Magic Lantern is an image viewer I wrote because I was just a little frustrated with the available image viewing programs for OS X. All the ones I could find were (pick and choose here) horribly out of date, slow, and/or commercial/shareware. It's very simple; all I wanted was a quickish program that lets you browse through directories.
I had originally intended to make Magic Lantern available via strangecargo, but I haven't put together a web page for it yet, and all attempts at convincing Larry to do it have failed. For now, I'm posting it here so I can start to get feedback and bug reports/feature requests. Magic Lantern is distributed under the terms of the GPL.
Executable: MagicLantern-1.0.dmg
Source Code: MagicLantern-1.0_source.dmg
The controls are as follows:
down arrow/right arrow: next image in directory
up arrow/left arrow: previous image in directory
page down: skip forward 5 images
page up: skip back 5 images
home: go to first image in directory
end: go to last image in directory
command-F: toggles in and out of full-screen mode
I and command I: toggles filename display in full-screen mode
I'm currently working on more customizable preferences and some bugs, but it's usable/stable enough that I use it as my default program for opening jpg/png/gif/etc files. Features in the pipeline include: resize behaviour preferences, a more appropriate icon, and perhaps XML-RPC integration with a web-based image management library that I'm working on (hopefully, more on that later).
If you're wondering, the name is derived from the name of a device not unlike a slide projector from the early days of photography.
The Magic Lantern icon, "100,000 Fireflies," is distributed with the gracious permission of Matthew Bice of IheartNY.com.
Please ask for features and bugfixes in the comments.
Send patches to me at <allan at counterpop dot net>
Hi,
I just downloaded Magic Lantern and used it to open a picture from my Pictures folder (on OSX 10.2.6).
None of the keyboard controls work. What do I do now?
I have been looking for a really fast viewer like that, thank you! I would suggest not to add too many more features because this can only make magic lantern slower. I found the UI very clever: both right and down arrow keys lead to the next picture; just start with one picture out of a folder and the next pictures are being cachec - that’s neat. Just a small suggestion: I had a hard time getting out of the full screen mode - why not make the esc-key trigger the normal mode? :-) Dirk
Wherefor art thy screenshots?
Hello, When I run the application on my powerbook, I also do not have functional arrow buttons (the computer beeps when the button is pressed). I’ll take this one as a bug. Some functions to perhaps consider adding:
Many thanks,
Matt
very nice app,lovely being able to jump into a slide show like that! i’d second the request for using the ‘esc’ key to leave fullscreen, and add a request for a preference to auto zoom smaller images to fill the screen during a slideshow, all the best!
When you’re in full screen mode, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get back to the menu bar, I had to CMD-Q. Oops, I see that’s already been noted.
Otherwise, very well done! Of course, it would be nice to be able to increase/decrease image size and so on, but maybe that’s getting away from your stated purpose in making a simple viewer app.
It seems that some people are having the same keyboard issue. I’m not sure what could cause this, but I’d like to fix it. If those of you who are having this issue could send me more detailed information on your machines, that would be great. Your specific hardware setups and OS X versions would be great. I’ve been testing and developing ML on a 12” AuBook, originally running 10.2.6, but now 10.2.8.
Arrow keys Inactive on 1gz titanium with 10.2.8, US keyboard layout.
Magic Lantern apparently can’t handle big tiff image files. I notice that neither can Preview. Just shows what I assume is a thumbnail, it’s that small.
yo, allan. No keyboard response at all on this mac running 10.2.6. it’s a dual 1.2. Wait, I lied. command-F works fine. nothing else causes any response I can see.
Try making this open PDF’s, PNG’s and PSD files and is shall be impressed….thanks for making this! good luck with making new and more powerful versions!
Wow. Nearly perfect fast file viewer. Lean and Mean. Two features would make this my number one viewer:
1st: Let me drag a folder FOLDER of images (and the option of letting me view folders within folders would be cool.
2nd: Let have ths option seeing images on a black backround.
That’s it. Sure wish I could program cool stuff like this!
