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Tom's Viewer

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 5:00 pm
by smaragdus
Preamble
I have always appreciated slim, light and simple programs. Some time ago I came upon such a program which turned out to be rich, powerful and sporting an elegant GUI to boot- Tom's Viewer. I found out that it was portable by design. I liked this image viewer immediately, thought of possible improvements while testing it, contacted the developer suggesting several enhancements, he accepted them and most of them were implemented in version 3.8 released on 2019-06-13. Tom's Viewer has become one of my favourite viewers. The program is very capable yet not that popular and I suppose that other users might like it too.

Synopsis
Tom's Viewer is a lightweight version of Tom's Editor.
Tom's Editor is an online image editor.

Features
  • Minimalistic design
  • Less than 1 MB
  • Single EXE file
  • Can be run in portable mode. No installation required
  • Can ready 200 image formats and save to 70 formats
  • Can screenshot Windows desktop, Youtube video or any website
  • Can convert any image into a Windows screensaver (.SCR)
  • REAL Freeware. Can be used for free for private AND commercial use
  • You can jump between different images in the folder by pressing LEFT or RIGHT ARROW. Or use PREV and NEXT options from the menu
  • Drag & drop images onto the program to open them instantly
  • Associate the program with various supported extensions so you can click on a file to open it in Tom's Editor Desktop
  • Save images AS BMP, JPEG, PNG, GIF and PNM
  • Load images in 200 formats, eg.: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, DDS, PSD, PCX, TGA, ITHMB, PNM, KOA, MAC
Other features include:
  • Filters;
  • Resize;
  • Rotate;
  • Crop;
  • Zoom;
  • Fit to screen;
  • Full screen;
  • Stay on top;
  • Count used colours;
  • Colour picker;
  • Copy from clipboard;
  • Paste from clipboard;
  • Conversion (GIF to AVI, AVI to GIF, GIF to frames, frames to GIF);
  • Keyboard shortcuts;
  • Themes;
  • Plug-ins;
Links Downloads
Direct download links for Tom's Viewer version 3.8 (released on 2019-06-13): Images

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - themes (animated image):
(12 themes - Small White, Big White, Small Black, Big Black, Small Violet, Big Violet, Small Dark Violet, Big Dark Violet, Small Emerald, Big Emerald, Small Blue, Big Blue)

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - menu (animated image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - context menu (static image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - gif (animated image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - colour picker (static image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - number of colours (static image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - screenshots taken (animated image):
(Website - Website - YouTube)

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - available themes (static image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - keyboard shortcuts (static image):

Image

Tom's Viewer version 3.8 - about (static image):

Image

Portability
Tom's Viewer is portable by design- settings are saved in configuration INI file (TomsViewer.ini) inside program folder.

Instructions
  • Download the standalone executable (TomsViewer.exe);
  • Put it in a preferred folder;
  • Run the executable;
  • If plug-ins are downloaded they are stored in sub-folder (TomsViewer) inside program folder;
Requirements
I do not know the exact system requirements- I presume that Tom's Viewer should run under Windows 7 or newer. I may ask the developer for clarification.

License
Tom's Viewer is closed source, unrestricted freeware:
REAL Freeware. Can be used for free for private AND commercial use
Note
  • I have tested only the portable version (the standalone executable).
  • Tom's Viewer is slim- it just 606 KB executable.
  • Tom's Viewer is light- under Windows 8 x64 it uses about 10 MB of RAM (average).
  • The developer is friendly and open to suggestions.
  • Tom's Viewer does not support APNG (Animated Portable Network Graphics) files (as of version 3.8)- I have requested support for APNG files and it may be implemented in the following releases.
  • For me the program is good enough to be added to the database.
Alternatives
Several programs with similar functionality:
Details
File details for Tom's Viewer version 3.8 (released on 2019-06-13):

