Resco Photo Viewer For Pocket PC Review
Browse and edit photos on your Pocket PC
Review by urban75 for Digital-Lifestyles, 13 June, 2005

These days, a smartphone/PDA isn't worth sniffing at unless it comes with a built in camera and a shedload of internal/external memory for storing mobile snaps on.

With many devices now sporting expansion card slots capable of storing hundreds of pics, Resco is hoping that their Photo Viewer application will prove an invaluable organisational and editing tool for keen mobile snappers.

The program - available in various flavours on the Windows Mobile, Windows Smartphone, Windows CE, Palm and Symbian operating systems - offers an easy way to browse, edit and organise photographs, set up user-defined albums, watch MPEG1 movies and slide shows and view received faxes.



For super-sleek execs out to score swotty points, it's even possible to run a business presentation from a Pocket PC by connecting a VGA card to a projector and running a PowerPoint presentation directly from Resco Photo Viewer.

Installing the program on an i-mate JAM Pocket PC 2003 phone was simplicity itself, with a double click on the downloaded .exe file transferring the software to the handheld via ActiveSync.

When you install the Pocket PC program, there's also an option to install the Resco Album Generator on your desktop PC - this program lets you create photo albums ON your desktop and then have the pictures and the album information transferred to your handheld device on the next sync.

Before firing up the program, Photo Viewer asks which file formats it should open by default, with tick boxes offering an impressive selection of formats: MPEG1, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, MS PowerPoint (converted by Desktop Album Generator), BMP, CFX, PCX, GIF, RAB, RAW, PGM, PPM and even PSD, Photoshop's native format.

Once up and running, the program's 'home page' presents users with the choice to open a photo album, browse a folder, browse a memory card, open the last viewed image, pull up the help files or have a rummage around the options on offer.

When it comes to options, Resco certainly haven't short-changed their customers, with a multitude of tabs, tick boxes and drop down menus letting users set up the application the way they like it.



Once I'd tweaked, twiddled and fiddled the app to my heart's desire, I was happy to find that browsing photos with the Photo Viewer was a pleasingly nippy experience, with a selection of thumbnail display options popping up on-screen in double quick time.

Clicking on a thumbnail bought up a large preview image, while clicking again resulted in a full screen picture, automatically orientated for the screen, Very fast and very smooth. Nice.

In full screen mode, the keypad can be used to scroll through picture collections manually, or users with tired fingers can set up a slide show and choose from a selection of transition fades and effects.

It's also possible to add sound (WAV, MP3) and text annotations to each image or set background music to a slide show.

Usefully, the program also offers basic image editing tools, with users able to tweak brightness, contrast and gamma RGB values and resize and crop images to specified pixel sizes - great for mobile bloggers wanting to trim images down for uploading.

For snap-happy camera-phone photographers, bloggers or folks who just like to carry around lots of photos on their mobile device, Resco Photo Viewer is an ideal product, offering fast browsing and viewing tools in a straightforward interface.

With a comprehensive feature set wrapped up in an attractive interface, Resco Photo Viewer represents excellent value at just US$25 (~£13.70~€20.50). We like it. Highly recommended.

FIVE STARS

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