PMView is a raster graphics image viewer, converter, and organizer with basic

image editing Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are digital photographs, traditional photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such a ...

capabilities. It was originally developed for

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

but is also available for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

What it is and what it does

PMView reads and writes and converts between more than 40

image file formats An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be c ...

, shows the images on the screen, single and in

slide show A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images (Presentation slide, slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals o ...

s, rotates or mirrors them, changes sizes and

color depth Color depth or colour depth (see spelling differences), also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to ...

crops A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydroponics ...

parts out of the images, and provides global editing of the image, all this individually on the image displayed on the screen, by prerecorded macros called batch scripts on a range of images, or directly in the File Open Container. And it can, of course, also print the images. PMView uses its own file open dialog, showing

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image ...

s of all images in a given folder in what PMview calls the "File Open Container", unless the user chooses to see only the filenames. The size of those thumbnails can be changed by the user, and the user can choose if the thumbnails are taken from the operating system, out of the JPEG or PNG files, or dynamically generated by PMView. Still in the "File Open Container", all or selected images can be processed by file copy and move operations, conversion between file formats, application of various image editing tasks in ''batch operation'' macros. PMView can acquire images by scanning of images using a

TWAIN Twain may refer to: People * Mark Twain, pen name of American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910) * Norman Twain (1930–2016), American film producer * Shania Twain (born 1965), Canadian singer-songwriter Places * Twain, California, a ...

interface to an

Image scanner An image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting or an object and converts it to a digital image. Commonly used in offices are variations of the desktop ''flatbed scanner'' ...

, and by grabbing a part of the computer's screen by

screenshot screenshot (also known as screen capture or screen grab) is a digital image that shows the contents of a computer display. A screenshot is created by the operating system or software running on the device powering the display. Additionally, s ...

s. And of course, from the

clipboard A clipboard is a thin, rigid board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place. A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not available. Th ...

, as a new image and as a new area of an existing image. Image editing features are global color modifications regarding

color balance In photography and image processing, color balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors). An important goal of this adjustment is to render specific colors – particularly ne ...

gamma correction Gamma correction or gamma is a nonlinear operation used to encode and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems. Gamma correction is, in the simplest cases, defined by the following power-law expression: : V_\text = ...

, luminance, negative conversion,

solarization The Sabatier effect, also known as pseudo-solarization (or pseudo-solarisation) and erroneously referred to as the Sabattier effect, is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly o ...

sharpening Sharpening is the process of creating or refining the edge joining two non-coplanar faces into a converging apex, thereby creating an edge of appropriate shape on a tool or implement designed for cutting. Sharpening is done by removing material ...

and softening of edges, and a number of filters including

Gaussian blur In image processing, a Gaussian blur (also known as Gaussian smoothing) is the result of blurring an image by a Gaussian function (named after mathematician and scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss). It is a widely used effect in graphics software, ...

and user-defined filters. For images with

indexed color In computing, indexed color is a technique to manage digital images' colors in a limited fashion, in order to save computer memory and file storage, while speeding up display refresh and file transfers. It is a form of vector quantization comp ...

(2, 4, 16, or 256 colors), typical for

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

images and found in most PNG images, PMView can edit the palette of colors, thus modifying the color of individual spots within the image. The Windows version runs on all Windows versions from Windows 98 to Windows 8, including native 64 bit versions, the OS/2 version on OS/2 3 "Warp" and newer. The program is written in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

with some routines in

Assembler Assembler may refer to: Arts and media * Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler * Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe * Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of A ...

, making heavy use of multithreading, creating and destroying threads as needed, thus enabling PMView to be very fast.

History

PMView is short for Presentation Manager Viewer. The name dates back to 1992 and OS/2 version 1.x where the graphical shell for OS/2 was called

Presentation Manager Presentation Manager (PM) is the graphical user interface (GUI) that IBM and Microsoft introduced in version 1.1 of their operating system OS/2 in late 1988. History Microsoft began developing a graphic user interface (GUI) in 1981. After it per ...

. An early OS/2 version of PMView was on the IBM BBS as "''pmview86.zip, 231751, 11-30-93, PM Picture viewer. GIF/BMP/JPG/PCX/TGA''". PMView version 1.00 was released in 1997. PMView version 1 was available in English, German, French, and Spanish. The last OS/2-only version of PMView as version 1.05. PMView 2000 (aka PMView v2.00) was released in early 2000 for both Windows and OS/2. The last version of PMView 2000 is v2.32. PMView Pro (aka PMView v3.00) was released in 2003.

Details

References

External links

*
Reference Manual

Getting Started manual

Historical Peter Nielsen Interview

Discussion of PMView on dpreview.com forum: "how do you view all your photos?"Mentioning of PMview on dpreview.com forum "Best program to View your pictures"
{{DEFAULTSORT:PMView Image organizers Screenshot software