Best Free Digital Image Viewer
This is one of those software categories where the quantity and quality of free programs is at least equal to that of commercial ones, so the selection isn't easy, and personal convenience will unavoidably appear as a main factor for this review.
And there's also the question of what exactly we mean by an "image viewer". With so many contenders that offer loads of features like editing, filtering, batch processing, organizing, publishing and the rest, that name may be a bit too restrictive, as we always tend to demand some additional editing features apart from the basic viewing and browsing functions (these are sine qua non, in my opinion). Thus many imaging applications overlap categories, and the differences for our review should be based mainly on the aspects of access speed, zooming capabilities, and other tasks not directly related to extensive image editing. Though I know many users will prefer all-in-one programs, I feel that they don't fit into this category, and feature bloat precludes their recommendation.
One of the best choices is the classic IrfanView. Irfan is a first-class product, but one for which I have mixed feelings. It's an amazingly capable application and very fast at displaying images, something I consider essential for a viewer. It offers plenty of functions for editing, converting, batch processing, slideshow exporting, etc. and supports almost any graphics plug-in. Some of the features (its resizing algorithm, for instance) are outstanding and even rank above a big fish like Photoshop. But, although many users just love it, it just doesn't work the way I'm used to. As a personal "inconvenience" I'll say wheel zooming requires a press of the Ctrl key, and I don't see the point in having a separate module for thumbnails. This, however, may be exactly what others prefer, and the same applies to the interface, which looks a bit too simple to me. But, obviously, this program is a real winner.
A product I feel more comfortable with is XnView. Like Irfan, it's very versatile; it can read and display nearly 400 types of graphic files, and convert any of these to more than 50 formats. It displays images very quickly, and these may be viewed full screen, as slideshows or as thumbnails. It's quite capable at processing images, too; you can rotate, crop, resize, adjust brightness and color, apply filters or effects, create a web page and much more. These operations can also be carried out from a batch file, which is ideal for converting or processing multiple images with custom adjustments, and the thumbnail window can fit your preferences with several layouts and sizes. It offers instant hotkey and wheel zooming, and dragging the image around at any zoom level is perfectly smooth. It also allows having several images open at the same time and even running multiple instances of the program. It supports drag and drop, lots of plug-ins, is available in 44 languages and has full cross-platform support, including Mac and Linux (unlike its competitors reviewed here). A heavyweight.
My third choice is FastStone Image Viewer. There are various reasons to choose this, but the main one is its superb interface, especially in full screen mode, with different pop-up panels appearing when the mouse cursor reaches any side of the screen. You can easily access every function of the program (one at a time, of course) from this window with no other element disturbing you until you decide it with just a mouse move, including a very handy thumbnail slider to browse your images. Even the smallest menus or panels in any of the modes are clear and well designed, and there are several skins available. The zoom system is very clever, too. It magnifies to a custom preset level with just one click, and "average-user" files are displayed quickly, the same as their thumbnails; but it's slower showing bigger files (>20MB, depending on the format) and both Irfan and XnView perform much better in this field, though for most users that won't be an issue. It may be a good idea to disable the preview panel in the thumbnail window to speed things up. It also supports all major graphic formats and popular digital camera RAW formats as well, and offers good basic image editing facilities, an excellent cropping module, full batch processing options and great slideshow capabilities. Much to like here.
FastStone has a "little brother" called FastStone MaxView which is essentially the same program, but it's limited to the viewer and a few features.
All the three programs reviewed support basic video viewing for the most common formats.
ALTools offer some interesting freeware utilities, including ALSee picture viewer. This one is fast, folks. And that's just about the most important feature a viewer should provide. Actually, no other free or commercial program I've ever tested performs so well when it comes to displaying any of the 24 supported formats, and this reason alone makes it worth appearing here. Thumbnail generation takes a little longer than in other apps, but once the images are in the database you can view and browse at blazing speed. And that includes even several-hundred-MB multilayered PSDs! The interface is clean and neatly designed, and although the icons might not be to everyone's taste, the functions are very easy to use. The drawbacks are a few, however: no wheel zooming, limited customization, very few batch processing options, no RAW or video support, and it writes to just 5 formats (JPG, BMP, GIF, PCX and TIF; I really miss PNG, among others).
This impressive entry in the Wikipedia features a chart comparing a considerable amount of free and commercial image viewers. Most of these products are also given detailed individual entries and include links to their websites.