==

Portable version:
Name: TomsViewer.exe
File Size: 620032 Byte(s) (605.50 KB)
Modified Date: 2019-06-13 14:47
MD5: 22c72ea52499f185013347e0c27b53bf
SHA1: 59addfd635127cc9e0cd53a49e60084188770432
SHA256: 9a051448d6d5bbffb9a7ebbf05bf3293d296660bc66d2137d826080ac50a5cf9
SHA384: 1489bc7b92477a4dae8219fa28a5fa05656150e2673d46c043d0c199c3c5c54fc7632d480a3229e13fc8c804fc778de6
SHA512: a1f9328b47ec3090950fcfc9130a05237885ccb5f25a63df3d534a2984f57b383e4a8a950f75d4c75868c4ab6e706e7b6219d6e7e95a028fd0f244f8b39bca3c
RIPEMD160: a2e9bf8aef837c3b84047163083a55bcd442cf91

==

Installer version:
Name: TomsViewer_Setup.exe
File Size: 2008571 Byte(s) (1.92 MB)
Modified Date: 2019-06-13 15:53
Version: 0.0.0.0
MD5: a5de64459574a96b031a0bf1eccc0b08
SHA1: ced2e877c50303bfe65925cd726392a850d1ab5b
SHA256: 63c2c467a7afa2fcfaa446559c924c3848ae9949f42f005f4642711ed93b06fa
SHA384: 0e0181d13e5a095cb9e8dd4ca8d567d07c7f2aa1d810270b69149ce2ea9093fc88657642f499753634d06ef6b7efa296
SHA512: 9cd87dab5a5ee1e62a6aab2c133d9e961a478673dcabb652531afe982301ee5b1634bf48e7e437fbd0ec8fbc17f7b9bd60d0dccaad82e5521e6da23e5c90d0d0
RIPEMD160: 0f7ce0497d4b9dec1f8f6a0d31fa22bc8f81ffd6

==

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:22 pm
by Specular
Decent variety of themes. Interesting its dual-purpose with the integrated editing features. Could be useful for various occasional batch tasks.

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2019 5:35 pm
by smaragdus
The developer reminded me that I did not mention the thumbnails panel, screen:

Image

The thumbnails panel can be accessed via the 'Browse Images' tool bar button (the second one from left to right).

Edit
The developer also informed me that Tom's Viewer may work under Windows XP and Windows Vista but someone has to test it and confirm that.

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 2:32 am
by zorro
Quick test with a few problems:
- doesn't open TIF (or at least mines - all other image viewers handle them well)
- spreads "Thumbs.tdb" files whereever you browse in thumbnail mode (reminds me of the mess XP produced)
- in thumbnail view you can not browse past the partition you started in (with no file open the thumbnails start in the application folder)
- nice editing tools - but no unsharp mask (this ist crucial for quality sharpening after resizing)
I like the overall concept however, and certainly the viewer is slim (well, with plugins downloaded - all of them executables - it weight 8 MB), but FSViewer expands the same concept to the max...

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 5:30 am
by Tom
zorro wrote: Sun Jun 16, 2019 2:32 am Quick test with a few problems:
- doesn't open TIF (or at least mines - all other image viewers handle them well)
- spreads "Thumbs.tdb" files whereever you browse in thumbnail mode (reminds me of the mess XP produced)
- in thumbnail view you can not browse past the partition you started in (with no file open the thumbnails start in the application folder)
- nice editing tools - but no unsharp mask (this ist crucial for quality sharpening after resizing)
I like the overall concept however, and certainly the viewer is slim (well, with plugins downloaded - all of them executables - it weight 8 MB), but FSViewer expands the same concept to the max...
Thank you very much for checking out the program, zorro!

1) TIFF is not a format. It's a container. There is over 50 different formats (including JPEG) that can be placed inside TIFF. A program that could read all TIFFs simply doesn't exist. Tom's Viewer does handle some TIFF images but not all. Perhaps you could send me your file so I know what format I should add?

2) In the next version it will be possible to enable/disable generating thumbnail cache files (.TDB). I never considered this a problem and nobody mentioned it earlier.

