Photo Viewing/Editing Applications?

[Jason Dunn]

I'm putting on my <a href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com">Spb Software</a> hat for a minute here to ask you about photo viewing and photo editing applications. Based on what's out there, including Spb products, what's missing? What features are important to you in a photo viewer? Simplicity? Speed? Gobs of features? What types of features would make you say "Hot damn, this is the only photo viewing application I'll ever install on my Pocket PC again?"<br /><br />And when it comes to an application to edit photos, what do you want to see? What are critical features that an application that claimed to be a photo editor would suck without? Think midrange features here, not CMYK pre-press support. Also, think about what's realistic and possible on a small screen - think scenario, and tell me what those scenarios are.<br /><br />My ears are open dear readers - what do you have to say?

[Ed Hansberry]

Huge fan of Pocket Artist. Only issue is not enough filters and it is very slow to render a 500K .jpg taken from a camera.

[nz0eBoy]

I have only used one photo viewing app on my PPC and I can't even remember what it was called.

But a couple of things I thought it mised was a convenient way to send a picture my e-mail (compress it and add it as an attachement the way XP does).

Loss-less rotation for jpegs should be in there somewhere also I think.

Speaking of rotation it would be nice if I didn't have to create a new file when I rotate a picture, rather that a program could remember the filename and automatically rotate it next time I open it

HTH

[freitasm]

I use Resco Picture Viewer... Why? Because is the only one that opened ALL my pictures without showing a "Out of memory" error.

I can get my 256MB SD card out of my camera, put into the H3970 and look at the pictures straight there! No changing picture format, no resizing (there's a Palbum software for changing pictures now, I think)

So, the most important feature? SHOW the pictures. With no problems. No complains...

[Jason Dunn]

Huge fan of Pocket Artist. Only issue is not enough filters and it is very slow to render a 500K .jpg taken from a camera.

Could you be more specific? What features from the photo editing side of things are important to you? Not the painting type stuff, but photo viewing/editing.

[Macguy59]

For me personally, apps like Photoshop Elements 2.0 and iPhoto2 do a nice job without being overly complicated. When viewing photo's on my PPC I want whatever app I'm using to automatically resize the image to my screen size. Having to scroll is a real turn off, unless of course I'm zooming in on it. Second would be a simple brush that one could erase blemishes with easily. Third would be an easy way to remove redeye. An example of this would be to drag a box around the eyes and with a single tap remove the redness. Lastly would be a 'quickfix' button that would change a variety of parameters at one time (but still allow for manual contrast/brightness control). Of course the basics like the ability to crop, resize, rotate and a way to email the pic from within the app would be nice :wink:

[Jhokur2k]

How about something simple *mind you I haven't found or read a manual for pocket artist so don't shoot me* - brush sizes? Or an easy drop down (rise up?) menu format similar to Photoshop, so you can get to tools quicker...

[bbarker]

I like the photo viewing app that came with my HP Jornada 568. It's simple and does just one thing. Usually what I want to do is show someone a picture of my family or one of my kids. I can open the viewer and quickly get there.

Unfortunately I can't just click on a photo from File Manager because Picture Perfect comes up. When that happens I can't simply show someone a photo because PP wants more. It requires complicated setup steps or something to do with albums. That always messes me up. It requires enough steps and waiting for thumbnails to load that the person I'm showing has lost interest by the time I locate the picture. The UI isn't intuitive either.

So give me something simple and quick as a viewer.

As for an editor, I don't know. I've never tried editing a photo on a Pocket PC. But if I did, again I would want an excellent user interface. Be sure you do usability tests to verify the ease of use.

[Ed Hansberry]

Huge fan of Pocket Artist. Only issue is not enough filters and it is very slow to render a 500K .jpg taken from a camera.

Could you be more specific? What features from the photo editing side of things are important to you? Not the painting type stuff, but photo viewing/editing.
Ok, ok, I am a photo editing hack. Red eye is about all I do for real, but The kids like it when I do the Swirl or a Bubble filter on the image, and I can't do that with Pocket Artist. Don't ask anymore questions. You'll confuse me. I'll start asking you about depreciation or something. :P

[Buddha]

Well one thing that should really be included (in my opinion) is a resample option, instead of a simple resize when changing a picture to a smaller format. This gives much better quality.

