Popular image viewers for Windows

IrfanView

IrfanView is a small-sized program for viewing and playing graphic, video and audio files. It runs on Windows and ReactOS operating systems and is free for non-commercial use. It has a set of graphic file editing capabilities. This program is named after its creator, Irfan Škiljan, a Bosnian programmer from Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, who now lives in Vienna.

XnView

XnView is a cross-platform image viewer. It allows you to view over 500 different image formats and save (convert) up to 50 image and multimedia file formats. You can use it for free for non-commercial and educational purposes.

XnView can also work with a scanner and printer, as well as play popular audio and video files (if you have the necessary codecs installed).

This program comes in two versions: the updated XnView MP and the classic XnView Classic. The interface is available in 11 languages, including Russian.

FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer is an image viewer application for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It includes a file manager and basic image editing tools. FastStone Image Viewer is considered one of the most popular programs in its category. It is free for home use starting with version 3.5. However, for commercial use, you need to purchase a license. The program is written in the Delphi programming language. Its developer is FastStone Soft.

PhotoScape

PhotoScape is primarily a graphics editing program developed by Korean company MOOII Tech, but it can also serve as an excellent image viewer

The basic concept of PhotoScape is "easy and fun", allowing users to easily edit photos taken with digital cameras or even cell phones. PhotoScape provides a simple user interface to perform common photo enhancement operations including color adjustment, cropping, resizing, printing and GIF animation.

Photoscape runs on Microsoft Windows and Mac and is available on Linux systems as a Snap package.

The default languages are English and Korean, with other language packs available for download as modules

The program is free for all users, including commercial organizations, and there is also a Pro version for a fee.

ACDSee Photo Studio

ACDSee is an image viewing, as well as image organizing and editing software for Windows, macOS and iOS, developed by ACD Systems International Inc.

ACDSee was originally distributed as a 16-bit application for Windows 3.0, and was later replaced by a 32-bit version for Windows 95. Since ACDSee Pro 6, native support for the 64-bit version has been added.

The latest versions of ACDSee include advanced digital asset management tools such as facial recognition (Ultimate 2019).

Picasa

Picasa is a free digital photo software released by Lifescape in 2002. The name "Picasa" is a play on words: a combination of the name of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, the phrase "my home" (Spanish: mi casa) and "picture", "picture" (English: pic). On June 13, 2004, Picasa was acquired by Google. Picasa integrated with photo hosting Picasa Web Albums (Picasa Web Albums), as well as Blogger, Gmail, YouTube, Google Earth and Google Plus. Unfortunately the project was shut down as of May 1, 2016.

Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge is an organizational program made and released by Adobe Systems as part of the Adobe Creative Suite, starting with version CS2. Its main purpose is to link parts of the Creative Suite together, using an interface similar to the file manager found in previous versions of Adobe Photoshop. It is accessible from all other Creative Suite components (except the Adobe Acrobat version, which is separate from Creative Suite).

Bridge has many features such as renaming and other functions to help with organization. It supports editing digital images in RAW format. Organizational features include adding color coding and ratings to images, the ability to edit XMP and IPTC, and the ability to work with different versions of a file, which is part of the Adobe Version Cue project.

Image files can be displayed in different sized icons, slideshows or lists. Each folder that can be checked out has a cache file to speed up image rendering time when viewing a thumbnail. The cache can be located in one central location or in different folders.

Honeyview

Honeyview is a free, fast and convenient graphic image viewer with support for many different formats. The program works with both the most popular file types and quite rare ones.

In addition, Honeyview is able to show pictures in compressed ZIP, RAR or 7z files without additional extraction and use of third-party software. It is very convenient to work with EXIF-data, information about which is opened literally with a click of the mouse. This data can be either deleted or copied for further editing.

The developers have given Honeyview an interesting feature - the program supports GPS-data of images (if any), which makes it possible to see on Google Maps the location of the photo.

Nomacs

Nomacs is a free, open source image viewer that supports multiple platforms. You can use it to view all common image formats, including RAW and PSD.

Image editing is also available: cropping, resizing, rotating, color correction, etc.

In addition to editing, an interesting feature is available - "Viewer Synchronization", which allows you to perform the same action (e.g. pan, zoom, etc.) in multiple viewers, making it easier to compare two images.

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