Review of ACDSee v3.1 and IrfanView v3.25 with DjVu Plugins by James Rile, PlanetDjVu, July, 2001 ACDSee v3.1 with DjVu Plugin   (www.acdsystems.com) ACDSee 3.1 image viewer and graphic converter is the perfect digital imaging software solution. As a high-speed picture viewer and jpeg viewer it is the ideal graphics software for image processing, digital cameras and photo services. With its sharper image, batch file conversion, SendPix and plug-in features, you can enhance, convert, and share your images faster than ever. ACDSee 3.1 supports 40+ image formats and multimedia files, including bmp, tiff, jpeg, mpeg, ldf, lwf, ttf. What is a Plug-in? A plug-in is software that extends the capabilities of ACD Image Viewing products for a specific purpose. For example, a plug-in might let you e-mail pictures to a friend, view additional file formats, get images from your digital camera, or take software-controlled pictures. ACD Systems creates and distributes plug-ins, but they can also be created by third-party companies. Getting additional functionality is as simple as downloading the plug-in you want.  March 16, 2000 - Support for reading of AT&T DjVu format added. ACDSee 3.1 retails for $49 (single copy price). Desktop Snapshot of DjVu file on display in ACDSee v3.1 ACDSee v3.1 Button Bar The DjVu Plugin for ACDSee v3.1 permits the viewing of DjVu 2.0 format files.  It does not recognize DjVu v3.0 - the thrumbnails for v3.0 files disappear immediately after displaying. Page Navigation can be done with the Page keys, or with the mouse wheel.  Using the mouse wheel to flip pages was enjoyable. The DjVu image displays at once, not layer by layer as in the DjVu Viewer plugin.  They render in one pass from top to bottom, against a black background. There is magnification, but the same as in the DjVu Viewer.  I wanted to find the feature of drawing a zoom rectangle but it was not there. DjVu v2.0 images can easily be run in a slide show. The Enhance menu item brings up the ACD Photo Enhancer (below).  This box lets you Rotate, Flip, Crop and modify the histogram of the image. Unfortunately, you cannot save back to DjVu. You must save in some other format like JPEG. ACDSee v3.1 Photo Enhancer Window The levels enhancement (below) would be a good place to brighten up those page images - if you could only save back to DjVu! ACDSee v3.1 Photo Enhancer Window - Levels Adjustment ACDSee v3.1 Thumbnail View Single-click a thumbnail image and that DjVu file will display. IrfanView  v3.25 with DjVu Plugin   (www.irfanview.com) IrfanView is a very fast FREEWARE (for non-commercial use)  32-Bit graphic viewer for Windoze 9x, Windows NT and Windows 2000.The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIFF support The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.  The DjVu plugin for IrfanView was last updated 4-22-00. Desktop Snapshot of DjVu file on display in IrfanView v3.25 IrfanView v3.25 Button Bar The DjVu Plugin for IrfanView v3.25 permits the viewing of DjVu 2.0 format files.  It does not recognize DjVu v3.0 - the application will crash with an "Illegal Operation" error message if you try to open one. Page Navigation can be done with the Page keys (no mouse wheel navigation here).   The DjVu image displays at once, not layer by layer as in the DjVu Viewer plugin.  They render in one pass from top to bottom, against a black background.  You can maximize the window of the viewer, but it jumps back to a sized-windows each time a new DjVu file is opened, which is annoying. The Page keys don't work either except within a single page.  You must click the arrows to navigate pages. There is magnification, but the same as in the DjVu Viewer.  I wanted to find the feature of drawing a zoom rectangle but it was not there. DjVu v2.0 images can easily be run in a slide show. The graphics select tool is very handy.  You can draw a bounding rectangle, then save that graphic region to the Windows clipboard, where you can then paste and save it in a graphics editor.  Below is a graphic region that was copied to the clipboard, then saved as a JPEG file.  This is a feture that is missing from the DjVu Viewer plugin! Extracted Graphic Segment Copied to Clipboard and Saved as JPEG

Conclusions The DjVu plugins for these two viewing applications will have to be updated quickly, because of the unruly behavior when DjVu 3.0 files are encountered.  It will be interesting to see what they do (if anything) about the hidden text layer.  These DjVu plugins have a few good features, which hint at viewer functionality yet to come.  The lack of ability to save modified DjVu files makes me long for that "Acrobat Exchange" - like application with which I can edit and tweak DjVu files!