For a long time I used Showfoto for my image viewer. Lately I have been using Mirage the most.
Both Showfoto and Mirage have clean, attractive, and intuitive interfaces. The primary advantage Showfoto has over Mirage is that Showfoto can do a heck of a lot more. Showfoto has many menu options for enhancing, decorating, transforming, and filtering your photo. Mirage, on the other hand, is limited to a few minor editing options such as resizing, rotating, and cropping.
The primary advantage Mirage has over Showfoto is that it seems to start up and load images twice as fast (at least on my system).
Personally I use Mirage the most, because I am very concerned about speed. I want my computer to respond to my commands instantly. Whenever I want to see an image, I would much rather it show up in 0.5 seconds than 1 second. (Yes, I can tell the difference.)
While all those extra features in Showfoto are interesting, I never use them. When I really want to edit a photo, I use GIMP, which is (I would think) better suited for that sort of thing.
So here is my advice: Use Mirage for most of your image viewing, when you just want to get a quick look at an image or a directory of images: this will save you a lot of half-seconds over your lifetime. Use Showfoto if you need to edit a photo but do not have time to learn GIMP.
Both Showfoto and Mirage have clean, attractive, and intuitive interfaces. The primary advantage Showfoto has over Mirage is that Showfoto can do a heck of a lot more. Showfoto has many menu options for enhancing, decorating, transforming, and filtering your photo. Mirage, on the other hand, is limited to a few minor editing options such as resizing, rotating, and cropping.
The primary advantage Mirage has over Showfoto is that it seems to start up and load images twice as fast (at least on my system).
Personally I use Mirage the most, because I am very concerned about speed. I want my computer to respond to my commands instantly. Whenever I want to see an image, I would much rather it show up in 0.5 seconds than 1 second. (Yes, I can tell the difference.)
While all those extra features in Showfoto are interesting, I never use them. When I really want to edit a photo, I use GIMP, which is (I would think) better suited for that sort of thing.
So here is my advice: Use Mirage for most of your image viewing, when you just want to get a quick look at an image or a directory of images: this will save you a lot of half-seconds over your lifetime. Use Showfoto if you need to edit a photo but do not have time to learn GIMP.
A big advantage showFoto has over the Gimp is its ability to work on 16 bit images. The Gimp is limited to 8 bits. This is important for photographers that, like me, shoot their images in raw mode to get the most detail possible. showFoto seems to be the best open source tool for RAW image editing right now. But like you, I do not use showFoto for quickly looking at images. For that I use Gwenview. ;)