>  	I've been a happy use of xv for a long time, but given its
>  	security issues I'm (finally) looking for a replacement.
> 
>  	Does anyone have a recommendation for an image viewing util?

ImageMagick will fullfill all your needs and it are commandline tools, so
they are highly scriptable.


BTW: I collected some of my perl/sh skripts at http://www.net-tex.de/code/
some of them use ImageMagick to manipulate images.