Image by Image for Windows

Image by Image seems simple enough. True to its name, the purpose of the program is to allow users to view AVI and WMV files image by image, or frame by frame. Such a program has the potential to be very useful, but unfortunately, Image by Image is more confusing than useful.

The program's interface is plain, a basic media viewer with four buttons at the top. The Open button is pretty straightforward, and we opened a video with the program easily enough. The next button lets users alternate between normal speed and "image by image," and we'd assume that this is the program's main feature, but it didn't seem to work. Videos played fine at normal speed, but when we clicked Image by Image the program only seemed to display the video's final frame. Another button labeled Set Position brought up a box into which users could enter numbers for hour, minute, and second, but it was never clear what we were actually setting the position for, or how this interacted with the rest of the program. Finally, the About button gave us a glimmer of hope that there might be a Help file that would explain this unintuitive mess, but no such luck. The only instructions for the program's use are contained in the publisher's description, and you can see for yourself how much sense that makes. Overall, we were confused and highly unimpressed with Image by Image.

Image by Image is free, which is really the only thing it has going for it. The program comes as a zip file and runs after extraction with no need for installation. We do not recommend this program.