Image Viewers, Photoshop Elements

[Makoto]

Are there any simple image viewers that will let you easily change the size of the displayed image on-screen, and play animated images, without requiring too many additional steps? Something like the QuickLook view, perhaps.
I've been using ToyViewer since... what, 2004 or so? ...and I like it, but it does have a few quirks - to resize the image display, for example, you have to click on a dropdown at the bottom of the window and pick a different resize/scale factor. And, to view the animation on animated images, you have to go to Tools > Multi-Page... (or hit Shift-Command-I) to pop up the player controls.

As for Photoshop Elements, I'm still using PSE v3. Yes, I know it's old, and yes, I know it's PPC-only (one of the handful of reasons I'm still using Snow Leopard). What I was wondering was if - aside from getting a version that'll run without requiring Rosetta (or my old Panther system ) - it's actually worth it to update to a newer version... any of them, not necessarily v10.

[benwiggy]

It depends what you're doing with Photoshop Elements, of course.

For most general purposes, iPhoto is very capable. The new version of Photoshop Elements on the App Store is also very cheap.

Preview is also a very competent viewer and editor of images. It can save as a variety of formats, has basic drawing tools, cropping, zooming, colour adjustment, etc. I don't know about animated images, though -- never tried that.

If only a handful of PPC apps like this are keeping you from upgrading to Lion, then I would suggest that it would be very easy to find updated replacements. The benefits from not running over six-year-old emulated code are significant.

[Makoto]

Well, no, the few apps running in Rosetta aren't the only reason. But, I'll probably just end up getting a separate Lion/ML system instead.

Have you used the more recent versions of Elements? I'll get the most recent version (didn't know PSE was on the App Store; I'll have to take a look), but I wanted to be sure there were no major issues, as PSE has reportedly gone through something of an upheaval since v3. (Well, you'd expect some change, of course... And, I would be jumping ahead seven major version numbers.) All I often see when I'm looking for more information online are the gripes. "Elements has gone downhill since <insert version number here>," etc.