3) You can drag&drop a file from another partition and Tom's Viewer will show images from that partition. But I will make it possible to change partition in a "normal way" :)

4) There is Blur-->Sharpen to sharpen images but I'll add other sharpening options

5) Just to defend Tom's Viewer a bit: FastStone Viewer is not freeeware, it's being made since at least 2004 and reads and writes a fraction of formats supported by Tom's Viewer. If there are any features that FSViewer has and you think Tom's Viewer is missing then I am happy include them in the next realeases.

Again thank you for all your input. I know Tom's Viewer is not a perfect program, it's far from it and all user input is very important for me!

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 3:27 pm
by smaragdus
@Tom

Welcome to the forum. Since Tom's Viewer does not have its own forum this thread can be used as a forum.

I too would appreciate an option to disable generation of Thumbs.tdb.

@zorro

I forgot to mention that the use of the thumbnails panel creates Thumbs.tdb in the browsed folder.

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:00 am
by zorro
Tom wrote: Sun Jun 16, 2019 5:30 am ...
Thank you very much for checking out the program, zorro!

1) TIFF is not a format. It's a container. There is over 50 different formats (including JPEG) that can be placed inside TIFF. A program that could read all TIFFs simply doesn't exist. Tom's Viewer does handle some TIFF images but not all. Perhaps you could send me your file so I know what format I should add?

2) In the next version it will be possible to enable/disable generating thumbnail cache files (.TDB). I never considered this a problem and nobody mentioned it earlier.

3) You can drag&drop a file from another partition and Tom's Viewer will show images from that partition. But I will make it possible to change partition in a "normal way" :)

4) There is Blur-->Sharpen to sharpen images but I'll add other sharpening options

5) Just to defend Tom's Viewer a bit: FastStone Viewer is not freeeware, it's being made since at least 2004 and reads and writes a fraction of formats supported by Tom's Viewer. If there are any features that FSViewer has and you think Tom's Viewer is missing then I am happy include them in the next realeases.

Again thank you for all your input. I know Tom's Viewer is not a perfect program, it's far from it and all user input is very important for me!
Well, Tom, it was not meant to be harsh - you're absolutely right with the status of FSViewer - and I really appreciate freeware authors, especially those who manage to code a program that slim in our days!

- for the TIFF-thing. Perhaps even I am wrong, but to my knowledge it is not a container - TIFF is uncompressed or lossless compressed (LZW / ZIP) image data. It can contain multiple pages and it can contain a JPEG-thumbnail of the image, but the image itsself cannot be JPEG. Some viewers (and even professional programs) apparently have problems with LZW-compression - but the ones I tested and used until now are all fine (JPEGView, Honeyview, IrfanView, XNView, FSViewer, Imagine, ArtSage, PhotoDemon, Artweaver, etc.)
Here's a TIFF I tried to open in your Viewer and got an error: https://depot.nullnull3.de/nl_landy0716 ... 4porst.tif

- the limitation of the thumbnail overview to the starting partition is not crucial, I admit I'm special and avoid drag&drop whereever possible. I just searched over and over and didn't found a way to change the partition without opening an image from the desired one. Some sort of partition/drive bar would be nice :-)

- regarding the thumbs.tdb, I'm with the others: it's simply a mess, when you have well organized folders with lots of images and a working backup solution. I don't mind waiting some seconds for the thumbnails to generate, thumnail databases seldom are faster - and as mentioned, I work a lot with images.

- the sharpen thing: I know that a lot of user don't even sharpen images after shrinking, although this makes the huge difference when posting them in the internet. But ok, I'm photographer, so... and that's it: when you shoot with a lens that produces fine smooth "bokeh", you loose all the smoothness by applying simple sharpening algorythms - the only one that sharpens the sharp bits and lets the smoothness untouched, is the unsharp mask. Of course normally with some adjustment possibilities (radius in px, strength). IrfanView has a fairly simple one with only 3 strength-levels, but even that one works way better than the standard sharpening. And I admit - it's not crucial. When I test a viewer, I always think about making it my default, but in reality I end up making this bit in that viewer and the other bit in another one...
Btw.: the god-like Photoshop is inferior to most viewers when it comes to scaling down an image :lol: - because it lacks the "Lanczos" scaling algorythm. Of course this can be worked out afterwards with the sharpening tools.

