: Lightweight psd viewer with layer support I'm looking for a lightweight psd viewer that allows me to turn on/off layers. I currently work at a web-design firm and at some points in the project

@Murray664

This answer may be late but it is something you want.

We have created a small online tool: Simple PSD (http://psd.keyangxiang.com) could solve your problem.


It has layer support -- choosing, measuring, exporting layers as PNG, JPG, or SVG files.
It can open 1GB+ size psd file
It is fast -- all parsing happens on your machine with graphic card acceleration, no need upload psd file , no backend even -- Pure Javascript
It is a web app -- any operation system that has a browser (Chrome / firefox) can use it.
It is free.


There are lots of other features to explore.

We have used this for a while ourselves. It is a perfect tool bridge designers and developers.

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@Sarah814

Gimp did seem to work well for just looking through the .PSD layers. There is also a modification of Gimp to be more like Photoshop called Gimpshop: gimpshop.com/, if you prefer it to feel more like Photoshop.

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@Sims5801359

Given you already have Photoshop, it sounds like you need a machine of similar spec to your graphics team.

I'm not sure that anything which allows you to open a complex, layered Photoshop file and fully supports its layer effects compositing would be significantly more lightweight - it's not simply turning a stack of raster images with alpha transparency on and off.

Another option could be for your graphics team to output a simplified version of the artwork at key stages, with multiple layers merged as far as possible.

(If the artwork was for print, the simplified artwork could be reduced resolution, but that's probably not appropriate for website layouts.)

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@Holmes874

The GIMP supports Photoshop layers. I accidentally discovered that the other day.

Granted, it's The GIMP so not everyone's cup of tea, but an open source option.

This is the one I've been eyeing: www.pixelmator.com/
It claims to have full PSD layer support and looks like a rather well design program.

EDIT by donquixote:
(no reply button to be found for me)
GIMP does support layers, but it will show them in a flat list, not the tree hierarchy you know from Photoshop. I am looking for an alternative myself..

UPDATE (Jan 2014): In recent versions, GIMP does now show layers in a hierarchy.

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