FuturixImager

FuturixImager opens, displays, and--with the downloadable "extras" file at the vendor's site--lets you edit a ton of image file types. It's quite a bit simpler to use, albeit less powerful, than popular Photoshop alternative GIMP. The free Imager even captures screens (or portions thereof) and displays slideshows using the directory in which the currently selected file resides.

I had quite a bit of fun with FuturixImager. Although it took me a few tries to get used to the clean but occasionally odd workflow, I ran into only a few real problems. For some reason, the clip function clipped an arbitrary rectangle instead of the one I'd selected. Also, the copy-and-paste function consistently returned an error when I tried to paste from one file to another. On one occasion, I received an "out of memory" error during one screen capture with the Imager window as part of the capture. FuturixImager edits only one image at a time, and you can create new images only by capturing a screen or part of it (there are no drawing or painting tools). For the most part, though, FuturixImager worked quite nicely and had enough tools to do the job.

So it's no Photoshop, or even GIMP. That said, FuturixImager offers a very interesting approach with a very small memory and disk footprint that minimalists will like. Give it a look.

--Jon L. Jacobi