NOMACS
Get a better image viewer and editor
Nick Peers goes hunting for a top-class image viewer – and is pleasantly surprised by what he finds.
Credit: https://nomacs.org
OUR EXPERT
Nick Peers is trying not to think about the hundreds of superfluous photos he’s built up over time.
A re you looking for a good tool to view – and perhaps edit – your images easily? While Shotwell might seem like an obvious choice, it’s more geared towards building a library of images rather than acting as a quick-and-easy image viewer. What you need is nomacs.
The tool bills itself as an “image viewer”, but that does it a major disservice. It’s an excellent choice for viewing single files, or the contents of folders, supporting a wide range of image formats (including Photoshop PSD and RAW image files from digital cameras), but it does so much more. You can edit a photo’s metadata for example, and correct problems with photos courtesy of nomacs’ Adjustments menu. It even throws in a few clever effects, including photo mosaic and tiny planet tools. All in all, it’s an excellent tool to add to your image-editing arsenal.
NOMACS’ BEST PANELS REVEALED
1 File Explorer
Browse your drive for photos to view – either select one to view it or click a folder for a thumbnail preview.
2 Thumbnails
Displays a list of thumbnails for all files in the currently selected folder. Click one to open that image.
3 Overview
This panel makes it easy to set a magnification level (use the slider or type a figure), plus pan around the photo.
4 Notes
This translucent panel displays any text that’s stored in the ‘Exif.Image. ImageDescription’ tag in the image file, and can be used to edit the text.
5
Metadata info
Displays all the metadata associated with your image. Double-click an entry to edit it.
6
Edit History
Any changes you make to the current image are shown here – click one to undo all subsequent changes.
As always, nomacs is available through Ubuntu’s universal repos (and therefore the Software Centre), but you’re tied to an older version. For example, Ubuntu 20.04 users would be stuck with version 3.12. A better bet is to install it through flathub – assuming you have flatpak installed, simply issue the following command:
$ flatpak install flathub org.nomacs.ImageLounge
Press Y twice when prompted and wait for nomacs to install all its required dependencies. Once complete, nomacs can be launched via the Gnome launcher. On your first run you’ll be prompted to select a language – only English is available, so simply click OK to find yourself at the main nomacs screen.
Tool with a view
You can view a single image or load in a folder full of images, which can be displayed as a slideshow or viewed one at a time with the help of an optional Thumbnails panel. But that’s not all: nomacs can also load the images inside a compressed folder, and display all the images inside a Microsoft Office document (such as embedded graphics in Word or PowerPoint) too.