Anyway: the only thing that really frightened me was the creation of the thumbs.tdb files - but I must say, apart from that it's a very nice viewer - the best to come for a long time (for me). I hope you keep up the work, although there are a lot of viewers out there, this one has a sleek concept, very good, uncluttered usability and a beautiful interface :D

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:53 am
by lintalist
Nice viewer indeed.

Some suggestions (you're welcome to ignore these of course)

1. My current viewer is Imagine https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1819 - the main reason being that it is also available as a plugin for my preferred file manager, Total Commander.
In TC* you can use a built-in file viewer to view documents including basic image support (jpg, bmp etc) but you can use Imagine, Irfanview or XNView as plugin which extends the capabilities of the built-in viewer. If Tom's Viewer would be made available as a plugin for such file managers you potentially reach a new target audience.
Documentation seems to be here https://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25751

* (and similar file managers such as FreeCommander https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=291 and DoubleCommander https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/ )

2. When I view an Icon file which has several sizes/icons I see only one Icon in Tom's Viewer - in Imagine I see a "layered" view showing all icons like so, Imagine also does this with other "layered" images which is quite useful
Lister-imagine-lintalist-ico.png

3. In the About it says "It can be used perivate and commercial use." perivate should probably be private? Or perhaps reworded as "It can be used for both personal and commercial use."

4. It seems Tom's Viewer uses the themes background as the transparent layer "background" - personally I would prefer the option to see the "standard" checkered background for such images for example on a transparent PNG or PSD I would prefer to see the "checkboard" which is what is often shown in image editors as well for the transparency. It offers the feedback the image is transparent and also in many cases make them less "jagged" - side by side comparison:
lintalist-side-side.png

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:11 pm
by Tom
smaragdus wrote: Sun Jun 16, 2019 3:27 pm Welcome to the forum.
Thank you for showing me this forum and for making the thread!

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:19 pm
by Tom
zorro wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:00 am - for the TIFF-thing. Perhaps even I am wrong, but to my knowledge it is not a container - TIFF is uncompressed or lossless compressed (LZW / ZIP) image data
"Here are some examples of used TIFF compression schemes: "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF#TIFF_Compression_Tag

"A TIFF file, for example, can be a container holding JPEG (lossy) and PackBits (lossless) compressed images. A TIFF file also can include a vector-based clipping path (outlines, croppings, image frames). The ability to store image data in a lossless format makes a TIFF file a useful image archive, because, unlike standard JPEG files, a TIFF file using lossless compression (or none) may be edited and re-saved without losing image quality. This is not the case when using the TIFF as a container holding compressed JPEG. Other TIFF options are layers and pages. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF#Features_and_options

There is a joke among programmers that TIFF stands for Thousands of Incompatible File Formats :D

Thank you for the TIFF file. I'll add support for it.


I've already implemented some of the features mentioned in this thread. I am working on others. I read everything you post here and I'll try to implement as much as I can. So thank you everyone and keep posting! :D

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:13 am
by Specular
lintalist wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:53 am 4. It seems Tom's Viewer uses the themes background as the transparent layer "background" - personally I would prefer the option to see the "standard" checkered background for such images for example on a transparent PNG or PSD I would prefer to see the "checkboard" which is what is often shown in image editors as well for the transparency. It offers the feedback the image is transparent and also in many cases make them less "jagged" - side by side comparison:
lintalist-side-side.png
Looks like the right side version in the screenshot quoted the alpha transparency isn't being displayed correctly. I'm fond of how Pictus allows for setting a custom background color, seen on images with alpha channels (example in the entry's screenshot). The WTV texture viewer program also allows for this.