(and lossless rotation of jpegs would be nice aswell)

my 2 cents

[Rirath]

For viewing, the only thing I'm dying for is easy panning around the image with the nav button. ^_^ Man I hate clicking and dragging... it's a real pain.

For editing, more realistic brushes. I realize it'd be really difficult to do a mobile version of Painter, but Mobile Pencil has some great pencil emulation. Pocket Artist on the other hand still looks flat to me.

[blusparkles]

I'd like to see batch processes, which is something that PQV implemented (I think) - so that when taking pictures with a digital camera, you can do stuff like resize them all to a particular size, convert them to a different format, rename them (instead of having IMG2343, having something meaningful, like Julies_birthday_1) etc.

[heov]

i really like PQV because it supports a lot of formats and it's FAST! Speed is everything to me... I just want to view my photos, maybe light editing, like cropping or resizing, color change, etc... and PQV fits the bill nicely. I think if Spb were to make a tool like that it would be great. The problem w/ other picture viewers such as Resco is pictures take too long for it to load and it's almost 2MB in size wheras PQV is only around 500K and resco doesn't have THAT many more features... Also, i personally think resco is bloatware... why would I want to open an mpeg movie on that? It's horrible playback...

Anyway, the most important things to me are speed, size of the program, compatiblity w/ other formats, and light editing (cropping, resizing, color adjustment). I think if you guys were to make a small, fast program that did just that... it would be great... you won't need stuff such as attaching audio notes or pen drawings or filters in the viewer... There are two different ppc type users out there- those that want to edit/customize pictures and those that want to view their pictures. The ones that try to be both, IMO, are the worst ones.

[Pony99CA]

For viewing:

Support of all common formats -- JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, Photoshop, etc.
Support images of all sizes (if bigger than the screen, only read the part that fits, if possible, like FlashPix).
Allow remembering the way the image was viewed last (zoom, rotation, etc.).
Allow transitions from one image to another -- slides, wipes, fades, etc.
Allow associating audio with images (like Picture Perfect).
Allow captioning the images, with custom fonts.
Various size thumbnail views -- 4, 9, 16, 25 images.
Multiple selection capability to add images, including directory import.
Display PowerPoint presentations.

For editing:

Simplicity!
Common paint functions -- titling, drawing, etc.
Multiple-level undo
Photo retouching -- red-eye removal (with different color options), texture/clone brushes, etc.
Automatic tweening to remove items from the picture -- select a region of the image and a direction, and the image will be tweened from one side to the other (like a gradiant fill).
Well-documented filter/plug-in support, preferably Photoshop compatible
Layers & masks.

Steve

[jet8810]

Make it free! :lol:

[John Walkosak]

I would have to add my support to Pocket Artist for photo editing. I use this every week on the job and I love it. It never fails me. Not that I am doing anything complex, usually just lightening and adding notes, but I find the interface clean and straight forward.

I use Picture Perfect to view. Nothing special, was just part of a bundle I picked up, but I like its features and ease of use.

[ipaq38vette]

My top image viewing priority is navagation within the PPC directories and the ability to cut and paste pictures from one folder to another. I really like the Adiem Photo Explorer's icon in the toolbar that opens the selected picture for editing. Simplicity with alot of expansion is excellent.

My top image editing priority is 3rd party plugins/filters. When I was looking at Pocket Artist, the two aspects of the program that turned me away was 1) the price and 2) the lack of plugin/filter support.

What I look for in a program is value. Bundle a decent picture viewer with an excellent image editor for around $20 and you'll have my money.

