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Provides: Displays selected image in finder.

Developer: Launay Software

Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.2, G3 processor

Price: Freeware/Email-ware (send the author an email about where you live).

I learned about MilkyWay on a Forum: the writer was extolling the virtues of this simple application. And now, a week later, I'm waxing eloquent as well. If you tend to get desktops or folders full of images, files and other clutter, you will find this application a "must have." And, since it's free, it becomes a no-brainer.

Installing MilkyWay is simply a matter of dragging it to your Applications folder. I also set my User - Autostart to start MilkyWay; I always want this running. The Preferences are very straight forward.

• The "Sound" is a simple droplet noise.
• Autohide simply means that images only are displayed when you are in the finder.
• Zoom means that small images are auto-zoomed a bit to help you see the image.
• I'll explain the Display Tools in a second along with the Auto-hide the tools.

So, you have a desktop or folder of cluttered files, screen shots, images your friends dropped off for you to deal with, whatever. All you do is to click on the image, and "pop!" a small image pops up showing you what the image is. That's it. Below is a life-sized example.

The size of the original image seen above is 2560 X 1920 pixels, so this is by no means life-size. All MilkyWay does is to show you what's in the image. The "Tools" mentioned in the Preferences are seen in the grey zone below the image. The "*" icon on the far left closes the image. That means that the image can still be active in the Finder, but the image will be removed from the screen. The Magnifying glass blows the image up to pin the larger axis across your screen. (This means that whichever axis is going to extend up to the width or height of the screen when zoomed in will set the maximum zoom.) There is no fancy bicubic expansion, so if the image is low-rez to begin with it will be pixilated when zoomed. On the other hand, an image that is high-resolution will expand quite nicely. Clicking anywhere on the screen returns the image to normal size.

As stated, the grey area along the bottom is the Tools area. If you have Tools set to Autohide (in the Preferences), they only appear if you mouse-over the image. As long as the image is selected in the Finder, the MilkyWay image will remain on the screen. You can mouse-down on the image and drag it to whatever location on the screen you like. This location will be remembered by MilkyWay for future images.

In the upper right of the grey zone is the kind of image you are looking at (in this case, a JPEG) and below that is the size of the image (in this case, 614 x 460 ppi)

In my testing, MilkyWay can "see:"

• GIF
• JPEG
• PSD (Photoshop document)
• PNG
• TIFF
• EPS (if saved with PDF info)
• Adobe Illustrator (if saved with PDF info)
• PDF (1st page only with white often showing up as transparent)

Limitations of MilkyWay are very straightforward; it shows the image as saved. You cannot enhance the image, all you can do is to see what the image is.

Obviously, MilkyWay is not intended to replace Bridge, iView, Portfolio, iPhoto, or any host of other programs designed to show photo collections. All it is supposed to do is to let you see what an image is when you are digging through a cluttered folder or whatever in the Finder

I do have three suggestions that would be nice to add, although they are not necessary: First off, as long as he is displaying the size of the sample image (in the lower left), I'd also like to see the size of the original image. In addition, it would be nice if there were clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation icons to rotate the image. Lastly, I'd like a choice on the background of zoomed images to be either black (the current situation) or white. The reason for this is if you look at PDFs, the white background is typically seen as transparent. When you zoom on a PDF, you have black text on a black background. while this is good for most images, it is not always so.

In short this is a nifty little application that is very big for me. And, you can't beat the price; send the guy an e-mail about where you live.

Download MilkyWay.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.