For Mac OS and Mac OS X, what programs can I use to view and manipulate graphic and animation files?

This document describes programs you can use to view and manipulate graphic and animation files in Mac OS and Mac OS X. The programs described in this document are either freeware or shareware. You will find more information about commercial applications in Macintosh catalogs and publications such as Macworld. This list is not exhaustive, but represents some of the more popular and useful titles. For more information about downloading software, see For Mac OS X, where can I download freeware, shareware, commercial software, and software updates?

A Smaller GIF: A Smaller GIF is a compressor and viewer for animated GIF files. It has a powerful set of tools that allows you to reduce the size of a GIF animation without any loss in quality.; Developer: Pedagoguery Software; Formats supported: GIF; System requirements: Mac OS 6 or higher; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: $28; Home page: http://www.peda.com/smaller/
GifBuilder: GifBuilder is an effective tool for constructing GIF animations. There are two ways of creating GIF animations with this application: convert from a movie file or construct each frame of the GIF with multiple images. GifBuilder includes features that allow for delicate fine-tuning of the resulting animation.; Developer: Yves Piguet; Formats supported: Imports GIF, PICT, TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, PICS, QuickTime movie, Adobe Premiere FilmStrip; creates animated GIF files; System requirements: Mac OS 7 or higher, Color QuickDraw; AppleScript, Macintosh Drag and Drop, and QuickTime recommended; Mac OS X-native: Separate Mac OS X version available; Price: Freeware; Available from: http://www.tucows.com/preview/206447
GIFConverter: GIFConverter is an excellent tool for the converting, creating, and manipulating static images and GIF animations. It is scriptable via AppleScript and Frontier, and supports transparency and interlacing.; Developer: Kevin A. Mitchell; Formats supported: GIF, JPEG, PICT, MacPaint, CompuServe RLE, TIFF, RIFF, PNG, EPS (export only); System requirements: Mac OS 7.0 or higher and a Macintosh Plus or newer; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: $30; Home page: http://www.kamit.com/book-page/product/gifconverter/gifconverter
GraphicConverter: An extremely versatile image conversion and manipulation program, GraphicConverter is the premiere shareware application of its kind. Some of its capabilities exceed those of vastly more expensive applications, such as Adobe Photoshop. It is particularly useful for developers who wish to create images optimized for the Internet. Newer versions of GraphicConverter also can perform batch conversions and create slide shows.; Developer: Thorsten Lemke; Formats supported: GraphicConverter can handle most static image and movie formats. Its capabilities can be extended with plug-ins.; System requirements: Mac OS 7.0 or higher, Color QuickDraw, 68020 processor or better, and 3MB of free RAM (4MB for PowerPC computers); Mac OS X-native: Separate Mac OS X version available; Price: $35 ($30 without CD or disk); Home page: http://www.lemkesoft.com/
Iconographer: Iconographer is a powerful icon editing tool.; Developer: Mscape Software; Formats supported: Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Windows icons; System requirements: Mac OS 7.5.3 or later and a PowerPC processor; Mac OS X-native: Separate Mac OS X version available; Price: $15; Home page: http://www.mscape.com/
IconToGIF: IconToGIF is a simple drag-and-drop utility for converting Mac OS icons into transparent GIF files.; Developer: Dan Crevier; Formats supported: Imports Mac OS icons and exports transparent GIF files; System requirements: Color QuickDraw and Macintosh Drag and Drop; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: Freeware; Home page: http://www.boingo.org/dan/software/IconToGIF.html
Imagery: Imagery is a drag-and-drop utility that allows you to convert a wide variety of image, animation, and sound files into a number of popular formats in Mac OS. It will also extract icon and other image resources from applications and save them as individual image files.; Developer: Jeff Lewis; Formats supported: Imagery recognizes nearly 100 different sound, animation, bitmap, and vector image formats. It exports to TIFF, GIF, JPEG, EPSF, PCX, PICT, Targa, Display Image, QuickTime, and several sound formats.; System requirements: Mac OS 7.0 and higher and QuickTime; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: Freeware; Available from: http://downloads.zdnet.com/Mac/?legacy=zddl
iView MediaPro: iView MediaPro is a flexible application that can catalog and view most kinds of graphic, video, and audio files. It is scriptable and integrates very well with the operating system.; Developer: iView Multimedia Ltd.; Formats supported: iView handles a broad variety of graphic, video, and audio formats, as well as fonts and desktop publishing documents.; System requirements: PowerPC, Mac OS 8.6 or later, QuickTime 4.1.2 or later, CarbonLib 1.0.4 or higher, 8MB of RAM; Mac OS X-native: Yes; Price: $45; Home page: http://www.iview-multimedia.com/
JPEGView: Though it has limited image conversion and alteration capabilities, JPEGView is primarily an image viewer. In this capacity it performs well, providing functions that let you easily zoom in and out on an image, view it in full-screen mode, or view a series of images as a slide show.; Developer: Aaron Giles; Formats supported: PICT, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, MacPaint, and StartupScreen; System requirements: Mac OS 7.0 or higher and QuickTime; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: JPEGView is "postcardware". The author requests that, if you like JPEGView, you send him a postcard. For an optional $20 registration fee, you can get a printed and bound version of the documentation.; Home page: None, but JPEGView is widely available from most online Mac OS archives.
MacGSView: A Mac OS port of GhostScript, MacGSView is a PostScript viewer that can also display and convert EPS files.; Developer: Bernd Heller; Formats supported: PostScript (including EPS files), PDF; can export to a number of common formats, including Adobe Illustrator and PDF files; System requirements: PowerPC, Mac OS 8.5 or greater, and at least 5MB of free RAM; Mac OS X-native: Beta Mac OS X version available; Price: Freeware; Home page: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/macos/index.htm
NIH Image: NIH Image is a powerful image analysis and modification application. In addition to supporting many Photoshop plug-ins, it has a sophisticated macro language that can greatly extend its capabilities.; Developer: The Research Services Branch (RSB) of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); Formats supported: TIFF, PICT, PICS, MacPaint, QuickTime, ASCII text (8-bit [256 colors] only, but can import 16-bit [thousands of colors] images); System requirements: Mac OS 7.0 or higher, Color QuickDraw, and 4MB of free RAM; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: Freeware; Home page: http://rsb.info.nih.gov/nih-image/
Preview: Preview is an Apple application installed with Mac OS X and designed to be an all-purpose static image viewer.; Formats supported: TIFF, JPEG, PICT, QuickTime Image, Photoshop, Silicon Graphics, MacPaint, Targa, BMP, and PNG; preview can also save images as PDF (Portable Document Format).; System requirements: Mac OS X; Mac OS X-native: Mac OS X only; Price: Included in Mac OS X
QPict: An image cataloger and viewer, QPict makes it easy to organize and preview large numbers of images from a hard drive, CD-ROM, or even off the Internet. It can scan an entire volume very quickly and display thumbnails of the images it finds, all within an attractive and intuitive interface.; Developer: Rune Lindman; Formats supported: A large number of image, movie, and sound files, enhanced with QuickTime; System requirements: Mac OS 9 or higher; Mac OS X-native: Yes; Price: $35; Home page: http://www.qpict.net/
QuickTime Player and PictureViewer: QuickTime Player (formerly MoviePlayer) and PictureViewer are two applications included in Apple's QuickTime distribution. QuickTime Player is used for viewing movies, such as MPEG and QuickTime, while PictureViewer will display a number of image formats. Neither is particularly sophisticated, but they are easy to use, and the Pro version of QuickTime Player has some editing capabilities.; Developer: Apple; Formats supported: Any format supported by QuickTime; notably, QuickTime movies and QuickTime image files (QTIF); System requirements: Mac OS 8.6 or higher; Mac OS X-native: Separate Mac OS X version available; PictureViewer is not available for Mac OS X; Price: Freeware; to get extra features, you must purchase QuickTime Pro, available for $29.99; Home page: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
RealPlayer and RealOne Player: With RealPlayer or RealOne Player, you may watch and listen to RealMedia content.

