PicLens: Cool Internet Picture Browser

PicLens, originally uploaded by Me (?).

I was genuinely wowed this morning when I stumbled across PicLens. It is a full screen picture reader that works with Flickr, Google Images, Yahoo! Image Search, etc, etc.

In one line it is: Cover Flow for Internet images.

It is also bloody cool!

Once installed (into Firefox, IE or Safari) you get a little arrow icon in the bottom left of your pictures when you mouse over them. Click on the arrow and you are presented with the interactive 3D wall of photos:

PicLens, originally uploaded by Me (?).

You can scroll in and out with the mouse wheel and use the mouse to scroll to the left or right. Everything is smooth and intuitive. If you point it at a Flickr photo stream then it will go on forever without having to page through multiple pages to get the picture you want.

Click on an image and it is centered and make slightly larger:

PicLens, originally uploaded by Me (?).

Double click and the image is brought up full screen in something similar to the Flickr slideshow:

PicLens, originally uploaded by Me (?).

Unfortunately the full screen slide show does not have a cover flow style transition but you could always zoom into the 3D wall and view it that way.

Click on the little arrow at the top left and you are taken to the original page. I have found the PicLens is great for browsing Google Images in a much more fluid way than using the browser:

PicLens, originally uploaded by Me (?).

Clicking on the images will take you to Flickr where you can see them full size.

Excellent stuff!

www.piclens.com