JPEGView - Image Viewer and Editor 1.0.37

So you bought a new DSLR camera, you went out, took some pictures on auto, fancied yourself a photographer and played with the Manual settings, got excited, took some more pictures, went back in and plugged the thing into a USB socket. Now what? The Windows Photo Viewer program isn't something to write home about, so hopefully, you are at least a bit accustomed to Gimp. But using a professional photo editing program on dozens of photos is a bit silly. To apply some quick touch-ups and color correction before you decide which to keep and which to throw in the bin, you will need a more straightforward tool. JPGView is such a tool.

JPGView has the cleanest most unintrusive and aseptic interface ever. Nothing is bordering the screen, and if you dare to run it in fullscreen mode (default), you will probably get disoriented for a second by the full blackness of the background. The only controls are located on the bottom of the screen and only appear if you hover the mouse in their area. JPGView was made to maximize the picture viewing space.

You can use the Picture Enhancement Mode to apply five set of corrections automatically to any picture that you view. These include revisions to shadows, highlights, color, and contrast. You can also make manual modifications for Contrast, Brightness, Saturation and color balance between cyan vs. red, magenta vs. green, and yellow vs. blue.

The parameters that you set to a picture, JPEGView can store within a local database without overwriting or creating another file. The modifications you made are then linked to the image and will prop up whenever you view that image until you remove the database entry. In any case, saving a modified image will be under a changed filename by default such as to avoid overwriting by mistake. You can also edit the INI file to turn some parameters "on" by default.

With JPGView you can preview different images using the same set of parameters. This feature is useful if you intend to make a batch correction. On the other hand, JPGView doesn't have a batch editing scheme. However, using the keyboard controls (which you can learn by checking the contextual menu), you go through all your pictures in a reasonably comfortable way.

Features

• It has a content oriented and very minimalist interface
• You can save parameter settings without modifying original files
• You can preview multiple images using the same visual settings
• A dozen or so parameter gauges

Final Thoughts

You can accommodate yourself to using JPGView in a few minutes. The light and unintrusive interface helps a lot in bringing the object matter, that is the photo, into focus. It is true that you only get the essential tools and that you need to edit an INI file for default settings, but if you're doing batch editing often enough you won't be bothered by this.