EZ Viewer 3

by Larry Horn

Co: GJC Software Co.

340 Grand Central Pky.

Bayville, NJ 08721-2716

www.gjcsoftware.com

Price: Full - $79.95

UG Price $59.95

System Req: Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, Pentium class PC, 8 Mb RAM, 64Mb Hard Drive space.

Summ: A multi-talented Graphic Viewer with image editing and fancy printing capabilities.

I have a digital camera and with the ability to take an unlimited number of pictures at no addition cost, I am taking a lot of pictures. I have a CD writer so storage is not a problem, just reviewing all of them and finding the ones I want to show and print. This is where EZ Viewer 3 comes to the rescue. If you think the main screen looks like Windows Explorer, you are right. It is used as an enhanced version of Windows Explorer to manage that ever-growing volume of digital images. It does every- thing Explores does including Drag-&-Drop and context sensitive menus on right click. But EZ Viewer has lots of added features that I will cover below. Actually, EZ Viewer can add to your volume of pictures because you can us its TWAIN scanner interface to add pictures to your collection.

File Management

The first thing you will probably use it for is to build Thumbnail catalogs/libraries of the pictures on your disk (or CD). You get a catalog for each folder. You can then click on an image to bring it onto the main screen for viewing. (Illustration #1) You can select the number of pictures you want to see at once (Illustration #2) from one to twenty-four. Want to have more detail than just file size about your picture? In the lower left size of the main screen, all of the detailed information for the selected picture is displayed. This includes the file format, compression rate, bits/pixel, Image size, image resolution, and optimum print size for you selected printer, as well as the usual file size and date.

As you click on successive pictures in the File Manager section of the main window, the pictures appear on the right. You may open another file by single-clicking or simply by using the down-arrow key to open picture after picture quick and easy. My only complaint is that in MultiView (say 4 images on the screen at once like in Illustration 1) you must click on the box you want the image to appear in or it will overwrite the last image in the same box. Perhaps the next upgrade build will feature that; did I mention they are free on line? Very nice.

Don't worry about the file format of your graphic: EZ Viewer reads AND writes in twenty different file formats including bmp, jpg, gif, animated gif, tif, psd, pcx, and many others. Yes, you can use it to change the format of a file, by simply using the Save-As feature.

What is my favorite file management feature? Batch processing of file names. My digital camera gives the pictures such descriptive names as P4020026, P4020027, etc., very informative. With EZ Viewer 3 I can tell it to automatically rename them to Vegas Vacation 01, 02, etc., much better and very simple all in one step rather than having to rename each one. You can also use Batch Processing to crop, convert, or rotate your pictures.

Another feature I use regularly is the Fast-Favorite Folder buttons. This feature allows you assign specific folders on your computer to each of eight little filing drawer icons so you can get to them very quickly. I have one assigned to my Upload-from-Camera folder, another to my To-Be-Printed folder, one for slide shows I am working on, and others assigned to frequently used folders. A nice feature to save time.

Picture Enhancements

In addition to file management, which would justify the price, there are also some very useful editing tools to adjust the color balance, gama, contrast, smoothness, red eye reduction, clone with transparency adjustments, and more. You can also resize for faster e-mailing, rotate, crop and add borders of numerous shapes. There are also numerous special effects you can accomplish. There are Page Curl, Embossing, Engraving, Edge Detection, Oil Painting, Posterizing, Sepia Tone, Diffuse, Motion several distortion effects, a line tracing feature that is very neat and others.

Slide Show

Now that we have organized and fixed up the pictures, what can we do with them? The first thing is to create a slide show. This allow you to displays images in a folder one-at-a-time at adjustable increments. You can have a random background color, a Continuous Show, and Random File Order Show with 29 different transition effects. EZViewer 3 even includes a MIDI player so you can synchronize music to your slide show. (Hint: Perhaps by version 4 you will be able to save your slide show, with music, to an auto-run CD ROM so you can distribute your pictures to others.) The slide show feature works very well.

Printing

Printing is also very versatile. You can print from 1 to 24 images on a page or up to 64 thumbnails. They can be laid in the number of rows and columns you decide upon. There is a very convenient "Fit Image to Page"feature which lets EZ Viewer automatically size the picture into the page. Use this with the magnify feature to just print part of the page with the auto centering function and you have total control. Want to add captions or text? That feature is included also.

They call this program EZ Viewer which is what it started as, just a viewer. But with all the features they have added by the current build in Version 3, this is much more than just as viewer. They had been scheduled for the July meeting (which we had to cancel because the school was closed for a summer construction project) so you could see all of the features I left out. Try to see a demo at one of the computer shows and we will try to re-schedule them.