Mac alternative to Faststone Image Viewer?

If you're adventurous, you might try ApolloOne, available in the App Store. Seems to be written from the ground up for Mac.

https://www.apollooneapp.com

I’ve been using the trial to browse old image folders, and while it’s a work in progress, it’s slick and fast.

I’d need to purchase to give it a full go, but I’ve yet to pull the trigger.
It doesn't offer 4 large previews/thumnails in one window though, something the OP is (was?) looking for. Thumbnails are max 420 px wide vs max 512 px wide in Finder.

I'm looking for something similar, with 4 to 6 largish images to facilitate culling.

As a compromise I'm still using Finder for culling, with eight (two rows of four) 512px-wide thumbnails filling my 2560x1440 screen, as max 2 images is not convenient for culling (I find) and many other programmes offer thumbnails that are even smaller and of lower quality (than Finder), like XnViewMP that I've started to use for cataloguing.
 
Last edited:
I know this is an old thread, but I am wondering what you found to be the best solution.
Sorry, there really isn't anything on MacOS like FastStone.

On Windows I preferred Irfanview, but there isn't anything like that either.

I have XnViewMP and qView installed for managing and viewing, respectively.
 
Last edited:
I know this is an old thread, but I am wondering what you found to be the best solution.
Facing the same problem, I settled on FastRawViewer Compare 4 images at once and other very useful features. Lightweight and fast program.

There is a small charge, but a 30 day free trial so you can see if it works for you before you purchase.

 
Thanks for the updates.

FastRawViewer looks good for its presentation and customization potential. I will give it a trial. The price seems reasonable.

I haven't seen how to view four at once but expect to figure out that as I read through the material.
 
If you want to run on an M1 then forget XnView MP for now. I was also trying to find a good program that is similar to Faststone on my Windows computers. While XnView MP didn't look as good it was often recommended. I tried it, but it is not native and doesn't work right on M1. Very slow to go through photos by turning the mouse wheel and even worse it had glitches sometimes and didn't work right. It has to use Rosetta 2 for now. In addition sometimes the only way to get rid of it was to kill it from the Activity Monitor.

The developer in this thread says that an M1 native version is being worked on though:


Until it is native then forget it.

I have still not found anything that is even close to as good as Faststone.
 
If you want to run on an M1 then forget XnView MP for now. I was also trying to find a good program that is similar to Faststone on my Windows computers. While XnView MP didn't look as good it was often recommended. I tried it, but it is not native and doesn't work right on M1. Very slow to go through photos by turning the mouse wheel and even worse it had glitches sometimes and didn't work right. It has to use Rosetta 2 for now. In addition sometimes the only way to get rid of it was to kill it from the Activity Monitor.

The developer in this thread says that an M1 native version is being worked on though:

https://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?t=42265

Until it is native then forget it.

I have still not found anything that is even close to as good as Faststone.
What specific problems are you having with XnViewMP? It seems to work well for me on M1.

When forward-arrowing through DxO PhotoLab conversions, it's really interesting to see the difference between my Raw edits, and the embedded JPEG as shown by XnViewMP.

I'm gonna try FastRawViewer, but most of my image collections are JPEG so I'm not sure it is the appropriate tool, as was IrfanView for culling. The latest qView has delete (move to trash) so is good for culling, but not all the other things IrfanView does.

(As I said, I prefer IrfanView to FastStone.)
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the updates.

FastRawViewer looks good for its presentation and customization potential. I will give it a trial. The price seems reasonable.
IMO the price is dirt cheap. . . There isn't any other editing app that has all of FRV's features.
Do you use it for culling JPEG photos? (i.e. camera doesn't do Raw, or you shoot JPEG only)

After one trip where several people took photos, without synchronizing camera clocks, I used Irfanview to adjust timestamps and rename photos so they were all in chronological order. 👍
 
Thanks for the updates.

FastRawViewer looks good for its presentation and customization potential. I will give it a trial. The price seems reasonable.
IMO the price is dirt cheap. . . There isn't any other editing app that has all of FRV's features.
Do you use it for culling JPEG photos? (i.e. camera doesn't do Raw, or you shoot JPEG only)

After one trip where several people took photos, without synchronizing camera clocks, I used Irfanview to adjust timestamps and rename photos so they were all in chronological order. 👍
I only shoot RAW and generate JPEGs as needed except for my iPhone pics ;-) . . . But FRV can be used with JEPGs too.
 

Keyboard shortcuts

Back
Top