I’m slowly building my LB art library. I like to create my own graphics, but I’ve been downloading some. The first thing I noticed though when I began downloading libraries was that in order to view the files I had to go through the multi-step process of loading the library in LB (Open > LB; click > Material Library; Load > Said library; click > file name). So I got to wondering if there was an independent file viewer for ‘lbart’ files. But I couldn’t find one.
Is there one?? If not, I think it would be very useful. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just to be able to get a quick view of the files content to see if the contents is worth loading into LightBurn.
Mikey…
No I haven’t noticed MY artwork is being changed after importing. My question is primarily about being able to view downloaded library files (downloaded as in Internet from other authors) BEFORE loading them into LB. I’d like to be able to quickly view the images in those lbart files in order to see if they are worth adding to my LB library–BEFORE I load them, rather than have to delete them after.
Unless there is a different way I haven’t found yet, currently I have to load new (downloaded) lbart files into the library before I can see what’s in the file. Then only after loading the file into LB can I finally see the images to decide whether I want to keep or delete them.
Seems there should be a (pre)viewable process for the file so you can see if the images are worth having. Maybe one persons file contains the exact same images that you got elsewhere? You don’t know until after you load the file into LB and look through it.
Another I thought I had was that since an lbart file contains a group of images, it seems like an easy way for someone to pass along unscrupulous images. Example: someone posts a lbart file in a forum claiming it’s full of holiday images. We have to trust the file owner that the file only contains what he/she says it does. Since the file contains multiple images, the person could easily include an unwanted image or two in the group that you won’t see until much later. Of course a viewer wouldn’t stop that practice, but you’d know about the unwanted file much sooner. But if user likes to collect libraries, but doesn’t always load and/or look through them, they could unwillingly have images they don’t want (or worse, shouldn’t have). Maybe that can’t happen, but it seems to me it easily could.
You mention that the files are stored in binary. Does this mean it would make it possible to create a standalone viewer?
Aaron, thanks for the tip about dragging from Explorer–I just tried dragging over a jpg, and yes, it works!
To add to this: Since we only link the files from a location on the computer, you need to manually delete the unwanted .lbart file outside of LightBurn.
We might consider adding a button to Delete .LBART on disk. Would you find this useful?
The images stored in binary would make it a bit more challenging for someone to create a standalone viewer, but nothing is impossible
I’ll ask our devs for more info about this binary format.
BTW: You can drag individual designs between Art Libraries. Holding Shift moves them instead of copying. Handy when you just want to cherry-pick a few items.
So, our consensus is that LightBurn itself is the viewer. It’s free to “Load” any lbart and see the contents.
We do think that it’s viable, and useful to have a “Delete permanently” feature next to the “Unload”. This would make managing downloaded libraries way easier.
I made an internal feature suggestion
Feel free to create a public one on our Fider page. We use Fider to decide which features are important for us to develop next.
In all reality though, how many people offer lbart libraries? If I were making art files available, I would certainly offer them in standard graphical formats that everyone can use, rather than limiting it to only Lightburn users. The fact that users can share art libraries is nice, but for a file seller, not practical.
I personally use the library feature to store frequently used items rather than having to search my hard drive looking for them. I think this was the original intent of the art library.
