Viewing options
Viewing options are surely what photo managers are all about.
To a degree, there’s some overlap between viewing options and some of what we’ve already discussed in Organisation. For example, the date and tag hierarchical organisation provided by digikam could be thought of as a viewing option, and some of the packages refer to what we’ve described as organisational methods as views. Here, though, we’re looking at the various ways of viewing the photos themselves, as opposed to how they’re organised hierarchically.
All the packages enable you to view images as a grid of thumbnails, as a single photo with a film strip alongside, and as a full-screen image. While viewing thumbnails, the ability to adjust their size is useful, and all the software except picty provides a choice. While digikam, Shotwell and Xnview MP use a slider for this purpose, in gthumb this option is hidden away in the Preferences menu.
All the software enables metadata to be displayed alongside an image. Tags and ratings can also be seen. All packages also permit a histogram to be displayed – although with Shotwell, this isn’t really a viewing option since you can only see it while editing an image.
All but picty provide a means of giving a rolling slideshow. In addition, if you like being presented with a lot of information at once, Xnview MP’S extensive use of panes will be of interest. Although you don’t have to cram all this information onto the
screen at the same time, loads of panes are available for you to choose from.
We also have to mention digikam’s Map view, which enables you to see photos overlaid on a base map according to their geographical location. Needless to say, this only works with photos that have geolocation information, and unless your camera adds this, you’d have to add this information manually.
Digikam provides a facility for doing just that.