FastRawViewer Review

December 15, 2014 | Matt Grayson | Software Reviews | Rating star Rating star Rating star Rating star Half rating star

Performance

In order to see how fast the viewer was, we loaded a folder with several raw files and opened up the first one. It certainly lives up to it's name as each raw file taken on a Canon EOS 5D MkII that we used was around 20-22Mb in size and they popped up on the screen as though they were low resolution JPEG files.

There's no lag or slow loading in line by line. The initial image loading in can take a few moments, but it's negligible and worth the wait in order to get the speed that the images flick through as you move left and right.

Interestingly, the modes along the bottom of the window may be auto corrective and it's worth checking that before saving any work. From time to time, we found that the exposure of the image was a lot higher than we shot and it was FastRawViewer that had automatically set it to what it considered a normal setting.

Conclusion

LibRaw haven't pulled any punches with naming the product, so it's good to see that it lives up to it's moniker. We can see how this program can be a useful addition to a photographer's workflow, but really only the kind of photographer that needs to see the pictures there and then. That includes wedding photographers wanting to show the client images that need approval, sports photographers who may have a small window in order to get the shot they need or even just the insatiably curious. For the price, it isn't going to break the bank in order to get instant large screen viewing of your pictures.

We're disppointed to not see some kind of batch processor. It would be good to be able to make the small changes to the images, then convert them without having to open a new program. It's also disappointing not having TIFF support. DNG is supported as well as a plethora of camera raw files. We can see why they aren't; after all, no camera shoots in TIFF, but some do in DNG. However, we still stand by our thought that you may come back to older projects and want to go through images again and if they're TIFF files, you won't be able to view them except in slower programs.

For the money, this is an extremely useful piece of kit. It could prove to be invaluable for the right photographer so that they can get the shot right. Sometimes the small screen on the back of a c amera simply doesn't show enough information and it's times like this that you'll need this program.

4.5 stars

Ratings (out of 5)
Features 4.5
Ease-of-use 5
Value for money 5

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