"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. Concerning the universe, I do not yet have absolute certainty" (Albert Einstein)
And by the way : 💢 what 💥 about 💣 Navalny ?
XNViewMP, very usefull picture-editingsoftware
Review and HowTo after 10+ years of use
Artikel XNViewMP is great picture-editingsoftware and it's also freeware. It is available for years already and is very consistently maintained.
It is a package that makes your picture-editing life very easy, especially because it has a very good (and very fast !) batch function.
You can set up the menus as you wish. And you can save all settings in your own files with your own clear names and in your preferred dirs. You can download a set of batch actions to get a quick start at the end of this article.
For example, you can create (and save) an action combination of autolevel, auto contrast, 30% extra sharpness
and a little extra saturation
and save the new pictures with the (added) extension new.
Plus a second action combination of reducing the size to e.g. 1000px, adding your own watermark and allowing new pictures to be saved with the extension 1000 (or ie small).
This package is (also) very useful to do all is needed to pre-process pictures for publication on a website. With this package you can also rotate pictures very accurately which is not seldom needed ...
Below you find several sets of two small pictures in original (left) and in improved quality (right). Behind each picture is the large fullsize picture that you can open separately (by clicking).
In these pictures you see little optical difference. The result depends very much on the amount of water vapour (which is between the subject and the camera of course). Digitally, however, the first (original) picture is 9.33 Mb and the second (edited) picture is 3.34 Mb.
If you zoom in, you can already see a clear improvement. And digitally the first (original) picture is 3.58 Mb and the second (edited) picture is 0.94 Mb.
And if you zoom in very far, something as shiny as a taillight looks much better. And that (also) in batch, which means that your series of pictures will be upgraded in a few seconds. Digitally, the first (original) picture is 2.37 Mb and the second (edited) picture is 0.72 Mb.
When it's dry you get something like this.
And something like that.
On the set above you can clearly see the wrong influence of water vapor. This picture was taken from home, through a not too clean window with double glazing, while it was raining. Exif : f/8 - 1/100th second - ISO1600 - 6xzoom.
But also for pictures taken indoors, the result is remarkably better.
Finally, a series of concert pictures where original and improved versions are side by side.
With little zoom
there is very little (optical) difference.
But with more zoom
the result is amazing !
These pictures are all taken with the unbeatable
Panasonic FZ1000
They're all handmade and not cropped.
The superior hardware and software of this camera makes a tripod superfluous, even in the dark !
But if you want to take timelapse shots the
Neomax 220 tripod(s)
Get a set of
settings
In this package you can technically edit pictures in all possible ways but not retouch them. In other words, you can't edit locally with the mouse but only select actions from the menus. Action(s) that will be released on the whole picture.
Another handy extra is that you can create (and save) your own toolbars. This in the context of "the fewer buttons the better". Make a backup of them every now and then (and of course not in the installation folder itself).
For local operations with your mouse is
Photoscape