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 5:17 am
by Tom
Here's a direct link to Tom's Viewer 3.9:

http://tomseditor.com/blog/TomsViewer.exe

Features and bug fixes:
1) You can now disable/enable creation of Thumbs.tdb files
2) There are more themes
3) Program can play APNG animation. Unfortunately I found a few that don’t play well. But many play just fine. Also- in this version APNG animations need to have .apng extension. Once APNG reading is perfect it will also read APNG animations with .png extension
4) Tom’s Viewer can run as a single instance
5) The TIFF mentioned on the forum does work now
6) About popup: “perivate” now reads “private”
7) In the thumbnails view user can now click the path (bottom, right) and change the path

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:13 am
by Tom
zorro wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:00 am
Well, Tom, it was not meant to be harsh - you're absolutely right with the status of FSViewer - and I really appreciate freeware authors, especially those who manage to code a program that slim in our days!
I honestly appreciate every opinion, even harsh ones :)

zorro wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:00 am - the limitation of the thumbnail overview to the starting partition is not crucial, I admit I'm special and avoid drag&drop whereever possible. I just searched over and over and didn't found a way to change the partition without opening an image from the desired one. Some sort of partition/drive bar would be nice :-)

- regarding the thumbs.tdb, I'm with the others: it's simply a mess, when you have well organized folders with lots of images and a working backup solution. I don't mind waiting some seconds for the thumbnails to generate, thumnail databases seldom are faster - and as mentioned, I work a lot with images.
Both things are solved in version 3.9 now. Thumbs.tdb creation can be disabled and you can change the path by clicking it :)


zorro wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:00 am - the sharpen thing: I know that a lot of user don't even sharpen images after shrinking, although this makes the huge difference when posting them in the internet. But ok, I'm photographer, so... and that's it: when you shoot with a lens that produces fine smooth "bokeh", you loose all the smoothness by applying simple sharpening algorythms - the only one that sharpens the sharp bits and lets the smoothness untouched, is the unsharp mask. Of course normally with some adjustment possibilities (radius in px, strength). IrfanView has a fairly simple one with only 3 strength-levels, but even that one works way better than the standard sharpening. And I admit - it's not crucial. When I test a viewer, I always think about making it my default, but in reality I end up making this bit in that viewer and the other bit in another one...
Btw.: the god-like Photoshop is inferior to most viewers when it comes to scaling down an image :lol: - because it lacks the "Lanczos" scaling algorythm. Of course this can be worked out afterwards with the sharpening tools.
I'll try to add more sharpening algorithms. I even found an interesting paper on that topic. I already have smart blurring and I think it gives nice results in some cases. It seems this operation can be reverted to create smart sharpening. So yeah, quite some work ahead :)
zorro wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:00 am Anyway: the only thing that really frightened me was the creation of the thumbs.tdb files - but I must say, apart from that it's a very nice viewer - the best to come for a long time (for me). I hope you keep up the work, although there are a lot of viewers out there, this one has a sleek concept, very good, uncluttered usability and a beautiful interface :D
Thank you!

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 1:29 am
by zorro
May I? I tested your updated version 3.9:
+ now thumbnail database creation can be switched off
+ opens most TIFF files
However - some big problems (perhaps my files are not representative?):
- does not open PSD files (at least all I tested, made with CC2014)
- takes ages to open fullsize images (16 to 21 MP)
- especially slow (about 10 seconds) for images from Fujis X-Trans-Sensor (I know that all other viewers as well open them a tad slower than images from cameras with Bayer pattern - e.g. Canon, Nikon etc., but always taking less than a second)
- opening the thumbnail overview an a folder with fullsize images is a pain, after several minutes the first thumbnails appear (wrong aspect ratio, all squeezed to square), attempt to stop the process triggers access violation, task has to be terminated through task manager
My machine is a quad-core 3,4 GHz laptop with 16GB Ram and conventional harddisk running on Win 8.1 x64

Hope this helps you :(

Re: Tom's Viewer

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 1:53 am
by Tom
@zorro
Thank you!
1) How big are your PSD files? I suspect either they are too new or too big
2) I'll make that faster! :D
3) Have you checked the resolution reported by Tom's Viewer after opening an image from Fujis X-Trans-Sensor and resolution reported by other viewers? There is a chance the one in Tom's Viewer is larger. And this could explain why it's so slow