[sweetpete]

For viewing:

Support of all common formats -- JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, Photoshop, etc.
Support images of all sizes (if bigger than the screen, only read the part that fits, if possible, like FlashPix).
Allow remembering the way the image was viewed last (zoom, rotation, etc.).
Allow transitions from one image to another -- slides, wipes, fades, etc.
Allow associating audio with images (like Picture Perfect).
Allow captioning the images, with custom fonts.
Various size thumbnail views -- 4, 9, 16, 25 images.
Multiple selection capability to add images, including directory import.
Display PowerPoint presentations.

For editing:

Simplicity!
Common paint functions -- titling, drawing, etc.
Multiple-level undo
Photo retouching -- red-eye removal (with different color options), texture/clone brushes, etc.
Automatic tweening to remove items from the picture -- select a region of the image and a direction, and the image will be tweened from one side to the other (like a gradiant fill).
Well-documented filter/plug-in support, preferably Photoshop compatible
Layers & masks.

Steve

Steve, I'm not sure I'd want everything on your list, but yours is close. I think on the viewing side of things you're going a bit overboard for my taste. I like all the options, I just think that the app size and performance would suffer greatly with all that (if not, then great, but I'm not sure the PPC is the best platform for all this ... yet)
I really like most of your editing features though. The main reason I think it would be a bit better to have lots of editing features, rather than viewing, on the device is the ability to do quick edits and send the image while mobile is very useful to me. On the other hand, viewing high res images on the small screen and doing house keeping of images isn't something I'd do often given the limitations of working with lots of files at once on the PPC platform. That's stuff left for the desktop IMHO.

Make sense?

[Jason Dunn]

For viewing, the only thing I'm dying for is easy panning around the image with the nav button. ^_^ Man I hate clicking and dragging... it's a real pain.

Ok, let's say the d-pad was assigned to pan the image around. How would you move from image to image in a folder/slideshow? The hardware buttons? I understand what you're asking for, but I don't think it's a coincidence that almost every app uses the d-pad for image advancement and panning uses the touch screen interface.

For editing, more realistic brushes. I realize it'd be really difficult to do a mobile version of Painter, but Mobile Pencil has some great pencil emulation. Pocket Artist on the other hand still looks flat to me.

Do you consider paint functionality part of image editing, or image painting? I know you're into drawing anime, but truthfully, I view image editing as completely separate from image painting. If Spb were going to create a painting application, it would be a stand-alone application designed specifically to do that.

One of the limitations in designing for a small device with limited storage is that it's very difficult, and not very advisable, to make "do everything" applications. You end up with a visually confusing, bloated app.

[l0o5er]

Coincidentally enough, I've just finished loading Palbum Suite onto my desktop & Pocket PC for evaluation. I am a PicturePerfect 5.1 user & have been interested for some time to try our Palbum's desktop functionality in particular as this is what's been missing for me in terms of a turn-key solution for converting my digicam photos for Pocket PC use (vs. my current solution of using Ulead Smartsaver). I have also appreciated what I have seen of Palbum's commitment to ongoing application improvements & new releases versus Applian who have a dismal performance in this area at least as far as Picture Perfect goes - its been well over a year since they released their last version (5.1) & their competition has been getting stronger & stronger.

I think that Palbum Suite manages the whole process of Pocket PC photo deployment very well - the desktop application is great. But I didn't like their Pocket PC viewer as much as Applian's.

* Prefer my albums to open on the first (or last selected photo) by default vs. thumbnail view.
* Prefer PP's incremental zooming capability & toolbar/hardware button to do this vs. zoom menu option
* Prefer PP's thumbnail view which has an option to crop thumbnail so that full "cell" is populated with image (appeals to my aesthetic)
* Like PP's configurable hardware button assignment
* Can't recall seeing a favourites menu or capability to directly open other albums on my Pocket PC from within the application without navigating to find them - PP does this

Also

* Would like to see improvements in the scaling algorithms so that when I'm viewing my picture @ 125% or 150% its smooth-ed out rather than pixel-ly (is this possible?)
* Also capacity to use a zoom tool so that I can zoom in on a particular area of an image selected with the stylus
* Would really like to see an add-in to my picture viewer so that it can act as a full-screen slideshow "screen-saver" when my Pocket PC is cradled. But don't want to have to manually load the application to do this - perhaps handled via a Today-screen add-in?

