Looking for more options and tools when it comes to viewing pictures from within Firefox? The very obviously named Image Tools add-on for Firefox will give you a few more basic controls when it comes to viewing images from within the browser. 

This add-on adds a toolbar across the bottom of the screen when you are viewing stand alone images inside of Firefox.  In the toolbar, you can fit the image to the window size you are viewing, zoom into the image, zoom away from the image, save the image or rotate the image around.

The author has also mentioned on his Firefox profile for the add-on that if you have any ideas for the add-on and how to make it better, let him know.  I always like to see Firefox add-on authors that are open to ideas from the public.

You can pick up the Image Tools add-on for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons website.

The Firefox add-on Thumbnail Zoom will do the work for you, and works with a lot of the popular image hosting websites out there.  All you need to do is download it, and then get to zooming!

This add-on for the Firefox browser will show you a floating panel with the full size image of whatever the thumbnail is about. You hover over the thumbnail image, and the add-on will take care of the rest of the work for you.

Here are some of the websites the Thumbnail Zoom add-on is confirmed to work with:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• Amazon
• Picasa
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• Hi5
• Twitpic
• deviantART
• PhotoBucket
• Wikipedia

You can also enable or disable each site’s ability to zoom on the thumbnails via the status bar menu (or through the add-on settings).  So if you need to zoom in on thumbnails when on Facebook, but not on Twitter – you have full control.

You can pick up the Thumbnail Zoom add-on from the Firefox Add-ons website.

TinEye claims to be the world’s first reverse image search engine.  Rather than typing in a phrase and looking for a picture, you type in a picture and get other pictures like it – or something like that.  Thanks to the TinEye add-on for Firefox, you can get instant image searching done right from the browser.

Here is a little more about TinEye from it’s developers:

TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.

When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches.

TinEye does not typically find similar images; it finds exact matches including those that have been cropped, edited or resized.

Once installed, you can right-click on any image, and select “Search Image on TinEye”.  When you do, you’ll be taken to an TinEye web page, that will display your search results.

It might not be a tool for everybody, but I do find the idea of reverse image searching very interesting and fun to play with.  You can learn more about it at TinEye.com.

So who really needs Pixlr?  It is a great alternative for us normal people out there who may not need the entire Photoshop suite of tools, just a simple and easy to use editor.  Having it online and with easy access via Firefox makes it an even handier tool for the web developers out there to have access to.  The only thing you need to have to make it work is Flash. 

One more nice feature about the service is it is super quick.  Just playing around with the editor on its own, it loaded up in under two seconds easily.  To pick up the Firefox add-on for Pixlr, go check out the Firefox Add-on site.  To learn more about the Pixlr editor, be sure to visit pixlr.com.

Zoom into images?

Ok, maybe image zoom isn’t the hardest thing to do. With the use of either the Image Zoom or zoomFox extentions you can get up close and personal with any images you find on the Internet. With zoomFox the image is opened in a new tab which also contains a thumbnail view of the image used to scroll around more easily, zoom controls with various zoom levels. Image Zoom goes for a much more traditional way of doing things by letting you click to zoom in. Either are great extensions for browsing really big pictures or graphics.

Allow you to edit photos?

When it comes to photo editing, both Picture2Life and Picnik come to mind. These two extensions export your find to an Online image editor that will give you even more creative control than MS Paint. (like that was a hard thing to do) In all honesty though it is amazing how these Web 2.0 online applications stand up against some of the basic photo editor competition out there. With the resources they have it is hard to see how anybody else could do better than what these two extentions (+ services) offer.

Change the way you view your images?

There has been a lot of innovation when it comes to graphics and pictures via the browser too. FoxSaver is an extension that we have tackled here before that turns Firefox into a screen saver and photo viewer. Tossing in their support for media RSS and you have a winner. Another unique image extension out there is PicLens. It instantly transforms your browser into an full-screen slideshow experience.

Need a few more tasks for images that you can only get done with the help of an extension?

• Want to take detailed site screenshots? FireShots
• Miss the image toolbar from IE6? Image Toolbar
• Need a Bulk/Batch/Mass Image Uploader? ImageBot

What else do you do or need from you images?

• Firefox: God’s browser of choice
• The REAL Firefox Found in the Wild!
• Firefox Tattoo
• How Many Popups Were Just Blocked?!
• Vista is Now Blocking Firefox?
• Firefox update on the news!

Seen any other good ones? Let me know!

Here are some of the currently supported web sites: Flickr, Facebook, Google Images, Yahoo Images, Friendster, Picasa Web Albums, and more!

Here is a little more about the extension from the developers:

the plug-in provides an immersive full-screen experience for viewing photos on the Web. PicLens Beta 1.5 can be used on Flickr, Facebook, and image search results from Google and Yahoo, and any page that supports Media RSS. To use the software, move your mouse over an image and click the PicLens button that fades in.

I have to say it will be interesting to watch PicLens (pun fully intended there) to see where it goes from here on out.

With this Firefox extension from Photo2Text.com now you can. Now I am not going to pretend that anybody has a good reason to do this. There isn’t one darn good reason you can think of either – go ahead and try. Time to geek out, relax and transform your photos into a load of interesting characters.

+ Download and Install the Photo to Text Firefox Extension!

Now this is a customization tool that is easy to use and fun as well. If you are feeling like the old Google logo just is not doing it for you, all you need to do is right click on the image, select “My Image Here” and then “Load My Image Here”. No rocket science needed.

+ Download and Install the My Image Here Extension for Firefox!

That is so 2001! There has to be a more efficient way of getting this simple job done.

There is and it’s name is AutoSlideshow. The AutoSlideshow extension for Firefox allows you to view graphics on a Web page in a little “photo player”. Here is what the author of the extension has to say about it.

AutoSlideshow allows you to view slideshows of images of web pages or images linked to from web pages. This is mainly useful for viewing images of a page with no possibility for image browsing.

Right now it has special support for: wikipedia, google, yahoo, facebook.com and studivz.net. As time goes by I could see a lot of areas where this simple extension could expand and get even better.

+ Download and Install the AutoSlideshow Extension for Firefox!