NexusImage without Side Panel

Picasa Image Viewer Replacement: NexusImage

Ever since Google announced it was killing off the Picasa App for Windows, I’ve been searching for a replacement program. It seems I need to find at least two programs to replace Picasa since Picasa was multiple programs built into one. One was a quick lightweight image viewer that was very similar to a lightbox that you’ll see on any modern website, and the other was a photo organizer.

Picasa Photo Viewer - So sexy
Picasa Photo Viewer – So sexy

I covered the Organizer in another post a few months ago (still haven’t really found a decent replacement), which you can read here.

I thought I could get away with using the Picasa Photo Viewer a bit longer, but for a few months now the arrow keys and navigating doesn’t seem to work, and many times the viewer gets frozen in memory, which causes it to refuse to reopen. So, its time to move on.

Now I need to find a quick light weight image viewer. Nearly all photo software comes with a viewer, for example all of ACDsee’s software comes with a image viewer, but like many other programs including the one built into windows 10, the image viewer is built on the core of the organizer itself, so its very heavy/bulky, doesn’t load fast, and they arent in a sleek lightbox preview box. So these are no good.

Finally, tonight I found a free portable (doesn’t need to be installed, just opened) software that works perfectly, and looks nearly as sexy as Picasa’s Image Viewer called “NexusImage”.

NexusImage
NexusImage

The software is extremely lightweight, probably more so than Picasa Photo Viewer, and it functions much like Picasa Photo Viewer, in the sense that you can click the escape key and the program will totally exit and close, so no need to mess with any title menus or anything –just close, and also you and use the arrow keys on the keyboard or middle mouse scroll wheel to navigate through other pictures in the folder.

I did notice that there was a panel on the right side that displays thumbnails for other images in the folder, at first I didn’t like this, Picasa Photo Viewer does have the same feature, but its located at the bottom of the screen.

NexusImage without Side Panel
NexusImage without Side Panel

Something I like about NexusImage is that there is a thumbnail panel on the right that shows all thumbnails in the same folder, which you can easily navigate (Picasa Photo Viewer shows it underneath the image), but NexusImage allows you to close it completely so you have just the image on the screen. Sometimes it seems this side panel can slow NexusImage down a bit, but you can easily close it and all is fast again.

One thing NexusImage has that Picasa Photo Viewer doesn’t is search functionality. I’m not sure if it’s even needed, but its there.

There are also other customize features such as the opacity of the light box, you can make dimming darker or lighter, which can be access by right clicking on any image.

NexusImage Context Menu and options
NexusImage Context Menu and options

I did run into an issue where the desktop dimming didn’t go away after I exited the program. I had to reboot to restore my desktop wallpaper to the normal brightness.

Over all, I’m really glad I found NexusImage, I plan on using it as my main image viewer.

You can download it for FREE from http://www.xiles.net/, and its a small 2.02MB download.

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