Image Viewers with MNG Support

Unquestionably the biggest category of MNG-supporting applications is viewers; most major operating systems are represented (if only via Java). Note that MNG image editors can often be used as viewers, too; they just tend to be slower and may not display as nicely on limited-color systems. There's also considerable overlap between this page and the image-conversion page, since many viewers can save to different formats. A few of the viewers here even have minimal editing functions like cropping, color balance, etc. Follow the links for details. Ye have been warned... The MNG specification was approved and promoted to version 1.0 in January 2001, but even before that there were several applications with partial MNG support. Now there are so many that this page is likely to be split in the near future. (Excellent!) All known MNG-supporting applications are listed here. However, Greg doesn't always hear about new ones right away, so if you don't see something here, also try Gerard Juyn's MNG application pages:

• MNG plug-ins, components and controls for browsers and other apps
• generic MNG-supporting applications
• Japanese MNG-supporting applications (and advocacy sites)

As with the PNG-applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to downloadable versions are provided where known. But if a link is broken, check the location and see if the page moved or if an updated version is available (and please tell Greg!). Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics).

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

• Advanced Batch Converter [Gold-Software Development] (Win32) - version 3.5(?) and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); commercial.

• Advanced Slide Show [Gold-Software Development] (Win32) - version 1.2(?) and later; read-only; JNG support; commercial.

• Ashampoo Photo Commander [Nikolaus Brennig] (Windows 2k/XP/2003) - all versions; read/write; JNG support (read-only); commercial. (This is the commercial successor to SlowView. It was previously known as Mediafile Assistant.)

• AutoGraphicsHTML [fCoder Group] (Win32) - version 5.7 and later; read-only; JNG support; commercial. (This is a utility to create web-based photo albums. The output format is restricted to GIF or JPEG, however.)

• FuturixImager [Alexander S. Tereschenko] (Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); write support for transparency in PNG and JNG as of version 2.01; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; freeware. (This was formerly known as Futuris Imager.)

• gtk-mngview - see libmng on the toolkits page

• GV [Tamotsu TOBITA (とびた)] (Win32, Windows 3.x) - version 0.85 and later; read-only; freeware. (This is a Japanese image viewer with PNG and MNG support; here's Babelfish's automated English translation of the page.)

• iBrowser [fCoder Group] (Win32) - all versions? read-only; JNG support; commercial. (This is an thumbnail browser and image/animation viewer. It includes slideshow and desktop background [wallpaper] functions, and it can integrate into the Windows shell.)

• ImageConverter Plus [Evgeny Shamin / fCoder Group] (Win32) - version 6.0(?) and later; read-only; JNG support; commercial. (This is a GUI image-viewer and converter with some basic manipulation capabilities; it can also plug itself into the Windows Explorer/menu system. See also 2PNG above.)

• ImageMagick [John Cristy] (Unix/X, VMS/X, Win32/X, Mac OS) - version 3.9.2 and later (minimal MNG support), or version 4.2.4 and later (full MNG-LC support); broken in versions 5.2.7 through 5.3.6; JNG support as of version 5.5.2; read/write; full gamma support; full chromaticity support? requires libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a multi-format viewer/converter/library package with the ability to view MNG-LC animations [except on Mac OS] and convert to MNG all GIF animations that don't use [the relatively rare] disposal method "restore to previous.")

• ImageWalker [Zac Walker] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read-only; JNG support; uses libmng, libpng and zlib; shareware. (This is an image viewer/converter, although it cannot create MNGs.)

• IrfanView32 [Skiljan Irfan] (Win32) - version 3.70 and later; read-only? freeware (for non-commercial use). (This is an image viewer/converter.)

• IV / ImgView / Image Viewer [Wolfpack Entertainment] (Unix/GTK+) - version 2.3.1 and later; read/write; JNG support; alpha support; requires Imlib, libmng, libjpeg, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with C source.

• IvanView [Ivan A. Kotenev] (Win32) - version 1.1.22 and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); commercial.

• KSquirrel [Baryshev "Krasu" Dmitry] (Unix/KDE) - version 0.6.0-pre9 and later; read-only; JNG support; requires libmng; freeware (GPL) with source.

• Mediafile Assistant - see Ashampoo Photo Commander above

• MNGBrowser - see MNGEdit on the editors page

• MNGeye [Triple-T Software] (Win32) - all versions; read/write/edit as of August 1998; freeware. (This is an image-viewer for PNG and MNG, including JNG support in version 1.1 and later. Version 1.31 is current as of MNG Draft 69 [frozen]. MNGeye and its sibling eMNGma are probably the most full-featured and up-to-date MNG applications written so far.)

