Presentation Mode

gThumb provides a presentation mode for showing slides to a larger group. You can enable this mode from the folder view using the slightly removed Presentation button at the top right. You can get back to the application by pressing Esc. Alternatively, you can use F5 to start and stop a presentation (see the "Unstable Presentation" box for more details). In full-screen mode, gThumb displays the images in the current directory in sequence, and the program moves to the next image after five seconds in each case.

To view an image longer, you can pause the playback by pressing p, or you can skip to the next image by pressing the Space or the Right arrow key; the Left arrow key takes you back to the previous image. In typical Gnome 3 style, you can access the application settings by clicking gThumb | Preferences. In the Viewer tab under the Slideshow section, you can specify the display duration and transitions between images (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Easy to overlook: You can access the gThumb settings via the application menu.

Import, Export, and Creative Matters

gThumb is useful not just for presenting locally stored images; it can also integrate online communities such as Facebook and photo services like Flickr or Picasa. If you want to integrate images from these services into your gThumb collection, you can import them by clicking the cogwheel button at the top right and then selecting the desired service from Import From. gThumb then connects to the respective service when authenticated.

Besides displaying content, gThumb also provides an option for exporting images to various online photo albums. To do this, select the images you want to export and click the Export button in the top right toolbar. gThumb then offers to export to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, and 23 in the drop-down menu. Once authenticated, you can upload the selected images in a new window.

Ambitious photographers who want to present their images in an unusual way have an array of functions for creatively designing a slideshow. Just select the images you want in the folder view and access the corresponding functions using the Export button. Contact Sheet creates a contact sheet with all the images in small format. Web Album creates an HTML album that you can then upload to a website. Image Wall arranges images for a montage (Figure 4).

Figure 4: gThumb also provides creative options, such as this picture wall.

Conclusions

gThumb performs in the blink of an eye many tasks that would be very time-consuming with a full-fledged image editing program. Adjustments can be made to contrast and brightness, red eye can be removed, or images cropped to certain standard formats, and all of this with just a few mouse clicks. The software also cuts a fine figure as an image viewer with presentation skills. The new version's user interface takes some getting used to, because it lacks menu hierarchies and because some buttons feature unusual icons. However, after tackling this obstacle, gThumb turns out to be a very efficient program for many everyday image editing tasks.