Developer: RealNetworks; Formats supported: Several Real formats as well as streamed MP3s; System requirements: For RealPlayer: Mac OS 8.1 through 9.x, a 200MHz 604 processor or better, 32MB of physical RAM (bumped to 64MB with virtual memory); for RealOne Player: Mac OS X 10.1.1 or later; Mac OS X-native: RealOne Player only

Price: There are freeware versions of both RealPlayer and RealOne Player, but Real also offers commercial clients with enhanced capabilities.; Home page: http://www.real.com/
Sparkle: The first major MPEG player for Mac OS, Sparkle is less important now that QuickTime has integrated MPEG support. Sparkle supports MPEG-1 movies, but included in its distribution is a separate program called MPEG2Decoder that will also play MPEG-2 movies. Both a player and a converter, Sparkle can convert between PICT, QuickTime, and MPEG formats.; Developer: Maynard Handley; Formats supported: PICT, QuickTime movies, MPEG movies, as well as several sound formats; System requirements: Mac OS 7.5 or higher, QuickTime, and a computer with a 68020 processor; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: Freeware; Home page: None, but Sparkle is widely available from most Mac OS archives.
TextureMill: TextureMill is an application that lets you create seamless patterns suitable for deployment as backgrounds for web pages or screen wallpaper.; Developer: Deep Devices; Formats supported: Export patterns as either GIF or PICT files; System requirements: Undocumented; Mac OS X-native: No; Price: $20; Home page: http://members.aol.com/deepdevice/
VideoLAN client: VideoLAN client is a cross-platform program that plays a number of video formats.; Developer: VideoLAN; Formats supported: DVD, VCD, SVCD, MPEG, MPEG2, AVI, MP3; System requirements: Mac OS X 10.1 or later; Mac OS X-native: Mac OS X only; Price: Freeware; Home page: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Windows Media Player: Windows Media Player for Macintosh lets you view and listen to several proprietary Microsoft formats.; Developer: Microsoft; Formats supported: Windows Media Format, AVI, DRM; System requirements: Mac OS 8.1 or higher (8.6 or higher recommended), PowerPC 603e 180MHz processor or better, 32MB of RAM; Mac OS X 10.1 or higher for Mac OS X version; Mac OS X-native: Separate Mac OS X version available; Price: Freeware; Home page: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.mspx

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Last modified on May 30, 2008.

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