Personally don't worried about the issue of speed/image loading performance as far as what I use my Picture Viewer for which is basically a photo album of processed 320x240 images.

Anyway, I have since uninstalled Palbum Suite cos it doesn't quite cut it for what I looking for at the moment at least in terms of justifying spending another $25 on a picture viewing application. But if you added the above I'd buy it in a flash :-)

Mitch

[bmhome1]

Fastest thumbnail with quick 100% size zoomed scrolling image is PocketLoupe (Glasslantern.com). Not cheap but the best for that purpose. PQView is great for multiple thumbnails and easy zooming in. Both will deal with ANY size photo file without out-of-memory nonsense like most other viewers choke on. Have both. Also Glasslantern's Pixfer makes transfers from card to other card/drives really fast and automatic.

PocketArtist is great and Photogenics (idruna.com) is also for mini-photoshop PPC image adjustments. Each offers individual features so have both. Neither is cheap and not small size (load into FileStore), can be very slow processing large image files, but capable of great results (red-eye fix, sharpening, color corrections).

[Pat Logsdon]

I purchased Photogenics, so that's what my comments are based on...

First & foremost, I'd KILL for some kind of line-smoothing for free-hand drawing/sketching - even if people aren't using their ppc's to do serious drawing, I think that the ability to draw simple circles and arrows without them being wiggly or jaggy should be basic functionality. Also, for simple sketching/editing, I'd really appreciate a simple 1 pixel border that clearly shows the boundaries of the space I have to work in.

Just my 2 cents... :)

[jeffmd]

Ok, im a graphic nut. I have a canon a40 digital camera, I often edit images and text to create wallpaper and cd covers, and youll see me doing photoshop contest at fark.com. My opinion of viewrs and editors on the ppc has been way low. alot of them end up doing what PC viewers DONT do! Namely albums, the display is to small to try and do albums. So dont bother with them. the best album you can do is thumbnails of a file directory ala acdsee for pc (not the pos for Pocket pc).

First.. allways keep images their native res. for viewing and everything. if the persons pda dosnt have the ram for decompressing it, he should convert it to a low res first, or maybe give the option when the user is about to open the file and the program knows the image wont fit in ram.

ok , first the viewer. Top notch resample algorythems a must here. it should start in "fit to screen" mode and have easy to use zoome and pan controles (Past programs have only been good in either zooming, or panning). and of course rotate controles. One of the things I hope to do one day on my ppc is read manga. The problem is manga (black and white comics) scans very in size.. but are almost allways pretty huge. So a good controle on zoom is required so I can view AND ready the pictures. At the same time I need to have good fast pan control. And lastly of course i need a good resample algorythem so the text is readable. Most image programs fail here because either it does not resample when you zoom in, or it does not have any pan controles.

As for an editor, its really hard to edit on a pocket pc, but I can think of things that would make some jobs easier. first and formost.. a GOOD Wand cut out utility! Since trying to cut at the pixle level is very difficult on the pocket pc, a wand tool to help seperating objects in na image would be immensly helpfull. Second, a whole plethora of color changing options. see all those color and brightness controles in photoshop? complete with effecting shadows, mid tones, and high tones? just dump em right into the program.

ahh hell... make a duplicate of photoshop, then i'll be happy. ;)

[tonyrxman]

"Lastly would be a 'quickfix' button that would change a variety of parameters at one time (but still allow for manual contrast/brightness control). Of course the basics like the ability to crop, resize, rotate and a way to email the pic from within the app would be nice"


I agree that a One-Click photo fix would be great. I usually view pixs with my pocket pc before I use my desktop. It would be great to edit the pix's with my pocket pc (via a quickfix button) then be able to download to my desktop....
-the One-Click fix would include- contrast, brightness, red-eye, color fix, and the ability to clean up blurred pictures...........

[Speed Racer]

There is definitely a need for a photo viewer for quickly proofing hi-res digital photos for white balance, focus, and depth of field. An app that could quickly proof, adjust, annotate, and e-mail images in the field would be a killer application for photo journalists.