• MNG-LC Player [Shinya IKEDA (池田 進矢)] (Java) - all versions; read-only; MNG-LC support; JNG support; requires JDK 1.1 or later; freeware (GPL and/or LGPL) with source. (This is a MNG viewer written completely in Java. The web pages and source-code comments are in Japanese only, although Babelfish provides an English translation of sorts.)

• mngplay [Ralph Giles] (Unix/X, Win32, BeOS, Mac) - all versions; read-only; requires SDL, libmng, libjpeg (for JNG support) and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a MNG viewer, now distributed as part of libmng and based on Sam Lantinga's Simple DirectMedia Layer toolkit. It should therefore be portable to multiple OSes, but it has been tested only under Linux so far. A Linux binary [1207k] is also available.)

• MNG Player [Tarkvara Design] (Mac OS X, Mac OS) - all versions; read-only; JNG support; alpha support (but incomplete for JNG as of version 1.0b1); uses libmng, libjpeg, and zlib; freeware.

• MNG QuickTime Component [Tarkvara Design] (Mac OS X, Mac OS, Win32) - all versions; read/write; requires libmng and zlib; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a MNG viewer component [plug-in] for Apple's QuickTime framework. The SourceForge CVS module name is simply MNG.)

• mngview - see libmng on the toolkits page

• MicroPlayer / μ-Player [Shinya IKEDA (池田進矢)] (Java) - all versions; read-only; MNG-VLC support; JNG support in MicroPlusPlayer / μ+Player; requires JDK 1.1 or later; freeware (GPL and/or LGPL) with source. (This is a tiny MNG-VLC viewer written completely in Java. The web pages and source-code comments are in Japanese only, although Babelfish provides an English translation of sorts.)

• PajantImage [Pajant Software] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This is an ActiveX control that supports multiple formats, including MNG-LC, and comes with an image viewer and screen saver. The web site's links require JavaScript to function.)

• PNG/MNG Construction Set Professional [Alchemy Mindworks] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; full(?) alpha support; commercial. (This tool, the PNG/MNG equivalent of GIF Construction Set above, can be used to add alpha transparency to PNG images as well as to create, modify, and optimize MNG animations.)

• sdl-mngplay - see mngplay above

• ShowImg [Richard Groult] (Unix/KDE2) - all versions; read-only; requires Qt, libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source.

• SlowView [Nikolaus Brennig] (Win32) - version 0.9.0 and later; read/write; alpha support; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; freeware. (This product has been discontinued. See Ashampoo Photo Commander above.)

• Smart Converter [Acoll Software] (Win32) - version 1.4 and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); shareware.

• Susie [Takechin?] (Win32) - version 0.45a(?) and later; read-only? freeware. (This is a Japanese image viewer with PNG, MNG and/or JNG support via plug-ins, of which more than half a dozen are available -- from ChangTa (PNG), Hiroaki Watanabe (PNG), MIYASAKA Masaru (PNG with source), Tietew Windows Lab (PNG), Pearly Baroque (PNG/MNG/JNG), SATO "COCKY" Akihiro (MNG/JNG), A. Mezamashi (MNG), and SOGEN (PNG/MNG/JNG). The Susie plug-in format, file extension .spi, seems to be something of a Japanese standard; for example, see also Pmacs and Picture Effecter on the PNG image editors page.)

• uplayer - see MicroPlayer / μ-Player above

• viewpng [Glenn Randers-Pehrson] (SGI Irix/X) - all versions? read-only; freeware. (This is an image-viewer for PNG and MNG. It was the original testbed for MNG features, and its MNG support is fairly complete--only the PAST, SEEK/SAVE, DROP, DBYK, ORDR, PPLT and JPEG-related chunks are not implemented. Be sure to grab both viewpng.gz and pnggzip.gz . Development on this app ceased in May 1997. There are no plans for further development.)

• XnView [Pierre-e Gougelet] (Win32) - version 1.61 and later; read-only; JNG support; freeware (for non-commercial use). (XnView is the newer, windowed version of Nview and Nconvert. As of September 2003, the latest version [with MNG/JNG support] is not yet available on Unix or Windows 3.x. The primary release is in French, but dozens of translations are available.)

Here are some related MNG pages at this site:

• MNG-supporting Applications
  • Browsers
  • Image Editors
  • Image Converters
  • 3D Applications
  • Games / Entertainment
  • Office / Business Applications
  • Scientific / Graphing Applications
  • Miscellaneous Applications
• MNG-supporting Hardware
• MNG-supporting Libraries and Toolkits

• MNG home page
• PNG home page

Copyright © 1998-2009 Greg Roelofs.