order of images in a folder

[hiker_jon]

Hi,

I would like to arrange the images in a folder in a special order. It would be great to use a thumbnail view to sort the images then save the order to a text file. When I next browse the images in the folder I would like to have the option of viewing them according to the list.

Can Irfanview do this? Is there any other software available to do this?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

That sounds like a way to get a lot of suffering. I don't know of any viewer that will do that. Why not just rename the files with a prefix: 001 .. 999, etc., and sort them by filename? That will then work in Windows Explorer and any image viewer, including IrfanView.

You can rename files quite easily in the Thumbnail Viewer with the F2 key.

[matera]

Such arranging is more the function of a WYSIWYG HTML editor. The Thumb viewer would have to be re-designed to work like a web browser. There would be an extra file in every folder.... I don't think that most users understand the difference between various methods of displaying images. Windows Explorer shows thumbnails and you can shove them around - oh, what nice magic, now why doesn't everything do that? Well, because everything doesn't have Internet Explorer embedded into it.

[Mij]

No, you cannot drag the thumbnails around to change the order but this is what you can do instead. It may be enough for you.
Open Irfanview and open the Slideshow dialog (File>Slideshow or press W). Click "Remove All" to clear any files already listed and close the dialog. Now open Thumbnails and select the folder you want. For each image , in the order you want them, right click on the thumbnail and select "Append to Slideshow". When you have finished open the Slideshow dialog again and you should see the selected images all listed in order. Click on "Save Filename as TXT file" , save your list and close the dialog again.
Back in Thumbnails go to Options > "Load file list from TXT file" and select the file you just saved. Now you see the thumbnails displayed as you want them. Double click on the first one to open it in the main window and use the arrow keys normally to step through the images manually (or press Shift+A to auto-step).

[Sam_Zen]

Hey, Mij, that's a pretty workaround.

[Mij]

Thanks, but I agree that it is a workaround. What you cannot do in IrfanView AFAIK is to display the current slideshow list directly as Thumbnails. A button in the slideshow dialog to do that would enable you to quickly switch between the list and the thumbnails. You could then move files up and down the list in the dialog and rapidly view the changes as thumbnails.
I could call that a feature.

[Sam_Zen]

Would be a feature indeed.
OT : Another example of the growing list of possible features inside IV, where one setting could be transferred to another dialog.