The program should have a utility to calibrate the PDA's screen. The reason why I bring this up is because every color PDA that I have seen has its own quirks (i.e. iPaq 3800 renders any moderately dark color as black). Resco's Picture Viewer has a Gamma control that helps but I'd like to see something that is more effective and easier to use. Mac OS X has a very slick way of quickly calibrating a display. They do this by walking you through several images that are tailored to each adjustment (i.e. contrast, brightness, white balance, and red, green, and blue levels). If you don't have access to a Mac just let me know and I'll send you screen shots of the process.

I'd like to see it open the photos in a thumbnail view. Selecting a photo would cause it to fit to screen. A zoom tool is a must for quickly checking focus. So is the ability to quickly pan around the zoomed image.

As far as image editing goes I would only want to do the basics on a PDA such as: crop, rotate, resize, save to different formats, and adjust contrast, brightness, and levels. Anything more than that and I would rather be sitting in front of my 21" monitor.

[mhynek]

I don't know if any of you remember a program called Coolviz 2, but it had the best zooming capabilities I'd ever seen (on a ppc). I don't know if it was the algorythm they used or what, but when zooming in on a photo, it would "smooth" the picture out so that it wouldn't appear as "blocky/pixelish". That's what I would like to see brought back in a viewer/album program. I currently use Palbum in my Ipaq 3970 and love it! :D

[dean_shan]

I don't need to do photo editing on the go so I just use Pocket Beholder (http://members.fortunecity.com/broadsword/Beholder.html). It views photos pretty well and best of all it's FREE! :D

[hollis_f]

I hardly ever use my PPC for editing pix - but it does get used for showing pix from my (and my friends') digital cameras. For that the main factor is speed. I want to be able to step through pix without having to wait an age for them to load. I want to be able to zoom in and out and pan around the zoomed image with the minimum of fuss. I want it to show me images and play movies from the digicam. Actually - I think I want PQV :)

[Marcus]

Here is a big one for me as i receive faxes by email. Some of the viewer/editor packages can handle TIFF files but not multi-page TIFFs, which is how faxes arrive for me. The only solution so far is an add-on for Primer's PDF viewer, which while a good product is very expensive and SLOW.

As for editing mostly I use them for resizing , colour balance and Brightness/contrast. Usually this is so I can take pics on the digital camera while I am away and make them a little more email friendly.

Mark

[Idruna]

Speedracer, check out the photojournalist oriented cousin of Photogenics, Pocket Phojo :) http://www.idruna.com

Supports pro size images, pro quality colour corection including white balance and levels, IPTC captions, screen calibration, and FTP and email + batch support for photo transmission, amongst other things.

[numb]

I'd like to see one that handles RAW files from top of the range digital cameras...like PocketLoupe, but faster, brighter and with a bettter interface (like thumbnails)

[jeffmd]

raw? wouldnt that be the same as bmp?

btw i just realised.. ya know our pocket PCs only do 16 bit color. :/ Maybe editing on them photoshop style isnt what ya wanna do ;)

[numb]

no RAW isn't the same as bmp..its the unprocessed data that a digital imaging chip produces. I only want to use my ppc to view them, and delete the bad ones, not edit them.
PocketLoupe does a reasonable job, but is very slow (althought they are huge files), and is too dark.
It would be nice if could show the exposure histogram too! (not asking too much!!!! :D

[glasslantern]

Numb - have you tried the latest version of PocketLoupe (v1.26)? Earlier this month we did a bunch of work to really speed up the program by converting to an entirely new image rendering library. In addition, there is now a brighten option to make up for dimmer Pocket PC screens. One image type that is still somewhat slow to load is Canon CRW files, since they are really huge. We're updating the program now to use the associated .THM files to provide super-fast small thumbnails for CRW images, which should help, since you'll be able to see the small image first.

Please let us know what type of images you are loading, and if there is a performance issue, perhaps we can find a way to speed it up.

