GraphicConverter Classic - 6.5

GC is truly a great product and worth every penny you pay. The owner is extremely responsive to bug reports and generally has a fix in a few days.

Unfortunately there are some bugs that cannot be repeated and features that you get to depend on never get fixed. Example: Find Duplicates works 98 percent of the time and when it doesn't the whole machine tends to crash. So no report is generated and nothing for the owner to look at. There should be but there isn't. I am not sure if its an Apple issue or a GC issue but in any case nothing ever gets resolved.

I have been told a lot of the bug reports that are filed are in "someone" else code (from Apple to ADOBE and others) and it is like nothing ever gets resolved if the problem is other peoples code. So if you do not like your system to crash only keep to displaying of images and it works really well.

Despite all my issues the product is really good and is extremely flexible (almost too flexible in some cases) as the preferences are many and most are poorly documented (IMO) so you must go through all of them any time you want to change something (simple?). The documentation was probably written in German and has been translated to English so-so. The person that writes the documentation at times ask someone on the mailing list on how to phrase something.

With the support and the price you cannot go wrong.

It's time to update reviews, so I'll start off by saying that version 5.8 (universal code) should have been designated GC v. 6.0 rather than continuing the "impression" that it's still pre-MacIntel code inside. Mr. Lemke's only fault as far as I can see - this version designation is a little confusing.

That "used for less than a month" is misleading in my info bar - I've been a GC user since version 3.83. It's this new unicode version to which I refer now.

Still a 5-star app. Whenever Thorsten Lemke "messes up" - it's brief and temporary because he promptly issues new versions with bugs fixed.
I don't see how he can keep up with user requests for new features - but he does, and that sometimes results in a glitch or two.

5.8 works like all preceding versions - very well. And there's some nice touches arising from user requests. Like "shadowed text" in the browser and slideshow - makes file paths much easer to read against light backgrounds and eliminates the need for adding colored borders (to make text visible).

Another feature I hadn't tried before (there're so many) - converting slideshow (folders containing images) to QuickTime movies. This feature works flawlessly, including the ability to set frame rates and display sizes. The resultng movies can be imported into iMovie for addition of sound tracks, effects and titles. I've had a ball this past week, making my own animated movies with GC, some PhotoShop, and iMovie (with iDraw a recent addition to my animation project software.)

To think - I paid $30 some years ago and have gotten about 20 upgrades free. How many 3rd party apps give that much value?

I can't get over how much I actually use this shareware product. It's stable, opens virtually anything, and is inexpensive. I second that, that it is one of the best pieces of shareware for the Mac ever written. Excellent!

If Microsoft would take half as much care and support for their software as Thorsten Lemke does, I would say: "I love Microsoft". However, this remains a conjunctive. As for now, there are few developers who take so much care to deliver just good work at a very reasonable price. Extremely good work!

I have been using Lemke's GREAT software since 1998 and once again he has produced a fantastic piece of software by which all other shareware products should be judged!

Solid, stable, feature laden, helpful documentation and great value for money! What more could one ask for?