Image viewer and image resizing software for Mac

Hello,
I am quite new to Mac and Mac OS, and although I have found most of the software I want, I am having serious trouble finding light and simple image viewing program for Mac. Something like IrfanView on Windows would be ideal! Built-in "Preview" program would be fine, but it does not allow to go to next picture in the directory by pressing arrow key (or any other way). This is kind of the most basic function in any image viewer (even built-in Windows image viewer since Windows XP has that!). Built-in software "Photos" is also not suitable, as when I tried using it, it required me to "import photos" to it's own library, and ended up duplicating all of my quite large pictures collection on my Mac's internal SSD (which is not very big). Does any of you know of such a simple photo viewer for Mac? I need it to be very fast, simple and allow me to go to next photo in the directory by pressing arrow key. Deleting image file right from the viewer would be a very useful feature, too. Imagine shuffling through a day's work of pictures from camera's SD card -- you want to go through all pics quickly, and delete bad ones on the fly, right from the viewer window.

Another program I am not able to find is a simple JPEG resizer. I have absolutely perfect one on Windows, but on Mac I could not find a reliable, fast and small program for this. Usually I just need to resize very large JPEG files by telling either the largest side in pixels, or just entering the percentage of original size.

Thank you for all your help in advance.

For quick viewing you can use the Finder. Just navigate to your pictures folder, select the first pic then press the space bar. Arrow keys, left/right or up/down, depending on your view, list, icon (and in icon you can move the slider at the bottom to big view and it's usually good enough to recognize the real duds), flow, etc. Order the photos by date, modified, name, etc. You can delete the duds with command-delete.

As for sizing, cropping and minor edits, you can use Preview. Look for the icon that looks a little like a tool box or old fashioned Doctor's bag. Add it to your icon bar if it doesn't show now. It's full of editing features. You can also easily resize there and the choice is sticky, so if you choose 800 wide, for example, it will default to that each time.

I missed Irfan View when I moved to Mac, but if you look and click around your Mac you will find it's all here, just set out a little differently. Really the biggest thing is changing your thinking - things are just done differently here.

Yes, I hate Mac Photos and barely use it, although it has lots of good editing stuff too.

Quick View is an easy way to just view an image, but if you want to do more that just view it use Preview. Preview does just what you tell it to do, you select an image, it shows you an image, if you want to see all the images in a folder, open the folder instead of an image. I find it easiest to just drag the folder from Finder to the dock and drop on Preview, but you can do it from Previews Edit >Open dialog box and just double click the folder or select it and click "Open". Just make sure that in Previews Preferences under the "General" tab that either "Open all files in one window" or "open groups of files in the same window" is checked and under the "View" menu that "Thumbnails" is checked. The only files that I know of that will appear besides images doing this is PDF's.
By dropping multiple files on Preview you can now do Batch operations too, like Adjust the size or flip and rotate. You can easily Crop images and do Color Adjusts in Preview as well. I also use Preview to "Annotate" screen shots by adding boxes, circles, arrows and text when I need to. I try to use the features that came on my Mac when possible. I believe they were designed to work well together and I don't need to run a lot of 3rd party software to try and force my Mac to act like Windows machine. To resize a photo go up to the tools menu and select Adjust Size, there you can select percent, inches, pixels and some other ways. And Photos doesn't Require you to import all your photos into it. Go to Photos Preferences and under the General tab Uncheck the Importing box for "Copy items to the Photos Library". If you do that and anything you do to a photo in the original folder may cause Photos to not find the photo. Photos is a great app, but you have to unlearn all the Windows stuff you learned working with photos.

If you have a folder of pictures/graphics and you open the folder from the File menu in Preview you can use the left and right arrow keys to navigate through the pictures. When you get to one you want to edit I think you can stop there to select and edit it.

Oh, thanks, this is really helpful. I did not think built-in programs had all these features. I guess just out of box behaviour is very unusual to me, thus I was not able to discover these things myself.
I also would like to use built-in software as much as possible, it just feels "right" as opposed to loading random 3rd party applications which may or may not be of acceptable quality.
Also, sorry for a slight off-topic, but since we are talking about 3rd party software, should I be worried about any "leftovers" from various programs I install/remove on Mac? I know on Windows it is an issue, but how is it on Mac? If I delete the package from "Applications" folder, can I be sure it is always cleanly removed? Or is there a possibility of some leftover crap remaining on my system?

In Windows you need the uninstall control panel (which may or may not work)... you have files scattered all over the place for one program, and entries in a registry file. The Application that you launch in Windows is usually a Single *.exe File. But on a Mac everything that the Application needs to run is Bundled inside the app.


If you Open your Applications folder, and double click on an app, the app launches just like it does on a windows machine, but if you Right click on the app you can select "Show Package Contents", this will let you see all the files that are needed to launch the App. No need for a "Registry" as all information is kept within the package. With the App being a Package like this you can typically move it, copy it or trash it without worrying about a Corrupted Registry or a bunch of other files all over you Mac. No real need for a Special App to chase down a bunch of files for you. There are exceptions to this, if the app came with an uninstaller you should use it to uninstall.
You may find a small file in the Library/Preferences directory that the app used to store Preferences in and these are typically very small 4 kb files and I see no need to run an app like (AppZapper = 3.9 MB or AppCleaner = 6.7 MB) to delete a 4 kb text file. Every few months I go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete the .plist files I know I don't use anymore. Since I don't have to spend as much time on maintenance as I did on Windows machine , this makes me feel like I have done something important on my Mac. LOL

Pomeroy said:

In Windows you need the uninstall control panel (which may or may not work)... you have files scattered all over the place for one program, and entries in a registry file. The Application that you launch in Windows is usually a Single *.exe File. But on a Mac everything that the Application needs to run is Bundled inside the app.


If you Open your Applications folder, and double click on an app, the app launches just like it does on a windows machine, but if you Right click on the app you can select "Show Package Contents", this will let you see all the files that are needed to launch the App. No need for a "Registry" as all information is kept within the package. With the App being a Package like this you can typically move it, copy it or trash it without worrying about a Corrupted Registry or a bunch of other files all over you Mac. No real need for a Special App to chase down a bunch of files for you. There are exceptions to this, if the app came with an uninstaller you should use it to uninstall.
You may find a small file in the Library/Preferences directory that the app used to store Preferences in and these are typically very small 4 kb files and I see no need to run an app like (AppZapper = 3.9 MB or AppCleaner = 6.7 MB) to delete a 4 kb text file. Every few months I go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete the .plist files I know I don't use anymore. Since I don't have to spend as much time on maintenance as I did on Windows machine , this makes me feel like I have done something important on my Mac. LOL

Click to expand...

OK, this basically confirms my personal observations and is very good news Thanks for clarification.

Give the first three posts in this thread a quick read. The graphics are missing from the thread for me but the information is still useful. The upshot is that how an application is installed often gives you a clue of how to get rid of it.

Applications that install via drag and drop usually only leave a few preference files around that don't cause trouble and take up a few k worth of space. Other apps place files in more places (MS Word, Adobe) usually either have uninstaller or have detailed directions on the manufacturer's website.