Filed under: Multimedia, Software
Blazing fast image viewing with Photon 1.0.2
Photon just loaded 839 JPEG image previews for me in under 2 seconds. That's expletive worthy speed. And when it loads the full image, it's just as fast, even with RAW format images. And it loads every pixel of a RAW image. If you set the preview mode to fit-to-screen, clicking the image gives you a loupe-style zoom to full resolution. It reads photos–from folders or directly from cameras/memory cards–with a feature they call "Instant Import". I plugged in a camera and by the time I had looked back at the screen, it had recorded all of the images on the card.
Photon serves one purpose, but serves it well. It helps you do a rough cut of large batches of images before heading into Lightroom or Aperture for more advanced procedures. It lacks any form of image flagging, has limited viewing of metadata fields (the columns in the HUD aren't individually expandable or adjustable) and no search feature of any kind. It basically provides a very fast, very streamlined interface for creating collections ("stacks") of images and–once you've bought the full version–exporting them with options to convert the format to jpg, png, psd and more. It does provide histograms, which is handy for deciding on which RAW images you're planning to keep.
A demo of Photon is available for download, and costs $49 to purchase. That's shown as a markdown from $69, but I'm unsure if that's a limited-time offer.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave said 3:50PM on 1-03-2008
$49 dollars for an image browser? I mean, it browses images, and what else?
Agreed, it's quite fast but to me $20 or $25 perhaps would be more a reasonable price.
Reply
Matt said 4:26PM on 1-03-2008
If it saves you the cost of buying new hardware to speed up your workflow, $49 is cheap.
Les Filip said 5:47PM on 1-03-2008
And if it was $25 would you have said it was only worth $15, and if it was $15 would you have said it was only worth $5, and if it was $5 would you have said it should be donationware?
Dave said 8:32PM on 1-03-2008
Didn't mean to be a hater/troll.
Last year I spent somewhere between $150 and $200 on shareware - I really do tend to buy apps I like. In this case I guess that I didn't see value in this application where others can.
I wish the developer much success with this application.
builtformac said 4:02PM on 1-03-2008
I'm hoping Adobe looks at this program and gets this technology of imagethumb processing in Bridge. Thanks for the tip this app will certainly help me browsing tons of images. Dave, this app can also convert and handle RAW well.
Reply
cosmos said 4:27PM on 1-03-2008
Too bad it crashes on loading any of Fuji S5 Pro's RAW files... I'd have loved to use it to get rid of images I won't ever use before loading them into Aperture or Lightroom... :(
Reply
Kelly said 4:44PM on 1-03-2008
VERY FAST, too bad CS3 Bridge can't work like this.
Reply
Ed said 5:07PM on 1-03-2008
If it had full screen viewing I'd be all over it.
Reply
Mike Bernardo said 6:31PM on 1-03-2008
Hi all,
I'm the developer of Photon. Great to see interest in my little app!
$49 is the introductory price.
Photon 1.0 is purposefully very minimalist. I wanted to get the app out there as early as possible and gather feedback on what people wanted, rather than take guesses as to what people *might* want.
Brett is right that 1.0 is focused on sorting and culling a large batch of images. However, 1.0 is just the beginning. I've already got a long list of features queued up for the next version. If you have ideas for things you'd like to see added, I'd love to hear them.
Also, if you're seeing a crash and would like to help out, it would be great to get a crash report.
Thanks!
Reply
shoepal said 7:44PM on 1-03-2008
"right click - open with" would be handy. I just opened a couple thousand images I haven't looked at for years and I found one I wanted to take in to photoshop and print. Anyhow, it is amazingly fast, which definitely makes sorting through thousands of photos more enjoyable.
Gus Jenkins said 8:22AM on 1-04-2008
I would like to see in the demo download, instead of exporting stacks disabled, perhaps a watermark or something like that, so I can see the speed in which the stacks get exported.
If I have to wait an hour for a couple of hundred pics to go from RAW to JPG, it would not be worth the price to me
Alex McKee said 6:55PM on 1-03-2008
OOH! It's teh spam!
(Reported)
Reply
Ben said 3:18AM on 1-04-2008
+1 for full screen viewing
Reply
jason said 3:01PM on 1-04-2008
can photon print "contact sheets"?
(ie. a specified number of image thumbnails on a single page)
Reply