11.1.1. Using Nautilus to View Images

Nautilus is a general-purpose file manager and browser for your graphical desktop environment. Nautilus has many functions beyond simple image viewing; however, for this section, we will use it for basic image browsing. For more information about Nautilus, see Chapter 2 Using the Graphical Desktop.

Nautilus is known for its ease-of-use and it handles images with the same ease as it does for other file types. To begin browsing your image collection with Nautilus, double-click your home desktop icon:

You will be presented with a view of all files and folders within your home directory. Double-click the image (or the folder containing the image) and Nautilus will open the file or folder within its browser window. Figure 11-1 shows that Nautilus automatically creates thumbnails of any images in your folders:

Double-click on any thumbnail icon to view the image in its native size. The image will load within the browser window. To increase or decrease the size of the viewed image in Nautilus, click on the zoom buttons next to the Location: field as shown in Figure 11-2:

Click the + button to increase the size of the image or - to decrease it.

11.1.2. Using gThumb

gThumb is a powerful image viewer for graphical desktop users that supports several image file formats, including:

• JPG/JPEG

• GIF

• PGM

• XPM

• PNG

• PCX

• TIF/TIFF

• PPM

• BMP

gThumb is useful for viewing individual image files as well as browsing collections of files in folders. It supports zoom in and zoom out functions, as well as thumbnail sized preview icons of all image files within a directory. It also supports several advanced options not found in Nautilus.

gThumb can be started from your desktop panel. Choose Main Menu => Graphics => gThumb Image Viewer or type gthumb at a shell prompt to start the application. gThumb will browse your user home directory by default. If you have any images in this directory, the gallery panel will automatically generate thumbnails for you to highlight and view in the main display area.

The interface of gThumb is straightforward. Double-click an image preview thumbnail to view it within the main gallery area. The image can be zoomed in and out, set to full screen (which covers your entire screen with the image), and be printed on your configured printer. The toolbar allows you to fit the image to the display window, collect multiple files into a catalog for easier access if they are located in different directories, and write descriptions about the images.

The gThumb interface also has a text field for you to enter a particular path to your image directories. Right-clicking on an image in the display area opens a pop-up menu of file management options such as renaming, moving, copying, and converting an image from one file format to another. You can also set an image as your desktop wallpaper within the pop-up menu.

You can combine functions within gThumb and create a dynamic presentation effect for groups of images within a directory. In the text field below the toolbar, type the path to the the directory where your images are located and highlight the first image in the main gallery panel. Click the Slide Show button on the toolbar and you will start a full-screen slide show where gThumb displays images in full screen. By default, each image in the slide show is presented for 4 seconds. You can stop the slide show at any time by pressing [Esc] or by moving your mouse cursor and clicking the Restore Normal View pop-up button that appears on the top left corner of the screen.