewing mode, without any pre-viewing the images to avoid in-memory image cache usage because, for example, SplashPhoto extensively uses caching. Because a lot of the tested programs don't support slideshow mode, I refrained from using any kind of slideshow mode in applications that would actually have supported it in order to have comparable results. In the test, I've tried to switch to the next picture as soon as possible. I paid special attention NOT to be too fast, because pre-mature switching to the new picture would have resulted in the current image's not being displayed and, therefore, seemingly reduced total loading time.
Where applicable, I've tested the applications using the different image loading/rendering methods available. For example, PQV allows for both full-size and reduced-size reading; the performance difference of the two modes are staggering. The same applies to Resco, with the additional option of switching off/on the advanced shrinking algorithm, resulting in far less "jagged" lines. Using the latter algorithm, fortunately, doesn't drastically increase loading times.
Now comes the first torture test result: 14 MPixel thumb reading. This row lists the measured time the apps spent at reading in all the thumbnails of the 52 14 MPixel test files (totalling 169288k) off the SD card. This was one of the torture tests because these images had no thumbnails, except for some (but only Loupe was able to find and display these already-existing, low-quality EXIF thumbnails). So, almost all apps (except for Loupe - it didn't try to generate them) had to read in all the images and generate thumbnails "in the hard way".
After this comes some additional benchmarks, now with 2/5 Mpixel images and in the dedicated slideshow mode. I haven't put these benchmarks right after the 14/8 Mpixel results, because it's in slideshow mode that I've tested them and not in 'plain' image mode. By this, I've eliminated the benchmark-incompatibility problems caused by any kind of optimized image loading (because we only need VGA resolution and no zooming will take place).
It's here that I've measured the power
consumption of time-(and processor-) consuming tasks like iterating over
(=reading, decoding (which is by far the most processor-hungry process) and
displaying) hundreds of pictures. The numbers (generally between 2 and 6%) are
measured on a Pocket Loox 720 and can only be used relatively (compared to the
results of other apps).
Additional system tools/utilities
The next section discusses some other tools that have nothing to do with image editing / slideshow per se, but can be advantageous to have because they are of system-level utility.
"WM2003(SE) / VGA today screen theme generation": it's not that easy to set wallpapers for SE devices, let alone VGA ones. I'll describe the problem and all the available applications in my forthcoming article "Theme Generators/Today Wallpaper Setters for the Pocket PC" some time. None of the apps tested were as good at setting wallpapers than the built-in Pictures application. At last, something Pictures excels at, in addition to the ability to save even 16 Mpixel images.
"capture screen? VGA?": some apps also offer screen capturing capabilities. I paid special attention to testing whether they really can capture VGA stuff - for example, PQV can't.
Conclusion
Unfortunately,
there's no all-in-one program, especially if you need any kind of image
editing. This means you have to seriously consider your needs and base your
choice upon it.
Small, but otherwise good picture viewers without editing features
If you don't want anything special, just a small, but fast and free pic viewer also with GIF support, and don't need thumbnails of large(r) images, get the PDAMill Viewer. CEPicture, the other contender in this category, is not free, but it is also capable of displaying animated GIF's. Unfortunately, its image thumbnail capabilities are very restricted, just like those of PDAMill Viewer.
PocketLoupe is a very handy tool for digicam users, especially for people with TIF/RAW images. Also, the ease of image deletion, the histogram and the superior EXIF thumbnail reading speed are a big plus.
Advanced slideshow capabilities, excellent speed & picture quality - Resco and Spb Imageer
If you want at least automatic slideshow, zooming
and even basic image editing capabilities (resize, crop, added text/drawing
etc.) with a very fast engine, also capable of displaying thumbs, go for the Resco Picture Viewer 5.2 or Spb
Imageer. These two applications are the only to offer excellent shrinking
quality, which is essential for the picture viewing without jagged lines, so
they are the best choice for anyone looking for a Digital Image Wallet.
Spb Imageer
seems a bit better because it has some additional image editing capabilities (e.g.
red-eye correction) not present in Resco and has the ability to save images of
even 14 Mpixel. Resco is clearly worse in the maximal save size. If you plan to
save anything over 2Mpixel, do not get
it!
