SlickView1.4

By default, an image viewer’s function is to provide a functional environment in which to analyze your picture collection. However, there are more features which can be found in third-party alternatives to the default Windows viewer, and this is also the case with SlickView which can also build the corresponding HTML thumbnail page.

Visual design and file support

The application first needs to be launched to open images, because there’s no context menu integration to quickly open a picture. Additionally, you can load the content of an entire folder, but you can just as well start navigating from a single items. Just pay attention to navigation controls, because using the arrow keys only goes back and forth through directories.File support is decent, and you can load some popular types like BMP, DIB, GIF, JPG, JIF, PCX, PNG, TGA, and TIFF. What’s more, you’re able to save to a new format, which means conversion is one of the application’s features, among others.

Good, but far from being a pro

There are no effects to add in order to enhance pictures, not even simple color management. What you can do is draw a border on pictures, but this just serves in the preview area and not kept if the file is saved. The options menu also lets you specify the size characteristics of thumbnails.Apart from converting to a different format, the application is also capable of building thumbnails for your entire collection. The layout can be edited, but HTML skills are required because handling parameters is done in a plain text document. Once generated, the default web browser shows up with the preview.

On an ending note

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that SlickView isn’t really capable of serving as a plain viewer for files, but this is mostly because of the inconvenient choice of hotkeys. On the other hand, conversion is flawlessly performed, and with some HTML skills you can also generate a neat page of thumbnails to include in a web gallery.