AuthorTopic: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?  (Read 4051 times)

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

on: March 10, 2014, 02:13:57 am
Yo.
I've been looking for an image viewer to display pixel art on a Windows 8 tablet.
But I can't seem to find one.
Does any one know of any?
The windows photo viewer filters pixels when you zoom in.
Any thoughts?
I'm considering programming a simple viewer in Unity if I can't find anything.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline Kasumi

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #1 on: March 10, 2014, 02:25:30 am
Can a Window 8 tablet run just regular Windows stuff? If so, Irfanview. You have to fiddle with some options (which I'll look for if you cannot find them), but you can make it not filter on zoom and zoom in fixed steps. So I just have it zoom at a fixed rate of 100% so anytime I press + it adds 100% to zoom, and anytime I press minus it takes 100% away.

Ah, man. And I just discovered you can even make it default to 200% zoom when browsing a folder in full screen mode or watching a slideshow if you're into that. Also found a way to make it never zoom below 100%. (Previously pressing - when it was at 100% went to 50%, then pressing + made it go to 150%...)

This program is even better for viewing pixel art than I thought. One tiny warning: I don't have the latest version, but animated gifs optimized for filesize (by say... gifsicle) may not display correctly on the version I do use.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2014, 02:31:16 am by Kasumi »
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Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #2 on: March 10, 2014, 02:30:01 am
Quote
Can a Window 8 tablet run just regular Windows 8 stuff?
Yah I got a Windows 8 tablet that supports installing regular Windows programs.
But no, not all W8 tablets have that feature.

Quote
If so, Irfanview.
Thanks!
I'll give that a try and let see how it goes.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline Atnas

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #3 on: March 10, 2014, 03:06:35 am
http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/ xnview is my fav.

really powerful, you'll never look back

Offline Vagrant

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #4 on: March 10, 2014, 08:17:25 am
I found one called Nexus viewer to be a good one recently.




It's the simplicity of it that's more of use to me, like when in the Linux default viewer, which was amazing. You can turn off blur and as a bonus, this one dims the screen for you. This is fancy for when you're on Gale for example, windowed mode, and displaying a ref image in this viewer. The dim will include whichever active windows you have. (You can turn it off)

Downside is the lack of a good fullscreen, and any zoom options bigger than 200%.

Sad, I wonder if there can be a workaround for this. Perhaps it's open source?

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #5 on: March 10, 2014, 06:25:35 pm
Thanks for suggestions guys.

I should mention why I'm looking for this.
I'm going to GDC next week and I want to be able to show people art and code stuff that I've done.
So I picked up a Windows tablet and I'm in the process of transferring files onto it.
Unity applications seem to run fine, so that's all good.
But I'm looking for a simple "portfolio" application that can display pixel art cleanly, and that works well with touch.
I want to potentially lay it down on a table and have people finger easily thru images at their own pace.
Or hold the device backwards, facing others, and easily control it myself by flicking to the next photo, without having to really see the screen clearly.

At this point I've tried:

Irfanview - decent features but not very tablet friendly.

XnviewMP - has NN scaling and a decent full screen slideshow. close to what I'm looking for but doesn't seem to be touch friendly. Found a post on their forums that says it supports gestures but haven't been able to find any information on how to enable it. Do you know anything about this Atnas?

Xnview - seems like a simpler version of Xnview.

Nexus Image - does not support full screen, touch image flipping etc.

Picasa - touch friendly, but cannot find a way to enable NN scaling. Also online, and I would prefer to have an offline viewer. Altho there is probably a way to download images and use it as an offline viewer.

Blogger -> just in a browser - works ok for scrolling past multiple images but does not have NN scaling. The image preview mode does not work well with tablets, displays in the wrong place and can not move it around. Also online and I would prefer and offline viewer.

Windows Photo - touch friendly, but no scaling options.

I have a feeling that If I just scale up my art to fit a decent viewing size, people wont really notice the bilinear filtering or care much.
But that will remove the ability to zoom out and be able to see the image at x1.
Of course pixel art at x1 on a tablet is fairly small, so maybe that doesn't matter.
And I also tend to draw rather large for pixel art sometimes, and those images seem to work fine.
It might just be the best choice to just take each image and scale them to an individual nice viewing size that works well.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline Atnas

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #6 on: March 10, 2014, 11:27:51 pm
I also was experiencing difficulties getting touch to work in xnviewmp, and then it started working. It works with 3 finger swiping on my cintiq companion. I'll investigate further and see what can be done to make it single finger.

Edit:

well that's why. I assume you just need to set up gestures in windows, I'll do some searching for good third party gesture apps.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2014, 11:29:45 pm by Atnas »

Offline Atnas

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #7 on: March 12, 2014, 12:49:22 am
strokesplus is really good

http://www.strokesplus.com/

Was able to set up like this:

left right arrow keys in xnview as back/next file
installed strokesplus, (latest beta version)
disabled global gestures,
deleted everything but global and made new app section set to xnview.exe
switched global modifier to left click,
then made two new gestures.
 Used the preset left and right gestures, with a line of lua to simulate keypresses.

should look like this



and



and



Edit: Oh poop, for fullscreen mode it doesnt use regular hotkeys? maybe i reset my xnview hotkeys or something. just duplicate those lines for LEFT and RIGHT and have it also send a PGUP and PGDN and it will work in both modes.

Zooming in and out can be done with acSendKeys("{SUBTRACT}") and acSendKeys("{PLUS}")

you can make more complicated scripts that will zoom more based on size of the gesture too
« Last Edit: March 12, 2014, 01:48:24 am by Atnas »

Offline Vagrant

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #8 on: March 12, 2014, 03:27:01 am
I'll have to try it then.



This makes me wonder why no one yet has taken the time to code a decent, simple, and clean pixel art viewer, intuitive to control, and with simple x1, x2, x3 and fullscreen. Have it blur on and off, and make the interface clean instead of cluttered.

Offline PixelPiledriver

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Re: Tablet Pixel Portfolio Software?

Reply #9 on: March 12, 2014, 09:11:26 am
Thanks Atnas!
Will check this out in the morning.

Quote
This makes me wonder why no one yet has taken the time to code a decent, simple, and clean pixel art viewer, intuitive to control, and with simple x1, x2, x3 and fullscreen.
Yah I want to do this but I don't think I'll have time before GDC to fully polish it.
Still might do it afterwards tho.



I've finally settled on FastStone MaxView.
It's the most tablet friendly and has the features I want. ----> altho the touch animations are a tiny bit clunky.
Thanks to everyone for input.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2014, 12:12:07 am by PixelPiledriver »
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1