IrfanView
Website: http://www.irfanview.com/
Download link: http://www.irfanview.com/
Author: Irfan Skiljan
Current version: 4.20
Version date: July 16, 2008
License: Freeware for private use
Download File size: 1.25MB, plug-ins 6.94MB
Operating Systems Supported: 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/2003/Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English languages supported: Multi language support
Other relevant information: Extensive plug-ins available, dual-monitor configurations
XnView
Website: http://www.xnview.com/
Download link: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/endownloadwin32.html
Author: Pierre-Emmanuel Gougelet
Current version: 1.95.3
Version date: November 5, 2008
License: Freeware for private use
Download File size: Basic 2.19MB, Standard 5MB, Portable Zip 6.85MB
Operating Systems Supported: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista, Windows 3.x, Mac OS X, Linux x86/Linux ppc, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86, NetBSD x86, Irix mips, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, HP-UX, AIX
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: No
Portable Version Available: Yes, the executable in the zip file can be run with no installation
Additional Software Required: None
Non-English languages supported: 44 languages (depending on versions)
Other relevant information: Extensive plug-ins available, dual-monitor configurations
FastStone Image Viewer
Website: http://www.faststone.org/
Download link: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm
Author: FastStone Soft
Current version: 3.6
Version date: September 15, 2008
License: Freeware for private use
Download File size: 4.06MB, portable 4.02MB
Operating Systems Supported: 98/2000/Me/XP/2003/Vista
Additional Software Required: None
64 Bit Capable: Yes
Portable Version Available: Yes
Non-English languages supported: Multi language support only in version 3.2 and older: Chinese (Simp & Trad), Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish
Other relevant information: Supports dual-monitor configurations
Tutorial available: 3.7MB
Related Topics
Best Free Digital Photo Organizer
Best Free Digital Editor
Best Free Media Player
This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Marc Darkin. Registered site visitors can contact Marc by clicking here.
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Smaller brother of Faststone Image Viewer:
FastStone MaxView
Hi,
I need to convert a batch of image files to PDF. I have tried IrfanView and XnView but with both programs I can only convert the first page. If I have a tiff image with more than one page, the PDF output will only have the first page.
How can I batch convert tif files with more than one page to pdf?
Thank you.
To be honest, I'm not used to working with PDFs so I can't give a proper answer. But fellow editors Tony and Steve have suggested a couple of programs to try:
ImagePrinter http://code-industry.net/imageprinter.html
PDFCreator http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Hope any of them will work. Please let me know.
Marc
PDFill PDF Tools can do the job quite well. It has a feature "Convert Images to PDF" to allow converting multiple image files into multiple pages of one PDF file.
Read more here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-pdf-tools.htm
Nice! I downloaded it from http://newfileengine.com/ absolutely free!
I'm just wondering if there is a batch processing program that can do what I specify. You see, I want to mass resize almost every one of my images (mostly wallpapers) into my desktop size, 1280x1024, perfectly. The problem is that I want it to keep the aspect ration, and crop the sides that are too long, instead of fitting the whole thing in with ugly borders at either sides. My Nuonsoft Wallpaper Cycler can do that by itself, but it will lag on huge images, and is already starting to lag too much, because of my large collection. I just want it to be faster, and more efficient, and use less of my resources. Also, I would like a great freeware image compression program, to free up some hard drive space. Please reply, and thanks if you do!
Hi,
sounds very much like IrfanView to me. I am very fond of its batch conversion capabilities. You can even keep the size and just compress the images (like specifying JPEG quality).
Best regards,
George
No it doesn't seem to be able to do what I've said, I had it for quite a while now. Unless you mean the Crop part of the advanced option (which I don't get, because I'm mostly a Novice at computer graphics), it only changes the images to the closest size possible while keeping the aspect ratio (which is the best I can make it do with my limited knowledge).
Picasa 3, in beta, includes an image viewer.
It's pretty cool.
Hi Marc, this page is for you:
http://www.freewarefiles.com/cat_3_42_Graphics-Viewers.html
Thanks for the link. I already knew the site. Actually, it's where I got some of the programs I've tested. But thanks anyway.
Marc
If you are a photographer and demand full color management (that, unlike FastStone, XnView and IrfanView altogether, also works with professional calibrated monitors), check out FastPictureViewer, a new product designed in 2008, expressly as a fast culling tool for photographers, with Unicode (international character sets), image rating (Adobe XMP and Windows Vista) and last but not least, Direct3D and multicore acceleration support for unmatched display speed :-)
One anonymous visitor has already replied to your suggestion in the message below mine: FastPictureViewer isn't freeware if you want other formats else than JPG.
Besides, it's limited to doing just that: viewing. If you're a photographer, as you say (I am, and have MANY thousand pics on several drives), you'll need a program which lets you do a bit more at least. It sure is fast and slick, but what's the use of that if you must switch to another app to perform the most basic operations?
