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A year later... Are there any alternatives to Ember

8 years ago from Toby Negele, Senior Product Designer

  • Chris Cacioppe, 8 years ago

    http://www.pixa-app.com

    I've been using Pixa for a couple of years. I'll admit the UI and the feature set hasn't changed in a pretty long time but it has a few features that make it win over every thing else for me.

    A: Live Folders. Apps that create their own little library piss me off. If that developer stops supporting the app or if the library gets corrupted your pretty screwed - back in the day i used iPhoto and that burnt me several times.

    Pixa allows you to create your own folder structure in dropbox or whatever and it simply references the contents in that folder. This is great as you can organise things the way you like drop in images directly into Pixa or into the folder structure, and pow it's all good homies.

    This is also sweet for teams, you can have a shared source library on dropbox and everyone runs pixa.. your all looking at the same stuff and adding to the same library.

    B: Projects So your working on a new project and you want to collect some samples from your library to keep you focused and inspired. Thats where projects come in.

    It's like a meta folder that references anything in your library in any place, that allows you to create a mood board without having to duplicate files or create a new folder in your source folder structure - trust me its sweet.

    C: Tabs You can have multiple tabs open that display different folders or projects. Its great for times when you want to jump around your library but keep certain things open at the same time.

    All of these features keep me using Pixa. I wish they did a bit of a visual refresh tho.

    And if you're wondering I don't work at Pixa/Shiny Frog.

    3 points
    • Ethan Clark, 8 years ago (edited 8 years ago )

      +1 for Pixa. It stands out from the competition.

      Live Folder is a great feature. I've bought the new cool kid Pixave on App Store. After realise it doesn't have that, I remove it. This feature works fast and auto-update within few seconds after changes in Finder.

      Pixa can do better with Live Folder by making it auto collapse and expand when user click it to keep the sidebar neater and easier for user to navigate. It's also a bit delay when scrolling on a long list of folders. This can be improved as well.

      Projects. It's a pity that I can't drag an image when viewing it to projects in the sidebar. I have to back to the grid view.

      Shortcuts. We can asign most of regular actions to a keyboard shortcut. It's a very nice feature.

      Other features in my wishlist for version 2.0:

      • simle edit functions like crop, filters, rotation.
      • native Mac gestures.
      • Availabitily to save 1:1 ratio when viewing images. It's very helpful when I viewing a folder with full page screenshots.

      As its Twitter said, we maybe have to wait for a long time for the next version.

      2 points
      • Toby NegeleToby Negele, 8 years ago

        i think Pixa is a great alternative. What bugs me though is the lack of support/updates.

        0 points
      • Chris Aalid, 8 years ago

        I use pixa and ended up mapping F5 to view 1:1. I think it's called "View Full Size" in the menu.

        0 points
      • Florian GrauFlorian Grau, 8 years ago

        +1 for Pixa

        My favorite feature is the genius extension for Safari and Chrome, which presents you with all the images on a given site and you can select all the files you want to import.

        Unless someone else is coming up with that feature I don't see myself switch anytime soon.

        Btw: Shinyfrog is allegedly working on a v2.

        0 points