Histogram, flashing the blown-out whites, and a multiple thumbnail view are all good features that are on our potential feature list...we certainly have not stopped development on our software!

thanks,
-jeff

Jeff Blum, CEO
Glass Lantern, LLC
[email protected]
http://www.glasslantern.com

[Speed Racer]

Speedracer, check out the photojournalist oriented cousin of Photogenics, Pocket Phojo :) http://www.idruna.com

Supports pro size images, pro quality colour corection including white balance and levels, IPTC captions, screen calibration, and FTP and email + batch support for photo transmission, amongst other things.

Idruna,
Thanks for the suggestion. I agree that Pocket Phojo is exactly what I'm looking for but the price is more than a little prohibitive for an amature photographer like myself.

[Jason Dunn]

the One-Click fix would include- contrast, brightness, red-eye, color fix, and the ability to clean up blurred pictures...........

8O

You don't ask for much, do you? :lol:

[tonyrxman]

tonyrxman wrote:
the One-Click fix would include- contrast, brightness, red-eye, color fix, and the ability to clean up blurred pictures...........

You don't ask for much, do you?



Jason,
If I'am dreaming why not dream BIG?!?!
Anthony

[Jason Dunn]

If I'am dreaming why not dream BIG?!?!

I can't fault you for that. :wink: But I'm not even aware of a program on the DESKTOP that will do what you're asking. How would software figure out how to fix the red eye effect automatically? How would it tell the difference between red eyes and a red shirt? The only way to have this work would be to have software smart enough to do human face recognition, figure out where the eyes were, and kill red hues in those zones - not impossible, but quite a tall order! :D

That's ok though, keep the ideas and feedback coming! This is good stuff.

[Mojo Jojo]

Currently I use the Palbum Picture viewer and some of the things I would like to see would be additional plugins (similar to the brightness Filter) but for colors.

Right now an image on the PC becomes muted when brought to the PDA. I can either color correct it on the PC, usually making the original odd looking, but have it look okay on the PDA. If there was something where I can have red/green/blue be adjusted by a value for ALL images that would be good.

Have a plugin that says 'auto-rotate image(left or right)' if width is greater then height. So an image that has horizontal proportions versus vertical it would open automatically in the correct orientation for it. Palbum has something called smart rotation, but that just seems to tell the direction to rotate the picture when a user clicks the rotate icon. I would like to see this done automatically.

An automatic image sync folder... similar to a windows PPC sync folder but specifically for images. So I can have a image folder, have it located where I tell it (SD / CF), and it grabs new files if found in a specific folder on the PC. Currently activesync makes a folder then moves everything directly to PDA ram (my documents), image files can be huge, would like to specify where they are placed.

I think those are a few things I would like added to some viewers.

[natedog]

My favorite photoviewer/album app is IA Album.

I really like the interface, and it shows me info about my photos while I'm out in the field, like Metadata (exif), and histograms. It's easy to review photos taken with my Minolta Dimage X, as it reads them directly off of the SD card, (IA Albums 'Browse Storage Card' menu item makes getting at the photos a snap too).

The main thing I miss is not being able to use IA Album for is viewing Quick Time video clips I often take. For this I either have to use PictPocket or PQV, neither of which I really like, and neither of which support photoviewing as well as IA Album (what I really don't understand is why media play doesn't have a codec for Motion JPEQ that will work with Quick Time .mov files).

Other than photo viewing and quicktime viewing, the main things I want to be able to do with my images on the PPC is:
Go through images and delete bad shots
Losslessly rotate images that need it
Show photos directly from storage card in a slideshow (look at what we did today...)
Option for disabling the PPC's Autodim feature in Slideshow mode (iritating to have to touch the screen to get the backlight back on when viewing a slideshow, either a menu pops up, or the slideshow halts).
Email selected images (with integrated resize/resample)
Batch resize selected images for storage on the PPC
Batch zip up selected images for sending / sharing them
Batch rename/timestamp using the exif dates in the image files would be REALLY nice.
Being able to add IPTC info and/or exif User Comments, or even just JPEG comments would be GREAT (when is a better time to categorize / make notes, than when you're in the field).
Thats basically what I need. Any serious retouching / cropping generally gets done on the PC anyhow...

