Downloads – Alpha 1.10 (10 November 2015)
- Installer (~75KB). This will set up your file associations for you.
- Standalone .exe (~200KB). Use this if you already have Picsie installed and you just want the latest version. Simply drop it over the existing executable.
Picsie is a very lightweight image and video viewer, with an emphasis on speed and minimal interface. I primarily made it because while in the past I was perfectly happy with XnView, Quick Look on the Mac made it obvious how much Windows was missing something similar.
A while later I saw VJPEG which did pretty much exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately it lacks a few features I like, so I set about making my own.
The result is Picsie. It opens .bmp, .gif (including animated GIFs), .jpg, .jpe, .jpeg, .png, .if, .tiff, .avi, .mpg and .wmv files. There is essentially no UI to it – simply a picture (or movie) on your desktop, with a drop shadow if your version of Windows supports it. If it’s larger than your screen, it will be scaled to fit. If you move away from the window, it will fade slightly.
Controls are entirely mouse and keyboard:
- Drag: Move the window
- Right click: Exit
- Mouse wheel: Zoom
- Double-click: Centre and zoom 1:1
- Escape: Exit
- ‘t’: Toggle whether or not Picsie stays on top of other windows
- ‘b’ / ‘f’: Toggle fading if application loses focus
- ‘h’ / F1 / ‘?’: Show this help page
File browsing:
- Left arrow: Load previous file in folder
- Right arrow: Load next file in folder
- Up arrow: Load first file in folder
- Down Arrow: Load last file in folder
- Ctrl+Left arrow: Load first file in previous “group”
- Ctrl+Right arrow: Load first file in next “group”
Groups of files are defined as a name followed by a number, such as “screenshot 1.png” or “photo 9.jpg”.
Animated GIFs:
- ‘0’ (Zero): Pause animation
- ‘-‘: Reduce animation speed
- ‘+’ / ‘=’: Increase animation speed
- Backspace: Reset animation speed
- ‘[‘: Step frame backwards
- ‘]’: Step frame forwards
Video Files:
- Space: Pause/Play video
- ‘m’: Toggle sound
If you use the installer (see the bottom of this post) it will set up your file associations for you. It plays nicely with other applications and just adds itself to the list of programs which can handle the file formats, rather than overriding everything.
If you load a large file (more than 10MB) Picsie prompts you rather than loading it immediately. In this case you will get a message telling you to press return to view the file.
Lastly, if you open a corrupted or invalid file, or Picsie just has a problem (temperamental beast that it is), you’ll get an error message. Feel free to complain at that point.
Changelog
Alpha 1.11 (10 May 2016)
- Support for animated GIFs with variable frame delays – no longer just applies the first delay to the whole image
Alpha 1.10 (10 November 2015)
- Proving it still exists
- Use natural sort order – e.g. “File 2.jpg” now comes before “File 10.jpg”
- Can now use ctrl+left/right to move between “groups” of files
Alpha 1.9 (6 April 2011)
- Added tooltips for images.
Alpha 1.8 (30 November 2010)
- Now properly releases animated GIFs when you switch to a different image.
Alpha 1.7 (18 November 2010)
- Has a taskbar icon in Windows 7
Alpha 1.6 (13 October 2010)
- Fix: Sets the zoom level properly when you load an image
- Fix: Now consistently applies the minimum zoom level
Alpha 1.5 (26 September 2010)
- Fix: Set a minimum size that you can zoom out to, rather than a minimum zoom level.
- Fix: Animation speed for GIFs is now read from the file, so should match what you see in other viewers.
Alpha 1.4 (4 September 2010)
- Fix: Picsie’s maximum zoom now hits the limits of the screen, rather than falling short. This also stops the stretching effect when the limit was reached.
Alpha 1.3 (7 July 2010)
- New: If a new Picsie window is the only one loaded, it centres on the screen. If a window already exists, it loads wherever Windows puts it. This significantly helps with the layout and ease of use as you always know where the first one goes, and additional windows don’t appear directly over it
Alpha 1.2 (20 June 2010)
- Fixed: Mute setting wasn’t remembered between videos
- Fixed: Refuses to load files with extensions not in lower case (e.g. image.JPG)
Alpha 1.1 (15 June 2010)
- Fixed a bug in the installer that stopped Start Menu icons being created in Windows XP
Comments, Feedback and Such
If you have any comments, suggestions or bugs, email me at [email protected] to let me know. I’ll gladly look into any feature requests, and do my best to address any bugs.
Things to Look Out For
- At this stage it would be useful to know how the installation process goes on other computers. Does it install OK? Do the file associations get set up properly? Inquiring minds need to know.
- Does it ever just fall over completely on some files?
- Does it handle large files nicely?
If anything in that list gives you a problem, let me know and I’ll deal with it ASAP.
Licenses and Thanks
The icon used is from the wonderfully talented Kuswanto at Zeus Box Studio.
Picsie is freeware, so feel free to downoad it, hand it around, share it, whatever. I’ll be open-sourcing it sometime in the near future, once I get around to it. Until then, all copyright on the software is mine.