PMView
 | |
| Original author(s) | Peter Nielsen |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Peter Nielsen |
| Initial release | 1992; 32 years ago (1992) |
| Stable release | 3.82 / 24 February 2020; 4 years ago (2020-02-24) |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, OS/2 |
| Size | 7 MB |
| Available in | English, German, French, Swedish; the OS/2 version also Russian |
| Type | Image viewer |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
PMView is a raster graphics image viewer, converter, and organizer with basic image editing capabilities. It was originally developed for OS/2 but is also available for Microsoft Windows.
What it is and what it does
PMView reads and writes and converts between more than 40 image file formats, shows the images on the screen, single and in slide shows, rotates or mirrors them, changes sizes and color depth, crops 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 thumbnails 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.[1]
PMView can acquire images by scanning of images using a TWAIN interface to an Image scanner, and by grabbing a part of the computer's screen by screenshots. And of course, from the clipboard, as a new image and as a new area of an existing image.
Image editing features are global color modifications regarding color balance, gamma correction, luminance, negative conversion, solarization, sharpening and softening of edges, and a number of filters including Gaussian blur and user-defined filters.
For images with indexed color (2, 4, 16, or 256 colors), typical for GIF 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++ with some routines in Assembler, 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. An early OS/2 version of PMView was on the IBM BBS[2] 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
| PMview supported file formats[3] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Format | Extension | Read | Write | notes |
| OS/2 Bitmap | BMP | Yes | Yes | |
| Windows Bitmap | BMP | Yes | Yes | |
| Windows Cursor | CUR | Yes | Yes | |
| DCA/Intel DCX, or multipage PCX | DCX | Yes | Yes | Digital Communications Associates (DCA) and Intel had designed the DCA/Intel Communicating Applications Specification (CAS). It defines a standard, high-level programming interface for data communications applications. The DCX format is the standard file format for storing FAX images in CAS. |
| Encapsulated PostScript | EPS | No | Yes | |
| Flexible Image Transport System | FITS | Yes | Yes | image with a BITPIX value of 8, 16, 32, -32, or -64. The value of NAXIS must be two (2) or greater. |
| CCITT Group 3 Facsimile | G3 | Yes | Yes | |
| Graphics Interchange Format | GIF | Yes | Yes | |
| OS/2 Icon | ICO | Yes | Yes | |
| Windows Icon | ICO | Yes | Yes | |
| Electronic Arts IFF | IFF | Yes | Yes | only FORM type IFF files that hold an image, subtypes ILBM: 1..n planes, PBM: 8 bits chunky format, special subtypes HAM: 3..16 planes, DHAM, SHAM, Palette change PCHG |
| Digital Research GEM | IMG | Yes | Yes | |
| JPEG File Interchange Format | JPG | Yes | Yes | |
| OS/2 Boot Logo | LGO | Yes | Yes | |
| MacPaint | MAC | Yes | Yes | |
| Microsoft Paint | MSP | Yes | Yes | |
| Kodak Photo-CD | PCD | Yes | No | |
| ZSoft Paintbrush / PC Paintbrush | PCX | Yes | Yes | |
| PCPaint/Pictor Paint | PIC | Yes | Yes | |
| Bio-Rad Image | PIC | Yes | No | only reads grayscale Bio-Rad PIC files that have eight bits per pixel |
| Autodesk Softimage Picture | PIC | Yes | Yes | |
| Netpbm Portable Bitmap | PBM | Yes | Yes | |
| Netpbm Portable Graymap | PGM | Yes | Yes | |
| Netpbm Portable Pixmap | PPM | Yes | Yes | |
| Netpbm Portable Anymap | PNM | Yes | Yes | |
| Portable Network Graphics | PNG | Yes | Yes | |
| Adobe Photoshop Document | PSD | Yes | Yes | |
| OS/2 Pointer | PTR | Yes | Yes | |
| Sun Raster | RAS | Yes | Yes | |
| Compuserve RLE | RLE | Yes | Yes | |
| Utah RLE | RLE | Yes | Yes | The Utah RLE format was developed around 1983 by Spencer Thomas at the University of Utah Department of Computer Science, as part of the Utah Raster Toolkit |
| Structured Fax File | SFF | Yes | Yes | |
| Seattle FilmWorks | SFW | Yes | No | |
| Silicon Graphics Image | SGI | Yes | Yes | |
| PMView Slideshow File | SHW | Yes | Yes | |
| Truevision Targa | TGA | Yes | Yes | |
| Tagged Image File Format | TIF | Yes | Yes | |
| WAP Bitmap Format | WBMP | Yes | Yes | |
| WordPerfect Graphics | WPG | Yes | Yes | |
| X BitMap | XBM | Yes | Yes | |
| X PixMap | XPM | Yes | Yes | |
| X Window Dump | XWD | Yes | Yes | |
References
- ^ The web page linked shows the File Open Container with all kinds of context menus: "PMView File Open window". pmview.com. 2014. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
- ^ "COMPUTERCRAFT's Link to IBM's FTP Mirror of the PCC BBS - OS/2 Graphics and Music".
- ^ A list of all supported file formats with detailed explanations: "PMView File Format Overview". pmview.com. 2003. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
External links
- Official website
- 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"
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