# Gwenview User Manual

Aurélien
Gâteau

    agateau@kde.org

Christopher
Martin

    chrsmrtn@debian.org

Henry
de Valence

    hdevalence@gmail.com

2005
Aurélien Gâteau
2008
Henry de Valence
&FDLNotice;
2005-08-21
1.2.92

&kappname; is an image viewer for &kde;.

KDE
image
viewer
artist
photo
picture

## Introduction

### What is &kappname;

&kappname; is a fast and easy to use image viewer for KDE.

Gwenview features three main modes: Browse, View, and Full Screen. Browse Mode lets you navigate through your computer showing thumbnails of your images, View Mode lets you view images one at a time, and Full Screen lets you make quick slideshows.

Image loading is handled by the Qt library, so &kappname; supports all image formats your Qt installation supports. &kappname; correctly displays images with an alpha channel (transparency) as well as animations.

&kappname; supports the displaying and editing of EXIF comments in JPEG images. Lossless JPEG transforms such as rotations and mirroring are also supported.

## The interface

### Image Operations

Gwenview has a few features which are available in both Browse, View, and Full Screen view. Gwenview has the capability to do basic alteration of your images.

- Rotate: A rotate operation will rotate the image either to the left or to the right, depending on whether you do &Ctrl;R Edit Rotate Right or &Ctrl;L Edit Rotate Left

- Edit Mirror : This operation will reflect the image along the vertical axis, as if you were seeing it in a mirror.

- Edit Flip : This operation will reflect the image upside-down (a reflection along the horizontal axis)

- Edit Resize : This operation will allow you to shrink or expand the image. Note that if you increase the size of an image, it may appear blurry and/or pixelated.

- Edit Crop : This operation lets you discard parts of the image you don't want.

### Browse Mode

When in Browse Mode, you can easily navigate through your files and folders. The preview window shows thumbnails of the images in the current folder, as well as subfolders.

Browse Mode Screenshot

Moving the mouse over an image shows buttons to rotate the image as well as a button to enter Fullscreen Mode. Clicking on an image takes you into View Mode. The sidebar on the right does not appear by default, but its appearance can be toggled using F11 View Show/Hide Sidebar or using the Show/Hide Sidebar button. Note that the option will appear as either Show Sidebar or Hide Sidebar, depending on whether the sidebar is currently shown. The slider at the bottom right allows you to change the size of the image thumbnails. You can also filter the images by filename using the box on the lower left. The toolbar (left) appears in both Browse mode as well as View mode and contains the most commonly used actions.

- Browse: Switches to Browse Mode.

- View: Switches to View Mode.

- Full Screen: Switches to Full Screen Mode.

- Go to Previous Image: Clicking this icon will go to the previous image in the folder.

- Go to Next Image: Clicking this button will go to the next image in the folder.

- Rotate Left/Right: Same as discussed in Image Operations

- Show Sidebar: Shows the sidebar (right) which displays information about the current image.

### View Mode

View Mode displays one image at a time. At the bottom, there is the Thumbnail Bar, which allows you to scroll through the images in the current folder. The Thumbnail Bar can be minimized by clicking on the Thumbnail Bar button. Clicking again will restore it.

View Mode Screenshot

The slider at the bottom right controls the zoom of the image. The Zoom to Fit button and the Actual Size button are next to the zoom slider and are two preset zoom levels. The Zoom to Fit button zooms the current image to fit the size of the window, and the Actual Size button zooms the image to the actual pixel size.

You can start directly in View mode by starting &kappname; from a context menu like Open With in another program or by launching it from the command line with an image as an argument.

### Full Screen Mode

The Full Screen Mode shows a slideshow of your images. Access Full Screen Mode by clicking on the button that appears when you move the mouse over the thumbnails in Browse Mode, by pressing the Full Screen button on the taskbar, or by &Ctrl;&Shift;F View Full Screen Mode .

Full Screen Mode Screenshot

The top bar will hide itself automatically; to show it simply move the mouse to the top of the screen. If the mouse cursor is over the top bar, it will not autohide. Most of the buttons on the bar are the same as the ones on the toolbar in Browse or View Modes, except for the Exit Full Screen Mode button which returns you to the &kappname; window, the Start/Stop Slideshow button, and the Configure Full Screen Mode button which shows a small settings dialog that allows you to easily and quickly configure the slideshow. The slideshow controls there are:

- The Interval slider controls how long &kappname; will show an image before it move to the next one.

- If the Loop checkbox is checked, when the end of the slideshow is reached, it will continue from the beginning instead of stopping.

- If the Random checkbox is checked, instead of progressing through the folder alphabetically, images will be shown in random order.

Also in the top bar is an area that shows you the other images in the current folder. Clicking on one will display it.

## Tips

### Using the mouse

#### Panning with the mouse

- Holding down the left mouse button on an image allows you to scroll the image.

- The mouse wheel will scroll the image up and down.

#### Zooming with the mouse

- Clicking the middle mouse button will toggle the auto zoom on/off.

- Hold down the Control key, then either use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out or left click to zoom in and right click to zoom out.

- The mouse wheel, used while holding down the Alt key, will scroll the image horizontally.

#### Browsing with the mouse

- When in Browse mode, clicking an image switches into View mode and shows that image.

- When in Browse mode, scrolling the mouse wheel will scroll up or down the thumbail view area.

- If the Mouse Behaviour option in Settings Configure &kappname; is set to Browse, scrolling the mouse wheel while in View Mode will move you through the images in the folder.

### Key bindings

&kappname; comes with a range of keyboard shortcuts, all of which can be viewed and remapped by selecting Settings Configure Shortcuts.... Note that in the Files and Folders windows, all the normal KDE shortcuts are functional, unless otherwise remapped.

A few of the most useful default bindings are:

- Space: Displays the next image in the directory.

- &Backspace;: Displays the previous image in the directory.

- &Alt;Up: Moves to the parent folder of the current folder.

- &Ctrl;&Shift;F: Switches into Full Screen Mode.

- &Esc;: Exits from Full Screen mode.

- &Ctrl;M: Show or hide the menubar.

- &Ctrl;B: Show or hide the Thumbnail bar.

- F11 Show or hide the Sidebar.

- F6 Make the Location bar editable so that you can directly type in a file path. You can return to the standard Location Bar by pressing the arrow at the right.

- &Ctrl;R: Rotate the current image to the right.

- &Ctrl;L: Rotate the current image to the left.

- &Ctrl;S: Save any changes made to the image.

- Del Move the current image to the trash.

- &Shift;Del: Permenantly delete the image from the disk. Note that this operation is irreversible and cannot be undone.

- &Ctrl;P: Print the current image.

- &Ctrl;O: Open an image using the standard file selection dialog.

## Credits and Copyright

&kappname; is currently maintained by Aurélien Gâteau

This document was written by Christopher Martin

This document was updated for &kde; 4 by Henry de Valence

Screenshots in this document were updated for &kde; 4.5 by Burkhard Lück

&underFDL; &underGPL;