Does there exist on the Mac a picture/video viewer that is as easy to use as ACDSee on the PC?

December 23, 2006 7:28 PM

Does there exist on the Mac a picture/video viewer that is as easy to use as ACDSee on the PC?

Required features:

- Must allow browsing of the filesystem, with preview thumbnails. A dedicated db for thumbnails/metadata is acceptable. "Importing a directory" or building a playlist is a killer. I just want to browse the files I have already, whereever they are.

- Must support keyboard-only navigation and playing. Notably, ACDSee allows tab and arrow keys for navigating files in a directory, pressing enter to descend into a directory or play (for video)/view large (for images), pressing enter again to get back to the file browser, and pressing backspace to go up a directory. If I'm required to touch the mouse to do these things, this isn't the program I'm looking for. Doubly so if any of these features are mouse-only and listed under the "Keyboard shortcuts" section of the help.

- Must support a full-screen mode that's easy to toggle with a keyboard command.

- Must support (or with easy codec installation) all popular video and image formats. Canon Camera RAW support is a huge plus.

- Free is good, but commercial is fine.

Anything like that out there?

posted by Caviar to technology (13 comments total)

FFView is a free ACDSee clone for the mac, but I don't believe it supports videos or camera RAW.
posted by boaz at 7:55 PM on December 23, 2006

GraphicConverter. Does everything. Ever. And a new version comes out (literally) nearly every 24 hours.

It's actually slightly ridiculous.
posted by dmaterialized at 8:27 PM on December 23, 2006

Photomechanic is what you're looking for. Does everything you're asking for and more.
posted by photoslob at 8:42 PM on December 23, 2006

None of these seem to support video in any way.

Thanks, but photo viewing alone is not sufficient - I need something that also supports video.
posted by Caviar at 9:55 PM on December 23, 2006

Irfanview or XnView.
posted by umrain at 10:17 PM on December 23, 2006

wait i misread "on the pc" as part of the independent clause instead of the dependent clause. nevermind.
posted by umrain at 10:20 PM on December 23, 2006

Actually it looks like XnView does have a Mac version anyway. Might be worth checking out.
posted by umrain at 10:26 PM on December 23, 2006

I too missed (and continue to miss) the speed and simplicity of ACDSee after I switched to OSX.

The closest thing I've found is FileBrowse. It has a strange interface (though undoubtedly beautiful and obviously well thought out).

Also, Adobe Bridge works surprisingly well for this too. I'm using the Universal Binary version (on my Macbook Pro) that comes with the Photoshop CS3 public Beta, and find myself using it a LOT more than FileBrowse.
posted by melorama at 10:47 PM on December 23, 2006

Oh, I also forgot...there's also IView Media Pro, which is/was hands down the best image/multimedia viewer app on the Mac.

Unfortunately, the product has been recently acquired by Microsoft, so it's future on the Mac platform is up in the air. I think the reason why I forgot to mention it is because I stopped using it, fully expecting Microsoft to kill it, hence the need to find anoter alternative.
posted by melorama at 10:50 PM on December 23, 2006

melorama: Oh, that is very sad. I didn't know Microsoft bought that app out.

Wasn't there a Mac version of ACDSee? Or has it been in perpetual beta stage?
posted by drstein at 11:24 PM on December 23, 2006

GraphicConverter does indeed support video. I've used it occasionally to browse a folder full of videos. It's a free download: just choose "Browse folder" from the File menu and see if it does what you want.
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:32 PM on December 24, 2006

Boy, GraphicConverter has DEFINITELY come a long way since it's OS8/9 days!

Although, after just trying the latest UB version right now on my MBP, I still think the OP will be happier with something like IView or FileBrowse. IView, in particular, is just screaming fast, even if you feed it a folder of dozens of Quicktime movies. It's far superior to GraphicConverter, overall, when it comes to handling video playback (I love not only how blazing fast it generates thumbnails of all your videos, but even cooler, how you can actually "play" the thumbnail preview in full motion by selecting it and hitting the spacebar)

It looks like M$ is rebranding IVMP in 2007 as "Microsoft Expression Media". The good news: It's still Mac compatible, and will continue to be. The bad news: It will cost $100 more than the current version of IVMP. But current IVMP owners will get a free upgrade to Expression Media once it comes out, so it would make sense to buy IVMP now to take advantage of the upgrade.
posted by melorama at 5:56 PM on December 24, 2006

Here's another one I just tried (I found it via the Versiontracker comments for IVMP):

QPict

it's VERY similar to ACDSee...Video thumbnailing is nowhere near as fast as IVMP, but at $35, it's significantly cheaper.
posted by melorama at 7:55 PM on December 24, 2006