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Introduction

Tacent View is both fast and correct. Most of the image loading code is either custom or based on official reference implementations. Once decoded, images are marshalled to GPU memory for fast switching/rendering. The thumbnail viewer caches images/meta-data and can handle thousands of files in a single directory at interactive speeds.

Tacent View Levels

Download

Tacent View is distributed as:

Source Code
Portable Windows Zip
Linux Deb File
Snapcraft Snap

The source code, portable Windows zip, and deb files are available from the releases GitHub page. If running Linux you may also consider installing the snap. If you want to build it yourself, instructions are available at the Tacent View GitHub page. The CMake build-system is used and can create projects (VS2022, make, nmake, ninja) for your desired compiler (MSVC, Clang, GCC). Build yourself if you have any security concerns. The buttons below link to pre-compiled versions of the latest stable release.

Operation

There are two main modes in which Tacent View may be used: GUI and CLI.

GUI mode is what you would expect – Open an image file with tacentview.exe and a window will open displaying the image. If you install the snap or deb file, it will register with the OS to be able to open supported image formats (but will not change your defaults). On Windows you may optionally associate Tacent View to a particular image type by selecting Open with and then Choose another app.

CLI mode (Command-Line Interface) allows you to perform all operations that can be done in the GUI from the command-line. The same executable file is used for command-line operations, whether compiled for Linux or Windows. CLI mode is intended to allow batch processing and conversions of images from one format to another. It allows Tacent View to be used in game pipelines and image processing workflows.

Image Formats

Loads: TGA PNG/APNG JPG GIF WEBP QOI DDS PVR KTX/KTX2 ASTC/ASC PKM EXR HDR/RGB BMP ICO TIF/TIFF

Saves: TGA PNG/APNG JPG GIF WEBP QOI BMP TIF/TIFF

Animates: GIF WEBP APNG TIF/TIFF

Features

Image quantization.
High quality image rotations including lossless JPG transformations.
Live rotation preview.
Viewing meta-data stored inside images (EXIF data in JPG files).
Compensating for meta-data orientation.
Fast thumbnail viewer that supports sorting by file properties as well as meta-data.
Slideshow mode at speeds anywhere between 60fps to multiple minutes per slide.
Slideshow ordering based on any sort-criteria. e.g. Order by latitude or longitude, etc.
Random slideshow shuffle with optional reshuffle at the end of every loop.
Live thumbnail size adjustments.
Cropping.
Image Levels adjustments with histogram.
Custom key-bindings per profile.
Small, Normal, and Large UI widget/font selection.
Fullscreen and basic modes for UX minimalists.
Multiple zoom modes. Includes optional per-image zoom, downscale-only, and one-to-one.
Flip operations.
Canvas resizing with arbitrary or preset anchor.
Image resizing using various filters / edge modes.
Predefined or arbitrary aspect-ratios for resize operations.
Folder bookmarks for storing favourite locations.
Colour channels.
Alpha blending.
Brightness adjustments.
Contrast adjustments.
Generating flipbook/contact-sheets.
Frame extraction. Both mipmap, cubemap, and animation frames may be extracted.
Creation of animated images from individual frames.
High-quality GIF file generation.
Scrubbing of all animated image formats (both forward and backwards).
Adjusting frame durations for all animated formats.
Legacy and modern DDS loading.
All BC, ASTC, and ETC pixel formats for DDS, KTX, KTX2, ASTC, and PKM files.
HDR image adjustments including exposure for all formats that encode HDR.
Batch conversions between image types.
Batch operations on arbitrary input images.
Correct transparency and alpha-channel support.
Transparent desktop mode.
Full per-image undo/redo stack.
Border detection/extraction.
Multiple monitor support.
Direct edit of pixel colour.
Viewing of mipmaps individually or side-by-side.
Cubemap view in T-layout or as individual sides.
Tile-view for checking texture edge boundaries.
Copy images to the clipboard.
Paste images from the clipboard. Every paste generates a new file automatically.
Drag image files directly into viewing area.
Raw pixel-data import.

Texture Pixel Formats

Some image formats are often used to store texture data that is easily decompressable by a GPU – DDS, PVR, KTX, KTX2, ASTC, and PKM files are examples. Tacent View supports the following texture formats for these types of files:

Packed
R8	R8G8	R8G8B8	R8G8B8A8
B8G8R8	B8G8R8A8	G3B5R5G3*	G4B4A4R4*
B4A4R4G4	G3B5A1R5G2*	G2B5A1R5G3*	A8L8
A8	L8
R16	R16G16	R16G16B16	R16G16B16A16
R32	R32G32	R32G32B32	R32G32B32A32
R16f	R16G16f	R16G16B16f	R16G16B16A16f
R32f	R32G32f	R32G32B32f	R32G32B32A32f
R11G11B10uf	B10G11R11uf	R9G9B9E5uf	E5B9G9R9uf
R8G8B8M8	R8G8B8D8

Block (BC)
BC1DXT1	BC1DXT1A	BC2DXT2DXT3	BC3DXT4DXT5
BC4ATI1U	BC4ATI1S	BC5ATI2U	BC5ATI2S
BC6U	BC6S	BC7

Block (ETC)
ETC1	ETC2RGB	ETC2RGBA	ETC2RGBA1
EACR11U	EACR11S	EACRG11U	EACRG11S

PVR
PVRBPP4	PVRBPP2

ASTC
ASTC4X4	ASTC5X4	ASTC5X5	ASTC6X5
ASTC6X6	ASTC8X5	ASTC8X6	ASTC8X8
ASTC10X5	ASTC10X6	ASTC10X8	ASTC10X10
ASTC12X10	ASTC12X12

* These formats are named like every other format in the table – based on how the bits appear on disk and in memory. Some APIs call these B5G6R5 (BGR565), B4G4R4A4 (BGRA4444), and B5G5R5A1 (BGRA5551) but this is inconsistent with their other format names like B8G8R8 which are correct. Even taking little-endianness into account the adjusted names would be G3R5B5G3, R4A4B4G4, and G2R5A1B5G3 which does not match the in-memory representation. On the bright side, the LE-adjusted names for the PVR spec do make sense: G3B5R5G3 -> RGB565, G4B4A4R4 -> ARGB4444, and G3B5A1R5G2 -> ARGB1555.