3 Image Viewers That Are Awesome and Free
These 3 Image Viewers Are More than Just Viewers
There are a lot of free image viewers out there. Image viewers basically allow you to organize and view images on your computer. But the two I’ll discuss here are among the best because not only will they organize and allow you to view images of all types, but they will also allow you to edit them and even soft proof them for printing.
Let’s take a look.
Faststone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, retouching and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches one of the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, PSD, EPS, TIFF, WMF, ICO, CUR and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, PEF, RAF, RWL, MRW, ORF, SRW, X3F, ARW, SR2, SRF, RW2 and DNG).
No Adware. No Spyware. | ||
Version 7.5 | download | 2020-03-10 |
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What I love about this image viewer is how fast it is as well as the numerous methods of editing a file. One great feature is the option of setting the Color Management System to use the monitor profile for soft printing before printing.
I’ll focus on this one because it’s my favorite.
xnView
XnView MP/Classic is a free Image Viewer to easily open and edit your photo file. The Image Viewer supports all major image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, WEBP, PSD, JPEG2000, OpenEXR, camera RAW, HEIC, PDF, DNG, CR2). As Image Viewer you have features like color adjusting, image resizer, cropping, screen capture, metadata editing (IPTC, XMP) and much more. With its easy-to-use explorer-like interface, XnView MP allow you to quickly view your images and photos, but also to make image management. You have features like batch rename, batch converter, duplicate image finder, image compare, but you can also create contact sheets, slideshow.
XnConvert is a fast and powerful batch image converter, you can convert, resize, watermark, add text, enhance, filter in batch mode.
XnResize is a fast and powerful batch image resizer, you can convert, resize in batch mode.
For Desktops
Applications for Windows/MacOS/Linux, with the popular XnView Classic and now XnView MP
IRFANVIEW
It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.
IrfanView seeks to create unique, new, and interesting features, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole “creativity” is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas, and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example, XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 10+ years).
IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer worldwide with Multiple (animated) GIF support. One of the first graphic viewers worldwide with Multipage TIF support. The first graphic viewer worldwide with Multiple ICO support.
Some IrfanView features:
- 32 and 64 bit version
- Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
- Multi language support
- Unicode support
- Thumbnail/preview option
- Paint option – to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
- Toolbar skins option
- Lossless JPG rotation, crop and EXIF date change (also in batch mode)
- Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
- Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
- Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
- Fast directory view (moving through directory)
- Batch conversion (with advanced image processing of all files)
- Multipage TIF editing
- File search
- Multiple undo steps
- Email option
- Multimedia player
- Print option
- Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF files
- Change color depth
- Scan (batch scan) support
- Cut/crop
- Add overlay text/image (watermark)
- IPTC editing
- Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
- Screen Capturing
- Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
- Shell Extension PlugIn
- Many hotkeys
- Many command line options
- Many PlugIns
- Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like “I Agree” or “Evaluation expired”
- No registry changes without user action/permission!
- and much much more
Click here to see several screenshots of IrfanView.
IrfanView 64-bit version
Starting with IrfanView 4.40 there is also a 64-bit version available.
Advantages of IrfanView 64-bit over 32-bit version:
- It can load VERY large files/images (image RAM size over 1.3 GB, for special users)
- Faster for very large images (25+ Megapixels, loading or image operations)
- Runs ‘only’ on a 64-bit Windows (Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10)
Advantages of IrfanView 32-bit over 64-bit version:
- Runs on a 32-bit and 64-bit Windows
- Loads all files/images for normal needs (max. RAM size is about 1.3 GB)
- Needs less disc space
- All PlugIns will work: not all PlugIns are ported (yet) to 64-bit (like OCR) and some 32-bit PlugIns must be still used in the 64-bit version, some with limitations (see the “Plugins32” folder)
- Some old 32-bit PlugIns (like RIOT and Adobe 8BF PlugIn) work only in compatilibilty mode in IrfanView-64 (only 32-bit 8BF files/effects can be used)
- Command line options for scanning (/scan etc.) work only in 32-bit (because no 64-bit TWAIN drivers)
Notes:
- You can install both versions on the same system, just use different folders. For example: install the 32-bit version in your “Program Files (x86)” folder and the 64-bit version in your “Program Files” folder (install 32-bit PlugIns to IrfanView-32 and 64-bit PlugIns to IrfanView-64, DO NOT mix the PlugIns and IrfanView bit versions)
- The program name and icon have some extra text in the 64-bit version for better distinguishing
Available 64-bit downloads
Download IrfanView-64 English (Version 4.58, Self extracting EXE file, 3.56 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 6bfdf8d92a937dde9d672b22e8864ab17fbe86a37b6cb2b4fa68e7bcb99c0861)
Download IrfanView-64 English (Version 4.58, ZIP file, 3.10 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 0c4e17336d800b1e072d8a0cb94957d673df11d1b526c6ce1f17aebc71f6dd76)
Download von IrfanView-64 Deutsch/German (Version 4.58, EXE-Installer, 3.82 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: e7fec27016e46ced330e460ea0053378502fbc264b4d9361529abc278050a9da)
Download von IrfanView-64 Deutsch/German (Version 4.58, ZIP file, 3.36 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 213621901123166619b2bea57574eae457af16248770d631c0b1bbb78d19dd09)
Download IrfanView-64 PlugIns (Version 4.58, EXE-Installer, 24.60 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: aa47dadff28084f765feb853da6dd5007be4476ceb9f6f9b41df36fa23878f26)
Download IrfanView-64 PlugIns (Version 4.58, ZIP file, 22.10 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 92d7c18a6113e744f75249bd7f146d0afcb27183410a5d533f29286beaf5686e)
PlugIns updated after the version 4.58:
My Recommendation
I love Faststone Imge Viewer. It’s just simple to use and easy to set up. All of these are great and your choice is more a matter of what you like, but I use Faststone.
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