Best Free Digital Image Viewer

Thanks for your comments. A similar debate arised here when Fast Picture Viewer was first suggested for review (current page 3 of the comments, submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/01/2008 - 02:06). I won't go into it all over again. I agree with some of the things you say and sure my top programs can still improve a lot in many areas, and of course you're right about speed and FPV is there especially because of that. I understand it meets your needs perfectly... But not mine.

I usually work with a lot of formats, I do convert from one to another, I do use batch processing a lot (especially resizing and renaming), I nearly always need to have a folder tree to quickly jump between them, and a thumbnail overview of a huge folder to go straight to the image I want without calling the limp Windows built-in viewers, I sometimes need some quick adjustments in the pics without having to call the monster (Photoshop and the demanding extra load on the system), I like to call the monster and not worry about memory overloads while having my viewer open, I usually like to view images in TRUE fullscreen with NO histogram and NO exif info stuck around if that's what I really want, I like to transfer photos from the camera to the computer right inside the viewer after viewing them...

Well, this is just my workflow anyway, and many users like yourself won't have the same needs. I usually have an eye on exif info as well, and zoom in and out quickly. And I can do all that not so painfully with freeware programs, though you can't have the perfect app. I'm not biased against FPV, believe me. Actually, I own the commercial version because I think it's a good product that deserves paying for the ability to view extra formats at the same blazing speed than the JPGs allowed with the freeware version. But this is also my main drawback, apart from my own workflow, the occasional memory insufficiency with big files on an average dual core machine, and the lack of Photoshop PSD support even in the paid version.

Though JPG is the usual format around, with FPV you have to pay for what many others offer for free. Speed is an essential factor but not the only one. In this respect, the program is unrivalled and it's the best for fast culling and rating, which is what I use it for. Once I have done this, I prefer some other way to work with my files, as browsing speed isn't that important then and I can perfectly assume the decrease if I have many more options to work with. But again, this is just me. And sure I understand your complaints. Several I make them mine too. Thanks.

Hi Uditha,

There is few solutions for your need:
- what Marc suggested already.
- Request cam2pc to make changes so you can continue using it.
- Create another program what has best features combined (cam2pc resize and xnview's rename).
- Use cam2pc for resizing and xnview for renaming.
- ...

From the point of view of WildBit Viewer. Editor has batch resize option and Viewer has batch rename. Both features can be enhanced. I will try to enhance both features in future versions. Anyway I will put your request under "thinking hat". :)

- Marko

Thanks for your comments, Uditha. I can see you've followed this section for a while, as you rely on Marko for a solution! ;) Your question has an easy answer, which I hope is what you're asking for.

FastStone's excellent batch processing options allow you to resize an image basing on one side and you can specify it to be one of four settings: width, height, long side or short side.

The task is easy. After selecting the files you want to process, click on 'Tools' in the menu and select the appropriate batch function, or just press F3 as a shortcut. Select the output format and folder. Tick the 'rename' box and set a template. Then tick the 'use advanced options' box. A lot of tabs appear when you go there but the first one you'll see is 'resize', with three options. The one you need is 'resize based on one side' and you can find some other settings to tweak, including the ones I mentioned above and a dozen interpolation methods for the output file.

You say Cam2pc's implementation of resizing is the best you've seen. It's very good actually, but there's that little touch missing. Exactly the one you demand, which FastStone offers along with the best (or at least most useful) batch options I've seen in a free program, though it's not the top pick in my review. Anyway, C2PC is the best when downloading pictures from a memory card, with all those saving options to choose from. But remember you can use both!

Thanks again. Sure Marko will be reading this. And hopefully he'll be as responsive as he has always been.

Futurix has already been suggested here before and I reviewed it in a comment this year (06/22/2009):

I've reviewed FuturixImager and these are my opinions:

I said I had tried older versions but I still see the same drawbacks. There are several of these.

First, I believe browsing capabilities are fundamental in a viewer and this program offers no folder tree view, so you can't really browse your directories in a convenient way, as you always have to access them through the 'open' tab or the 'file' menu. This reason alone makes it unsuitable for my personal workflow, though I guess others can live without it. But that's not all.

Similarly, there's no thumbnail window, which leads us to the previous point. I don't see much functionality with this kind of approach. Just imagine browsing through folders with hundreds of pics when you're looking for one whose name you don't remember, only by clicking on the 'previous - next' arrows. How long will it take to identify it in Futurix?

If the program were fast, this problem could be alleviated, but then there's the speed issue too. I find it to be significantly slower than most of the programs I review in my article. Average images(2-5mpx) load with almost no delay, but 10-megapixel JPGs report a different story already. Either larger images or LZW-compressed TIFs or RAW files can make you wait beyond your patience. And there's no support for animated GIFs.

Of course, having no possibility to select several files at a time means there are no batch processing options, which is something I'm beginning to appreciate as a fundamental feature in a viewer.