If you're a photographer, you need to do all kinds of things to your pics (let alone editing!) such as rotating, cropping, renaming... Is navigation speed so important when you're forced to carry those out in another program, so spending the time you had saved browsing through?
If you're a photographer, you most likely need to work with different file formats, and would you be paying to view the additional ones when a lot of other apps allow you to have them for free? Oh yes, it's fast.
I've tried the program (with JPGs only, of course) and with this format the speeds they boast so much about at their site are higher than those achieved by the products reviewed here, but not very significantly, as my own trials suggest. FPV may be the fastest viewer around, but what will you be doing? Keep your finger stuck on the keyboard arrow to display each of your photos for a tenth of a second and watch them pass? Irfan, Xn, FastStone and Imagine perform really well at displaying average JPGs, and ALSee is just as fast as FPV. And it's nearly like that for a number of other formats which the latter doesn't support for free.
Regarding color management, I have hardware-calibrated monitors. I'm not sure about Irfan or Imagine (have to check that), but both Xn and FastStone are color-aware apps and let you specify whether you want them to display images taking into account their color profile. They're slower if you have the option enabled, though, but that's something you can live with (or even without, if you disable it).
Marc
>FastPictureViewer isn't freeware if you want other formats else than JPG
Again, what's wrong with that? 99%+ pictures taken in the world a JPEGs nowadays. Do you know of any consumer or pro P&S or DSLR camera that does *not* take JPEGs? Besides that Xn and Fs are not freeware either, if you use them for anything but personal/educational.
>If you're a photographer, as you say (I am, and have MANY thousand pics on several drives), you'll need a program which lets you do a bit more at least
I guess it depends on work habits. If I get back from somewhere with 5,000 pics from multiple cameras, I have a big problem and I don't want to wait for any tool to build thumbnails and slow down my system for an hour before I can start culling (and throw away 99% of the images anyway). I use FPV to do that quickly (typically about 4000 images per hour or so), then I move on to other (slow and much more powerful) tools with the remaining 1%. At the end I saved about 2/3 of the time it used to take me to do the same job.
About the "as you say" part, I'm not into pissing contests but I brought my first pro camera, a Nikon F3HP w/MD-4, when it came out in 1980 and I've tried all popular images viewers since the personal computer was invented. The first digicam I've worked with was a Kodak DCS200 back in 1992, 1.54MP, on-board hard disk and SCSI connection. I think I'm qualified to talk about what's needed in an image viewer and speed, above all, is paramount.
>Oh yes, it's fast.
Indeed, and TIME is your *only* non-renewable asset. Think about it.
>ALSee is just as fast as FPV.
You are kidding, right? I just tried it on a folder with 4,600 JPEGs (12.1MP large, fine, D3) then a folder with a couple of 28.6MP images and, clearly, you are kidding me, unless you tried FPV on an old machine or a VM, in which case remember that Formula 1 car does not run very well on go-kart tracks.
>And it's nearly like that for a number of other formats which the latter doesn't support for free.
ALSee is in beta, last updated in June 2005. More than three years ago! Will it ever support D3, D700, D90, P6000 files? 1D/1Ds MkIII??? Oh yes, it's free (if you don't use it professionally).
Besides that I could not find the RGB histogram, though, and I had to press F12, then later close a (modal) popup, everytime I wanted to see my shutter speed or aperture.
How do you compare a 9fps burst with ALSee (or any other, for that matter)? Can you zoom & pan on a detail, and scroll through the image sequence instantly with the mouse wheel, while keeping the pan & zoom, to pick the sharpest or most crucial image of the lot? I don't think so, still it's something that photographers would *die* for... Oh wait..
>both Xn and FastStone are color-aware apps and let you specify whether you want them to display images taking into account their color profile
That's only half of the story. What's important is to be able to specify into what profile to translate the images, e.g. your calibrated monitor's profile, if you have one. Xn, Iv and Fs does not allow that and colors are all wrong on such monitors (and ALSee does no color management at all).
And, by the way, it's 2008. Xn, Iv, Fs needs to wake up. Besides lacking real color support, what about Unicode? XMP rating? (you know, that medatata interop standard embraced by the whole industry, that photographers use to tag their files...) What about support for 3D accelerators? Nope. Even Adobe will begin to use the GPU in Photoshop CS4, get ready to shop for a new graphic card and perhaps a multicore machine :-)
Anyway, thanks for the warm welcome. The market will decide I guess. Thank you for your time, the original article and the replies. Very informative. Cheers!
