Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: oahvenla@vinkku.hut.fi (Osma Ahvenlampi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: SURVEY: Amiga picture viewers Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.graphics Date: 23 Feb 1994 17:45:49 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 126 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2kg4od$npk@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: oahvenla@vinkku.hut.fi (Osma Ahvenlampi) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: graphics, viewer, IFF, JPEG, GIF, freeware, shareware PRODUCT NAMES FastJPEG 1.08, by Christoph Feck Mostra 2.0, by Sebastiano Vigna PPShow 4.0, by Nico Francois and Rafael D'Halleweyn ShowGIF 1.01, by Christophe Passuello Viewtek 1.05, by Thomas Krehbiel At the time of this writing, FastJPEG 1.08 was still in the beta test stage, and thus not publicly available. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on Feb 23, 1994. Search for the text "[UPDATE:" to find updated information. -Dan] BRIEF DESCRIPTION These are all picture viewers for the Amiga. They are compared for speed and picture quality on IFF, GIF, and JPEG images. Not all the viewers support all these image file formats. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION All the programs except FastJPEG 1.08 are available on the Aminet ftp sites: FastJPEG_1.0.lha gfx/show 33K+JPEG viewer with dithering for ECS/AGA Mostra2.lha gfx/show 53K+Shareware ILBM viewer, supports 2.0 & 3.0 PPShow40.lha gfx/show 79K+ILBM/ANIM/GIF/JPEG/DataTypes viewer Viewtek.lha fish/ff903 66K+JPEG/GIF/IFF viewer. V1.05 FastGIF2.08.lha gfx/show 151K+* Newest version (2.08) of FastGIF (21 Jun [UPDATE: Note that ShowGIF 1.01 is the CLI version of FastGIF 2.08. - Dan] LIST PRICE All programs are freeware or shareware. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 500, 7.09 MHz 68010 CPU 1MB Chip RAM, 2MB Fast RAM ABOUT THE TESTS After getting the new PPShow 4.0, I decided to do a few tests of the various picture viewers available. The file formats tested are: JPEG - 24bit color JPEG. I didn't have any greyscale pictures around. GIF - 16 color and 256 color highres (~640x480) images IFF - Highres interlaced 16 color, and lowres interlaced HAM6 NOTE: Only Viewtek and PPShow are capable of showing all these formats. Mostra shows IFF only, ShowGIF GIF only, and FastJPEG JPEG only. I did not test IFF24, 8bit greyscale JPEG, HAM8, and other AGA modes. IFF ILBM TESTS Three of the programs, PPShow, Mostra and Viewtek, support IFF. PPShow was the fastest of them. With 16 color highres/laced pictures, Mostra was about 40% slower, and Viewtek about 70% slower than PPShow.. With lowres/laced HAM pictures, Mostra was about 20% slower than PPShow, while Viewtek was 230% slower! GIF TESTS Viewtek, ShowGIF, and PPShow can display GIF pictures. Of the three, ShowGIF was clearly fastest. With 16 color highres GIFs, PPShow was about 90% slower, while Viewtek was as much as 300% slower! All three programs displayed the picture on a 16 color highres screen. With 256 color pictures, Viewtek was the only one of the programs capable of color output. It did that by converting the picture to HAM for display. I could not get it to display these pictures as greyscale on a 16 color screen at all. This is what the other programs did. This time, PPShow was 160% slower than ShowGIF, while Viewtek took 760% more time to convert the picture to HAM instead of greyscale. JPEG TESTS JPEG format is supported by FastJPEG, PPShow, and Viewtek. Picture size and other variations seemed to have little effect on the relative speeds of the viewers. All three display 24bit color JPEGs by converting them to HAM. All three also support HAM8, even though FastJPEG has a separate version for that. At least FastJPEG and Viewtek also support greyscale (8bit) JPEGs, but I did not test the speed of those. FastJPEG was the clear winner in this league. Not only it was the fastest, but also had the best display quality, especially noticeable in HAM6. PPShow was about 20% slower, Viewtek about 70% slower than FastJPEG. PPShow had terrible artifacting on vertical and diagonal lines with high contrast. FastJPEG, on the other hand, produced crisp lines with fairly good anti-aliasing. Viewtek output was something between these two. FastJPEG has good dithering routines, while both PPShow and Viewtek hardly seem to dither at all. SUMMARY All times are in seconds. IFF/16 IFF/HAM GIF/16 GIF/256 JPEG/24 640x512 384x480 528x296 720x512 300x474 JPEG quality FastJPEG -- -- -- -- 42.4 s good ShowGIF -- -- 4.6 s 15.4 s -- -- PPShow 2.3 s 2.5 s 8.7 s 39.4 s 50.3 s poor Mostra 3.2 s 2.9 s -- -- -- -- Viewtek 4.0 s 8.3 s 18.6 s *132.2 s 72.2 s fair *) Viewtek was the only one of the programs that could produce color output of 256 color GIFs on ECS machines. The time given is for that. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Tests made by Osma Ahvenlampi. This article is freely distributable through any channels. --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews