Image browser compatible with affinity photo

[humpty dumpty]

Does anybody know of an image browser that is compatible with Affinity Photo?

[Komatös]

Hi @humpty dumpty and welcome to the forum.

In the classical sense, Windows Explorer or Mac Finder could be called an image browser.

With a few more details about the intended use, you could be helped more specifically.

[Return]

xnviewmp,eagle.cool,imatch

[thomaso]

NeoFinder

https://www.cdfinder.de/guide/3/3.16/affinity_dam.html

[henryg]

XnViewMP for me. Not ideal, but I've grown to like it. Very east to change file info too eg modified & exif dates etc .

[humpty dumpty]

On 6/4/2023 at 11:14 AM, Komatös said:

Hi @humpty dumpty and welcome to the forum.

In the classical sense, Windows Explorer or Mac Finder could be called an image browser.

With a few more details about the intended use, you could be helped more specifically.

I used to use Faststone Image Viewer, but over the years, all the different upgrades have left the program woefully antiquated.  I could open any image in an editing package of my choice but now, with the latest upgrade on windows 11 that's no longer possible.

XNViewMP appears to do all I want, so I'll have a play with that until Serif get their act together.
Thank you all for your help.

[lightchaser-nyc]

On Mac https://www.pixlpath.com but only previews of afphoto files.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, lightchaser-nyc said:

On Mac https://www.pixlpath.com but only previews of afphoto files.

Are these previews any different from the thumbnail images Finder shows in gallery view when AP is set to Save thumbnails with documents?

[loukash]

3 hours ago, lightchaser-nyc said:

pixlpath.com

Thanks for sharing. Looks good and is priced well.

3 hours ago, lightchaser-nyc said:

but only previews of afphoto files.

That's all there is in Affinity documents to preview for any 3rd party app: 256×256 px

On 6/4/2023 at 1:10 PM, Return said:

xnviewmp

On 6/9/2023 at 6:00 PM, henryg said:

XnViewMP

On 6/16/2023 at 7:30 AM, humpty dumpty said:

XNViewMP

Being in the process of moving from MacBook Pro mid-2012 El Capitan to MacBook Air M2 15" Ventura, I'm also currently exploring XnViewMP to replace iView/Expression Media. It has a few quirks and is really, really a totally Windows-y app (yuck), but it appears to be quite customizable. What I like: It actually catalogs any file format, i.e. it works sort of like a "Meta Finder". In fact, just for the fun of it I'm currently cataloging and "thumbnailing" my whole Home folder which has a whopping 915 GB: lots of hi-res audio (as I also work as sound engineer, multitrack recording, mixing, mastering, etc.), not to speak of ten thousands of various image files I've accumulated in the past 35 years of graphic design. XnViewMP can handle that pretty well.
So far I noticed two major issues: 1) It can choke on certain AI/PDF files where the parallel GhostScript process will hang. 2) It doesn't handle symbolic links (UNIX aliases) the way I'd like it to, and it can get caught in an almost infinite loop depending on how the aliases are placed. I may thus have to replace my symlinks with regular MacOS aliases to work around that. (Mac aliases were a problem on El Capitan, hence my years old symlink preference…)

Another apps I'm testing:
digikam.org
It has potential, but watch out: What they call "Albums" are actually your Finder folders! Whatever you do to your "albums" within the app is destructive. 
If you tell it so, it can catalog Affinity documents but it cannot read the preview thumbnails (yet?).

NeoFinder is also a candidate, and in fact I'm using it since 2000 while it was called CDFinder for cataloging my every external discs, disks and drives. As such, it's brilliant. As a DAM and iView replacement, I'm still not convinced, even though it can even partially import and rebuild iView catalogs.

GraphicConventer is also a capable image browser, and I'm using to primarily to edit metadata, which it can do in probably any possible way.

[Komatös]

Possibly the OSS DarkTable is also something for one or the other.

https://www.darktable.org

 

[loukash]

41 minutes ago, loukash said:

GraphicConventer is also a capable image browser

The best thing about GC is that it can read and write Finder Labels/Tags. Can't do without them.
And it's scriptable.

NeoFinder can do that, too. And it can create "meta albums", unlike GC which just can save your favorite folders.
It's primarily the view options in NeoFinder that I dislike. I'm "spoiled" after all those years with iView…

[v_kyr]

21 minutes ago, loukash said:

The best thing about GC is that it can ...

