cPicture 4.3

Overview

cPicture is a light and handy application designed to assist users with their regular digital image workflow. This freeware is easy to manage; it is light non-interfering tool; it manages lossless crop of JPEG images with ease.

In addition, cPicture reads all formats of digital camera. It does not create any additional RAW image libraries. Instead, it provides a quick and easy search tool and indexes prints for review. Gamma correction with a 32bit color channel image scaling will appeal to advanced users while novice users will appreciate the simplicity and usability of the interface.

Installation

There is no installation as such. You download the zip folder, unpack it and run the program. There are some requirements for the program to run smoothly: IE 5.5; true color graphic adapter; DirectX 9 to display video. It does not create any database or registry keys, or any other installation files, unlike other programs that tend to create a lot of junk in your computer.

Interface

cPicture offers a neat and clean-cut GUI with nothing to distract you from the task at hand. It is somewhat plain but intuitive. The main window offers several tabs with main functions, and a tree structure to browse folders and files. Overall, GUI reminds Windows Explorer, so there is nothing complicated or hard to find in it.

Pros

• Intuitive GUI.
• No installation, no database, no registry keys, no junk files.
• Crops and rotates images without compromising on quality.
• Plays recorded videos.
• Reads RAW image files.
• Preserves file information.
• Has an option to add comments, or delete all EXIF file data.
• Does an automatic lossless split of a panorama picture.
• Panorama pictures mode in full screen.
• Removes red eyes.
• Creates index prints and thumbnails.
• Converts RAW to JPEG and BMP.
• The program does not interfere with your antivirus or firewall – it does not require internet connection.
• In terms of security, cPicture addressed some significant issues: it is not affected by the security breach for JPEG processing.
• cPicture is protected against the addition of any executable program code.
• Minimizes the risk of unintentionally deleting your files.

Cons

During our test, cPicture failed to open some folders stating they were unavailable, or that no JPEG pictures were found. For example, we had many JPEG images in Skydrive folder, and cPicture failed to open that one, so we had to manually copy the files to Desktop be able to test the application. Maybe the developers will explain what we missed.

Alternatives