Is there a IrfanView alternative for Mac for a specific design task?

January 10, 2013 2:46 AM

My WineBottler version of IrfanView has stopped working for some reason, I need this for just one task: Click and drag on a picture and get the X/Y coordinates of the selection and size in one quick view. An example:

As seen in this screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/MN2SH9fb
I have to mark a specific area on a bitmap and add the coordinates in my CSS file. In IrfanView I can see the selection in the header, with the coordinate of the upper left corner and the size of the selection.
All image viewers or editors I could find only give me the size of the selection, not the coordinates.
I have also looked in Photoshop, Gimp and Adobe Illustrator CS3, but it seems that there is no way to easily display the same information here either.
Closest I could get is "Seashore", but here it is not optimal either since the point information won't stay fixed and readable, or I'd have to create a new layer first.

posted by ts;dr to computers & internet (9 answers total)

I thought Skitch did this, but I could be wrong.
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 3:39 AM on January 10

Thank you for the tip. I installed it but unfortunately this too only reveals the size of the selection, not the coordinates.
posted by ts;dr at 3:50 AM on January 10

Have you tried GraphicConverter?
posted by Catseye at 4:06 AM on January 10

I use a tool called GraphClick for digitizing charts from screen captures. It would be overkill for just getting pixel coordinates but it would absolutely do what you need.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:09 AM on January 10

Photoshop will (sort-of) give you the coordinates:
1. Open up the 'Info' panel
2. Drag out your selection from the bottom-right to top-left (this bit is important).
3. As long as you keep the mouse button down, the info panel will give you the x- and y- coordinates as well as the selection dimensions.

Not ideal, but it works.
posted by pipeski at 4:10 AM on January 10

Re: GraphicConverter and GraphClick: Thanks for the tips, but I'd rather not pay for another program for just one feature.

Pipeski:
Thanks, it is a bit complicated this way since I need to keep the mouse button down and remember the coordinates, but maybe I can get used to this.
posted by ts;dr at 4:33 AM on January 10

imagej will do this out of the box, I believe, or possibly with a plugin. Free, cross platform, very powerful tool for all sorts of image manipulation tasks. If you wanted to get fancy, you could tie the output into your workflow.
posted by rockindata at 6:21 AM on January 10

yup, just downloaded and checked. Rectangular selection gives upper left (x/y) coordinate, width, and Height, right under the menu bar. I have to do my actual job, but you can also get this to output to a dialog box or file with a keyboard shortcut.
posted by rockindata at 6:27 AM on January 10

Thanks, I also got a tip somewhere else that you can do this with GIMP without the coordinates disappearing: (add a Pointer dock, Windows - Dockable dialogs - Pointer) to see this info.

But ImageJ might be more useful, slimmer solution for this task.
posted by ts;dr at 2:55 AM on January 11