Advanced adjusting capabilities; on-the-field digicam support
The other
application capable of unlimited saving of large-resolution images, Phojo, may
be worth considering if you look for excellent adjustment/filtering capabilities
and/or support for the Wi-Fi add-ons of some professional Nikon/Canon cameras.
However, a serious contender of Phojo is Pocket Artist (especially because of
its excellent IPCT setting capabilities, even in batch mode), at a much smaller
price tag. The latter doesn't support the above-mentioned Wi-Fi add-ons,
however.
If you
would like to have a picture creator/editor tool instead of an image editor,
your choices are Pocket Artist or Photogenics. Also, of interest are the two free
tools, Mobile Pencil and Atelier.
Standardized EXIF reading and compatibility test results
It's very important to know if a given photo viewer application supports the native thumbnail format of a given digital camera. If you always shoot tons of pictures and need the fastest PDA-based image viewer which displays the EXIF thumbnails of the images in an instant, then, this matrix is for you.
If you don't have a digicam model listed below (I've tried to test the latest digicam models), this matrix can still be pretty instructive because you still can see if a given application has problems with some cameras and, in general, does it know all (the tested, that is) EXIF thumbnail formats.
In the compatibility matrix, I've marked all the application & digicam compinations that resulted in really fast thumbnail reading. Furthermore, I also made some timing tests here too with two sets of images. Then, I've put some 4-5 images of all the listed digicams in a directory and loaded all of the thumbnails.
I've only tested the fastest apps. There would
have been no point in benchmarking, say, the very slow Aidem Photo Explorer or CEPicture - just take my word, they
are slow. Please note that I've used the
non-default thumbnail modes of SplashPhoto because of its flaky thumbnail
caching/reading algorithm in the standard mode.
|
|
PQV |
XnView |
Spb Imageer 1.2 |
Resco Picture Viewer 5.31 |
Fujitsu-Siemens Album |
Pocket Phojo |
Loupe |
Pocket Artist 3.0 |
SplashPhoto |
(Westtek) iPAQ Viewer 2.12 (on a 2210) |
|
Canon EOS 20D |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
|
Canon EOS 350D -
Digital Rebel XT |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark
II |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
|
Canon PowerShot A95 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Canon PowerShot
A510 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Canon PowerShot
A520 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Canon PowerShot
SD500 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Canon PowerShot G6 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Canon PowerShot
Pro1 |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Canon PowerShot S1
IS |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Canon PowerShot S60 |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Canon PowerShot S70 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Casio Exilim EX-750 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Casio Exilim Pro
EX-P700 |
+ |
+ |
very slow |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
a little bit slower |
slow |
+ |
|
Fujifilm FinePix
E550 Zoom |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Fujifilm FinePix
F10 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Fujifilm FinePix
F810 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Fujifilm FinePix S3
Pro |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Fujifilm FinePix
S5100 - S5500 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
HP PhotoSmart R707 |
not comp. with HP's |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
+ |
|
Konica Minolta
DiMAGE A200 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Konica Minolta
Dimage Z2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Konica Minolta
Dimage Z5 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Konica Minolta
Maxxum 7D |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
+ |
|
Leica Digilux 2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Nikon CoolPix 2000 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Nikon CoolPix 4800 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Nikon CoolPix 5200 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Nikon Coolpix 5700 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Nikon Coolpix 7900 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Nikon Coolpix 8400 |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
+ |
|
Nikon Coolpix 8700 |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
+ |
|
Nikon Coolpix 8800 |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Nikon D70 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
slow |
+ |
|
Olympus C-7000 /
C-70 Zoom |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Olympus E-300 EVOLT |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Olympus Stylus
Verve (-mini) Digital |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Panasonic Lumix
DMC-FX7 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Panasonic Lumix
DMC-FZ20 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Panasonic Lumix
DMC-FZ3 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
Panasonic Lumix
DMC-FZ5 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Panasonic Lumix
DMC-LZ2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
|
|
Pentax *ist DS |
+ |
+ |
slowish |
+ |
|
+ |
+ |
+ |
|