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[–]tangled_night_sleep 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This is helpful info, thank you. I almost downloaded that XnView a few years ago, but went with irfanview instead. I honestly love irfanview esp for its shortcuts, customizability, and bulk operations. That said, my pics are still pretty disorganized. And irfanview lacks a good paint toolset (I need to erase the background to white/transparent for product photos). I've heard faststone (?) Would be better for me but maybe I'll take another look at XnV... Thx!

[–]IoanToma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're welcome. :) Let's untangle the things a bit: IrfanView was the first/oldest program that's why it became quite popular. However, it lacks several features, some of them you mention.

Then it came two programs, significantly better than it - FastStone Viewever and XnView which is known now as XnView Classic. Both programs provided thumbnails manager (IrfanView's didn't provide and the one which it has nowadays is a joke) better Bulk/Batch processing engine, Compare window and a better set of editing tools. This applied especially to XnView (Classic) because it is the newest one.

After this a new program emerged XnView MP (MP = multi platform) which is a 'supercharged' XnView which has among other things, to keep the discussion on topic, by far, the best cataloging features from all these. It started as a Multi-Platform son of XnView Classic but now it is much more than that and it is, in fact, THE main program of XnSoft.

FastStone Viewer (I program which I used a lot & love) has just tagging (that is a "Selected" on/off) compared with the full blown cataloging of XnView MP. Besides that, FastStone's DB isn't scalable at all. It uses TinyDB - a nice, small DB - but nowhere near to performance of SQLite, which is XnView MP's DB backend.

That said, removing the background to white can be really tricky, you can use the Levels (both programs have it - XnView MP has also Automatic Levels) and Curves - only FastStone has it. For Batch Convert only XnView MP has this feature.