Ok, ok; I understand your opinions and even share some of them. I admit you know what you're talking about, but I've never doubted that. Your qualification seems to be as good as mine, if not better, and your comments are really welcome. But that's not the real point.
I don't want to go into deep controversy because your reasons are as valid as mine, and bargaining won't take us anywhere. I may have seemed unenthusiastic about FastPictureViewer, but I truly agree it's a great program. A proper viewer MUST be fast and at this level FPV is surely the best by far. I must admit I underestimated it. My apologies. And thanks for letting me know about it because I'll probably be using it to some extent.
In my review above I also discuss about what an 'image viewer' is and simplification vs. features. I have concluded a fair balance is the best thing. What a 'fair balance' means is something the user must decide, but in this case FPV is constrained to just viewing. And this is a freeware site, too. The vast majority of the photos in the world are shot in JPG but, sadly (and fortunately, as you must know), there are other formats, though. FPV FREE is VERY limited and is JUST a JPG viewer, not an IMAGE viewer. Nothing wrong with that, but this is why it won't make it to my top apps in this category. (Yes, JPGs are images too, but you know...)
When I said that about dinosaurs I didn't mean I'm not prepared to accept the death of the "ones" referred to here. That will come sooner or later for sure. But I don't think those companies you mention (where commercial interest itself, among other things, led to what happened to them) can compare in this case to individual developers or small teams who provide their products for free. Many of these won't even achieve more than a few downloads and will die soon, but neither Irfan, Xn nor FS would be where they are if they were crap. They don't follow the new trends in imaging and stick to old concepts, right, but we've got F1 cars and one can still be more inclined to an old Ford T. You should agree they're also quite capable, and that's because those "obsolete" concepts are well based and can still work for many users who bear functionality in mind. The community will have the final word but, as they're useful, powerful and FREE, there's no reason to think they'll succumb in the near future.
Again, no doubt FPV is a great app. It seems to have been well received by users and with good reason, too, because it's the best at doing what it does. It's representative of the new generation of programs, which in different manners could also include some others like Pictomio, Seadragon, Viewer2, etc. But in this case it comes at a price. If all the extra features in the paid version had been free as well, I'd be likely to include it as one of my recommendations. I might, however, mention it in a next update of my review anyway.
I'd like to take this opportunity to say we are delighted to accept user-contributed articles at the site and you are encouraged to write about this topic (or any other) and further expose your own views. Thanks again for your useful comments.
Marc
Sorry about the delay, but I'm really busy these days. As you said, TIME is your *only* non-renewable asset.
Shareware, free only supports jpeg format
Not really. Shareware nags and shareware expires. FastPictureViewer is a free *JPEG* viewer, what's wrong with that? Try it before writing it off. If you are the author of one of the dinosaurs, you might even learn a thing or two...
Dinosaurs still perform very well because they're powerful and, just like in those times where the real ones lived, I'm afraid an external cataclysm will be needed to defeat them.
Marc
You sound like the CEO of Novell, or WordPerfect, or Lotus, or Corel :-) Those who fail to evolve die, it's as simple as that, a slow death perhaps, but still, they die.
You should try Pictomio
http://www.pictomio.com/Default.aspx
I tried it the instant it came out (if you are one of the authors, I'm the guy who reported the histogram bug months ago). It's modern and DirectX based and as such it beats the dinausaurs hands down. IMHO it's *very* nice for "family browsing" but it crawls and index everything for far too long to be of any usefulness in fast culling scenarios, you know, thousands of pics and customer waiting with a plane to catch in 1 hour.
I'll post a full reply when I have time.
Marc
picasa 3 (beta) now has a super quick image viewer aswell, worth a look
Imagine is the best, fastest and most hidden image viewer on the internet. Try it:
http://www.nyam.pe.kr/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=2
Check my updated review above.
Marc
I went to the author's site to download the program but there's a problem with the download link there and it doesn't seem to work.
Marc
I can't open that link at all so I use PROXY site for these situations.
Use the link which I mentioned or use this, direct link:
http://www.nyam.pe.kr/dev/imagine/download/Imagine_1.0.3.zip
Thanks. It worked. I'll test the program when I can spare some time to dedicate.
Marc
Tried them all, but I always come back to IrfanView, its speed wins me over every time.
I use Photomechanic, The GIMP, ImageForge, EXIFTool and ACDSee Pro 2.5 for image & metadata editing, organising etc, so my expectations of a viewer are minimalistic -- like, show me the picture, now!
Have you tried ExifTool GUI ?
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/foto/exif/exiftoolgui.htm
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