Fast photo viewer for large picture files

[aHumanError]

Hi there.

I'm an amateur photographer and all my images are shot in RAW format which can be quite large files. Unfortunately this has recently become a slow process browsing through them. I often take hundreds of shots - a lot of the same thing with different settings/angles so I like to be able to browse quickly between them.

This has only become an issue lately and I'm not sure why.

I used to use Windows "Photos" which worked ok but all of a sudden it took a while to load just one image so I found a free third party app to replace it called "ImageGlass" but now that's slowed down too, in fact agonisingly slow.

I have an i3 and a SSD. Everything else on my laptop is pretty instant but when loading just one image though ImageGlass it just hangs for about 20 ~ 40 seconds CPU is all over the place (but never at 100%). When the image finally loads it struggles to load the next or previous one in under 20 seconds, often non responsive between each one.

When loading through Windows Photos it's far quicker (Loading) but there's another problem because it processes the image to "enhance" the colours/contract etc which slows it down to a crawl to browse next/previous images like ImageGlass - not only do I NOT want it doing this but it slows the load time for each image. I know there's a switch in the options menu to enable/disable "picture enhancement" or whatever it is but this option is simply absent, all my efforts to find out if it's been moved or removed keep pointing back to the place it should be, but isn't for me.

So I was wondering if there's any software that will allow me to browse raw files quickly?

Thanks for any input.

 

[AMD_man]

What's weird is that it uses to work fine for you. Have the pictures gotten bigger lately?

I used to use XnView. As far as I know it should be simple and efficient.

The thing is, if there was no change in the image size, format or anything else, there should be no reason why it would be slower. I think that's the real problem. Try scanning your computer for malware. The way to do this is by running a bunch of programs, although a few would be enough. If you want to be thorough:

1- rkill
2- Zemana portable
3- HitmanPro
4- MBAM
5- Adwcleaner
6- JRT
7- Optionally reset your browser to default settings
8- Optionally run EEK
9- Open CMD as Administrator and run

sfc /scannow

This should take a while but it should leave your computer clean as a whistle.

 

[root]

I use darktable.

as a quick suggestion, - have you checked the settings.

if it was good before, it sound like it was just loading a (possible low res preview) before.

and that you may have changed the preview type to a higher resolution.
or have you setup a default filter/color grade setting that's just applied to everything as it is loaded in?


I wouldn't immediately switch apps before investigating what has caused the machine to slow down.