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 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 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.
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.
(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.
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.
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