Well GC can do much more than what has been named so far, it also does a much better job than APh for quickly rescale/resize and convert (read/write) all sort of image formats ... etc. It's a pretty valuable tool to have & use under macOS.

1 hour ago, loukash said:

That's all there is in Affinity documents to preview for any 3rd party app: 256×256 px

Not really, even my Py afthumbs scripts can extract greater previews and embedded PNGs out of Affinity files.

[loukash]

8 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

GC can do much more than what has been named so far

Of course. Been using it since over 20 years. But… it's an advanced tool, suffering from Featuritis. One must know and understand what one wants to accomplish.

[Return]

I mostly use eagle (for both win and mac)
It has some nice features including tagging and rating and smartfolders(collects per tag if setup rules for it)
You can create a custom thumbnail from a screenprint for even the invisible files like afassets/palettes,etc.
Also one can use an auto import folder to serialize when saving from the affinities.
It does create copies of the files so you don't use the originals this may add to the storage though.
It can export folders/files to the regular explorer/finder folders or reach the files from explorer/finder directly or from within the program.
It can export as package files to import into other eagle libraries or simply add to another library from within the program.
It will create local folders which can be backed up on another drive by simply copy/paste.

[thomaso]

35 minutes ago, Return said:

It does create copies of the files so you don't use the originals this may add to the storage though.

Does it mean Eagle creates a file copy of every single instance included in an Eagle catalog? (... which appears quite disk space wasting / similar to the space demanding macOS Photo library)

And what happens in Eagle if an original resource file gets edited, moved or deleted?

[Return]

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

And what happens in Eagle if an original resource file gets edited, moved or deleted?

There's a trash folder so no direct deletions and a restore option and as with all other programs one should back up.

And yes the copying seems to take up space but isn't backing up or using a duplicate the same?

What I do like is that I can open the folder where the file resides from within the program or even from explorer.
So no obscure file format that is of no use without the program.

If you edit the file from eagle it will not overwrite the file and one needs to use save as and import it again in eagle or use the auto import function listener.
ex.
Create file>save as in a regular folder.
This folder is monitored by eagle.(per library)
Now edit this file again with its program>ctrl+s (save)
It will auto transport to the designated folder in eagle.
Make new edits>ctrl+s 
It will transport the same file again to eagle with the same name but it will not overwrite the first file.

But perhaps you better try out the program or see it's well explanatory documentation.
LINK

[Return]

Oh I forgot to mention that it is also a fontmanager with activate/ deactivate feature
And (animated)gif's, video's, urls (which open in the builtin browser), shows youtube video's within and has a browser extension to quickly transport from a site to the library when running the program.
 

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, Return said:

And yes the copying seems to take up space but isn't backing up or using a duplicate the same?

By far not: A backup gets stored on a separate hardware to be available if the default disk fails. Furthermore a backup can save all file types and files, the system files/folders included – whereas a backup of Eagle data appears to create even more copies of its library sources (... will result in 3 copies of each image source).

[Return]

But it will still be a duplicate of that same file(s).
If you just have the files in eagle instead of finder it will be only that copy and you can also store it as backup to another (shadow)library even on another drive.
Since storage is cheap these days, I don't see any problem.
(Currently running 2tb on this pc and again 2 tb on other pc connected through LAN and 2 tb as external drives and 5 tb on onedrive cloud)
Seems enough 😁
 

[loukash]

On 9/3/2023 at 11:06 PM, loukash said:

I'm also currently exploring XnViewMP to replace iView/Expression Media

Sooo…
After wasting tens of hours of my time, here's the major dealbreaker:

XnViewMP removes Finder Tags/Labels when editing a file or its metadata!
No go.

But it's still a pretty good image/metadata viewer. The trick: let it cache as many thumbnails as you have storage space to waste. Since the Thumb.db can get several GB fat, depending on your thumbnail size and quality settings, I recommend to move its storage path to ~/Library/Caches/_make_your_custom_XnViewMP_cache_folder_here which will usually automatically exclude it from Time Machine backups. To do so, go to XnView > Settings > Integration > Paths

For cataloging, it'll be NeoFinder then.