Python: OSX Library for fast full screen jpg/png display

Question

Frustrated by lack of a simple ACDSee equivalent for OS X, I'm looking to hack one up for myself. I'm looking for a gui library that accommodates:

• Full screen image display
• High quality image fit-to-screen (for display)
• Low memory usage
• Fast display
• Reasonable learning curve (the simpler the better)

Looks like there are several choices, so which is the best? Here are some I've run across:

• PyOpenGL
• PyGame
• PyQT
• wxpython

I don't have any particular experience with any of these, nor any strong desire to become an expert - I'm looking for the simplest solution.

What do you recommend?

[Update] For those not familiar with ACDSee, here's what it does that I care about:

• Simple list/thubmnail display of images in a directory
• Sort by name/size/type
• Ability to view images full screen
• Single-key delete while viewing full screen
• Move to next/previous image while viewing full screen
• Ability to select a group of images for:
  • move to / copy to directory
  • delete
  • resize

ACDSee has a bunch of niceties as well, such as remembering directories you've moved images to in the past, remembering your resize settings, displaying the total size of the images you've selected, etc.

I've tried most of the options I could find (including Xee) and none of them quite get there. Please keep in mind that this is a programming/library question, not a criticism of any of the existing tools.

Answer 1

I will recommend using wxPython to create such a viewer, wxPython is easy to learn, free, cross platform and blends well in OSX. Even if you want to use pyopengl, wxPython would be good with pyopengl.

see such tutorials http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/video?name=1790000&fromSeriesID=179

and there is already cornice written in wxpython/PIL, may be you can modify that. It has been inspired by the famous Windows-only ACDSee :)

Answer 2

it's not an answer to your coding question but for (a big part of) the lack of ACDsee equivalent (requires OSX 10.5+):

• Simple list/thubmnail display of images in a directory: Finder.app
• Sort by name/size/type: Finder.app will do name & type, not image size (but does file size)
• Ability to view images full screen: quick preview (spacebar / eye icon)
• Single-key delete while viewing full screen: command-backspace while viewing in quickpreview, both windowed and fullscreen
• Move to next/previous image while viewing full screen: both quickprewiew (after selecting a group of images or whole directory with cmd-a) and Preview.app
• Ability to select a group of images for[...]: Finder.app will does all but resize

seems like you have everything except resize just pressing the spacebar while in finder. Preview.app will resize both a single image or multiple ones in one batch.

Answer 3

Use an App like Picasa (now available on mac). Use AppleScript through Python to control it from your application.

Failing that, use PyObjC to create Cocoa image display component and dialogs, and so on.

Answer 4

I ended up using PyGame, has been pretty good so far.