These personal inconveniences won't be a concern for many users, and Futurix does have some good points as well. For example, although there's no kind of control over the process, the rendering of RAW files (at least Canon's CR2) is top quality, but at the expense of time, as I said above. That lack of options will need further postprocessing, which can be done inside the program because the filters and adjustments are good enough. However, there's multilevel undo but no redo at all.

Having said this, I'm sure you can understand it if Futurix isn't listed among the other products in my article. But thanks for the tip anyway.

Marc

Thanks for letting me know, Anupam. Oddly enough I downloaded and installed version 3.9 on a PC just yesterday. So, I wouldn't have checked for a new one in a while! Anyway the new version doesn't appear on their official site yet???

http://www.majorgeeks.com/FastStone_Image_Viewer_d4691.html

I think they made a mistake though ...

Thanks for the info. As you can see, Fast Picture Viewer is mentioned in my article, but this is a nice standalone package that many users will welcome. I'll add this to my review.

Thanks again

Two answers were given in the forums (thanks Jojoyee and J.L.):

"Windows Photo Gallery supports these file types: BMP, JPG, JFIF, TIFF, PNG, WDP. If Windows Movie Maker is installed, it can also play videos in these formats: ASF, AVI, MPEG, WMV.
It would be helpful to know:
What is the format of your saved pictures?
Can the picture files be viewed by other viewers?"

"Do they open fine with Paint?
Tell the reader that K-Lite Codec Pack is for audio and video only, not pictures.
Lastly, the file associations seems to be corrupt in the registry. Check them (XP: Tools>Folder Options>File Types, Vista/7: Start>Default Programs>Associate a file type or protocol with a program)."

There're a few questions raised. Please check back the forum thread here.

I'm no tech guy at all and unfortunately I can't help you with your problem. Anyway, I'll post your message in the forums and see if someone can. Sorry.

Meanwhile, I suggest that you download and install any of the programs reviewed here and probably you'll be able to see your pictures again.

Picasa is reviewed in another category (http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-digital-photo-organizer.htm) because it isn't an image viewer, though it can be used as such. I've already answered this question here before, though I know it takes some time to delve into the comments section. I do use Picasa myself, but the reasons to exclude it from my article at that time remain almost the same through the latest versions. Quote (07/16/2008):

"The reason why Picasa (and some other cool software) doesn't get a mention here is basically explained in the first two paragraphs of my article. And yes, sure it is a very capable program, probably (and maybe questionably too) the best for organizing pictures, but I don't think it's a good candidate to stand among the best image viewers.

The following is a fragment from the long comments I wrote mainly about XnView and FastStone further down this page:

""Picasa is great, too, but not as straightforward as it should for my needs, and even basic functions like saving files appear somewhat tricky. Anyway, its fancy look, the various methods for organizing and gathering pictures together into unlimited custom folders without actually moving them from their original locations, and the web publishing abilities can be really attractive to a lot of users. And it comes from Google ;)""

[...] Besides, the management of external hard drives is ridiculously complicated with all those imports and exports to your main drive and back. Couln't it show all the drives in the system directly in the tree under My PC? I might be doing things in a wrong way; if so, please somebody tell me. But an application like this should show basic things like that clearly from the first time you run it, be more intuitive and make your workflow easier. This isn't the case, unfortunately for a piece of otherwise great software."

Hi,

Have you tried to run Viewer as admin? Anyway this issue should be fixed in next version.

- Marko

Perhaps Marko, WB's developer, will see your message and have something to say about it. Sorry I can't help you.

If you want to resample an image, most of the programs reviewed here can do a good job, as long as it means just reducing size. MC suggests FastStone and that's a very good choice. It offers quite a lot of options for the matter and, in my own tests, it beats most others in output quality and generates the lightest output files for the same sizes and compressions (with compressed formats, of course). The only one in my article that can rival (and even beat) FS in this aspect is Irfan View, another very good choice, but maybe not so straightforward to use, and WildBit Viewer does a decent job as well. XnView's results in this field are a bit disappointing for an otherwise excellent program. FS's developers also have a free specialized app, FS Resizer, which works just as well as its sibling, is very simple to use and has a portable version:

http://www.faststone.org/download.htm

But enlarging is a very different story. If you're planning to use these programs for upsampling and then printing, I'm afraid you're out of luck. When you take a screenshot of an average monitor (say 1024x768), the resolution you get is exactly the same as the monitor's, 1024x768 pixels, or 0.79 megapixels, which is quite smaller than even most cellphone cameras reach nowadays. And things don't get much better with larger screens, as you'd need a really big one to get the necessary pixels for a quality print. Even in this case, the final printed output would be very poor, as the points on any screen can never compare to the photosites on a digital camera sensor.

And this is why enlarging the screenshots won't look good either, as the picture will always degrade because you can't have more detail than what you've already got. The software tries to 'guess' the pixels you're adding to make the image larger, and the bigger, the worse.

I use FastStone Capture for the images and the viewer to edit without any problems

You're right. Thanks for ponting it out. FastStone runs under 64bit Windows but there's no specific 64bit version of the program. I don't remember how I got the wrong information, but I should have looked better. My apologies. It's corrected now.