Zoom feature please, other than that works perfectly on my ibook 800 with os 10.2.8 and all the latest updates.
Hi,
downloaded the app and had the same problem as a few other writers with no input working. I am running a 12” Powerbook (10.2.8 and all the updates). Anyway downloaded the source and had a go at compiling it myself. I had to switch back to gcc 3.1 as I don’t have 3.3 installed but I discovered if I put a NSLog in any of the MagicResponder.m methods it never prints to the console. It seems as if the responder is not being connected up properly or something. Anyway I am going to have a bit more of a play so maybe I can get something to work. I’m only fairly new to developing on OS X but I’ll give it a go. ;-) I’d love to help develop this app as OS X (at least at the moment) is in sore need of a nice little viewer like this. So yeah if you want more info or help debugging on a PowerBook G4 drop me a line.
It would be nice to have a command-1 for 100% command-2 for 200% and command-3 for full screen scaling options like the old OS 9 QT picture viewer. If you can get this to work in both slideshow and regualar mode that would be double the fun.
Thanks for adding the esc key to get out of the full screen mode (in 1.0.1).
Otherwise, great little program.
-Nick
hi allan, i’m an old time switcher and have allways been disapointed not to find an image viewer (like irfanview on PeeCee) able to browse images of the same folder. since then i became a freeware/shareware (french) translator and thus offer my little help for a wider exposure of this jewel.
otherwise no problem with the app, everything works as advertised by the way i have a feature request : image rotation with one keystroke (L=left R=right ?)
thomas
Magic Lantern 1.0.1 works perfectly and the arrow key bug has definitely been crushed.
I would think the application would be 100 % perfect if it only displayed the name of the file (instead of the complete path) and if I could rename files on the fly.
Simply awesome!!! Thank you so much!
Would it be possible to quickly display thumbs of all pics in a dir? How about a slideshow functionality with presettable time?
Thanks again!
hey, how can I open that type of file in Windows…please tell me. greats Ace
Magic Lantern = default image viewer for me. Thank you so much for the 1.1 update and spending the time and effort making such a fine app for us :-D
This is a great program!!!!!
In general it works very well and is fast and a good replacement, but the odd crashes it has are a little too random to make it the only tool I use. Keep up the good work. Would be interested in any new updates.
Awsome viewer! The only thing I wish it had was a keyboard command to delete the current picture its displaying. That would make it very easy to get rid of the pictures you don’t want while you’re weeding through large directories of images.
Fantastic! Definitely the cleanest viewer app I’ve been able to find. I’ve grabbed the source and I’m in the process of moving it up to xcode 2.0 and adding a few features. Just wondered if you really had any intention of updating it yourself. I want about 3 of the really simple features that I’m used to in Irfanview, an image viewer for Windows.
Interesting, I just noticed that it’s almost 1 year to the day since the last comment. :)
Regardless, good work. Thanks for the source code. :)
(btw, this comment form is atrocious… it won’t let me enter my email address in a form that can’t be spidered)
jfaulken /at/ gmail /dot/ com
John: I rewrote Magic Lantern a few months ago under xcode 2.1 so that I could organize the code a little better and take advantage of Core Image. It’s a little experimental and it has some bugs, so I haven’t released it yet. I may put up a preview sometime in the near future.
As for the comment form, yeah, it kind of sucks. I’m too lazy to change it.
Hi, I bought my first mac a few weeks ago, but I always remember a friend telling me, that thereīs nothing like IrfanView or Acdsee for macs. He told me this about 7, 8 years ago. Maybe he was right, but here is your viewer. Perfect for my needs to browse folders. An updated version would be very nice, but just the code details. Itīs fast, I can browse folders. Thatīs enough for me. Great work!
michael
Any chance of getting the XCode version posted in the near future? :)
I’d be more than happy to play around with the code and fix bugs.
Whoaa, this is the best out there! This is exactly what many, many of us Mac users need. FAST and simple image viewer with out any extra stuff. I’d love to see a Intel-version with a external editor shortcut. Respect!
Great viewer, but I’d love to see a universal version of it!