An open source alternative to ACDSee would help people move from Windows to Linux one step at a time. Imgv is a contender for the ACDSee replacement.

Imgv is an image viewer developed by Ryan Kulla for his own use and made available to you as an open source project using a GPL licence. Ryan is performing one hundred percent of the development, documentation, and support. If nine other people helped Ryan, Imgv could become a winner.

Imgv is written in Python which makes development easier but limits development to those people who know Python. All I know about Python is the namesake, the class of warm smooth slithery snakes.

I started the comparison between Imgv and ACDSee using ACDSee 2.4 and Imgv 2.9.6. Half way through I downloaded ACDSee 7 for comparison.

I like ACDSee because it is well written, does what I want it to do, and wastes resources on nothing else. The developer, David S Hooper, and I share a liking for the band ACDC. One of the later ACDSee releases added a bunch of useless upgrades so I stopped upgrading. ACDSee 7 adds features useful when you have a digital camera and when you take lots of digital photographs. I will upgrade to ACDSee 7.

How does Imgv compare to ACDSee 2.4? ACDSee 2.4 is just an image viewer. Imgv lets you rotate images which is the most common action I perform on new images. You find most of your pictures are shot with the camera horizontal and the rest are shot with the camera vertical. When you view the pictures, you want to rotate the vertical shots 90 degrees to the left or right so they view the right way around.

ACDSee works only on Windows while Imgv works on both Windows and Linux. imgv almost works on Windows 2000. I used Imgv on Windows 2000 and found two problems. Imgv does not let me maximise the image. When I try full screen mode, Imgv disappears. The lack of a maximise option in Imgv sends me back to ACDSee as I frequently use ACDSee maximised.

How does Imgv compare to ACDSee 7? ACDSee 7 has image rotate, histograms and some other image adjustment tools. In fact ACDSee 7 has most of the features I used in Paint Shop Pro. If I were setting up a new computer, I could use ACDSee 7 instead of both ACDSee 2.4 and Paint Shop Pro. Imgv has enough power to replace ACDSee 2.4 but not Paint Shop Pro.

ACDSee 7 accepts RAW files from major brands of camera but Imgv does not. If you are buying a new quality digital camera then you should be able to save images as RAW files instead of the slow TIFF format or the damaging JPEG format. My next digital camera will save files in a RAW file which means I will need ACDSee 7.

Gimp

Gimp is an open source image editor that works on Windows and Linux. Gimp does not require the proprietary Java or have any other impediment. Gimp does not currently have an image viewer/filer application anything like Imgv or ACDSee. If Gimp were equipped with an ACDSee equivalent, the equivalent could use Gimp to perform simple image changes. The viewer application could show the pictures then call Gimp to perform rotations. For anything more complicated, the viewer could open Gimp in a new window with the image preloaded.

Gimp already has people working on raw files and other issues. If the Gimp could work with Imgv then Imgv could keep up with ACDSee.

Conclusion

Imgv is a logical replacement for early versions of ACDSee when you are planning to move from Windows to Linux. Imgv is behind the latest release of ACDSee which leaves ACDSee the winner for people who are staying on Windows. If more people supported Imgv, Imgv could become an alternative to ACDSee.