None of the programs I use meet all my needs. It would be nice to have one app that did it all (at least with respect to camera images).

[Jason Dunn]

Excellent feedback guys, keep it coming!

[alizhan]

heov said: "there are two different ppc type users out there- those that want to edit/customize pictures and those that want to view their pictures." I would add a third: those who want to archive their pictures (e.g., while on trips). Photo archivers differ from photo viewers and photo editors by intent: photo viewers are intended to show images, and photo editors are intended to change the content of images; photo archivers are intended to proof, categorize, store, and retrieve images. Photo archivers make no lossy changes to the image, and need provide only those viewing tools directly suited to proofing (i.e., content analysis, not content editing).

This is the process I'm shooting for: I'm out in the field, and take a card's worth of images. I pop the card out of the camera, and insert it into the PDA. I open the archiver application, which allows me to define IPTC/EXIF information for all the images on that card (en mas and/or individually), proof images for basic quality (histograms, zoom, color analysis, etc.), and fix orientation problems (lossless rotation). The annotated images are re-written in place on the card, which I then store until I get home. Optionally, the application can move all of the images from the card to another location, and clear the card (a la Pixfer http://www.glasslantern.com/products/Pixfer/index.htm).

No application I've tried allows me to do all of this. I've starting developing one, but, quite frankly, it's more likely to get done if someone else does it :wink:. About the closest existing application I've seen is Idruna's Pocket PhoJo http://www.idruna.com/pocketphojo.html. Pocket PhoJo is directed squarely at photojournalists, though, and is SERIOUS overkill for an amateur like me. Half the touted features are things I would never use (pre-press manipulation, and downloading images via cell-phone connection come to mind), and it costs more than I paid for my camera!

I think that the best approach is to develop a suite of inexpensive programs that know how to communicate with each other, instead of one monolithic application. We've already identified several pieces: viewer, slideshow, proofer, touch-up, and archiver. Additional components can add other functionality: you want to send optimized pictures via e-mail? Add another component. You want to layer graphics onto the photo? Add another component. The whole PPC interface is built around the idea of lots of small applications that interoperate. It works.

That said, I can list some specific lackings in the applications I've tried to date:

- No support for lossless manipulation of JPEG images. Lossless rotation has been mentioned several times in this thread, but is not the only lossless operation available with the JPG format.

- No support for editing embedded meta-data information (EXIF, IPTC, and JPEG comments).

- No support for embedding application-specific data in the JPEG. EXIF and IPTC are examples of this, but there are lots more: audio notes, ink notes, viewing preferences, slide-show parameters, etc. JPEG comments with XML would work, as would defining a new APPx block. As a concrete example, how about supporting a 320x240 thumbnail? The PPC has a strict screen size of 320x240, so why not render a new "thumbnail" at exactly that size? The EXIF standard states that the EXIF thumbnail must be 160x120 (IIRC), but there's nothing that prevents one from embedding another thumbnail targeted at the viewing device's native resolution.

- Limited support for RAW camera files. For me, this isn't much of an issue as my current camera doesn't have a RAW mode (and "Super High Quality" JPEGs are almost always good enough), but if I had a RAW mode I'm sure I'd be using it.

Just my $0.02.

-- Mark

[BugDude10]

I agree with Mark's analysis. For me, I don't need editing; I have a handful of apps on my desktop PC, where I can better see and adjust my pix. For my PDA, I want a good viewer (so I can organize pix into slideshows to show friends and colleagues) and, as soon as my MicroDrive arrives (and now that the USB mass storage driver works on the e740 with the Expansion Pack :D ), I could use an archiver to store my pix from my digital camera to the MD, to make more space on the camera's card.

A nice feature in the viewer would be the ability to resample the image to maximize space savings, and perhaps one-click image optimization for handhelds (i.e., one click to boost color and sharpness to make the image jump out more).