[Windows] 12 free image viewers or organizers (Windows Photo Viewer alternatives)
February 15, 2013 29
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Windows comes with built-in capability to view images. However, that built-in image viewer has many limitations such as the inability to view animated GIFs, inability to crop images, inability to easily share images aside from via email, inability to convert images, etc. To solve the woes of Windows Photo Viewer, there are many third-party image viewers or organizers out there that you can download. This article lists 12 free image viewers or image organizers for you to pick from.
12 FREE IMAGE VIEWERS OR ORGANIZERS
Picasa (Organizer + Viewer)
JPEGView (Viewer)
kuView (Viewer)
ACDSee Free (Viewer)
Imagina (Viewer)
NexusImage (Viewer)
Zoner Photo Studio FREE (Organizer + Viewer)
XnView (Organizer + Viewer)
IrfanView (Viewer)
FastStone Image Viewer (Organizer + Viewer)
WildBit Viewer (Viewer)
Osiva (Viewer)
WHICH ONE IS THE BEST?
Before I dish out my advice, let me confess that image viewers/organizers are not what I would consider an area of expertise for myself. So I’m depending on all you dotTechies to chime in the comments below to provide better feedback than myself. With that being said…
My top three picks out of the above-mentioned twelve are IrfanView, Zoner Photo Studio FREE, and FastStone Image Viewer simply because all three are feature-filled and easy-to-use at the same time. Out of these three, in my opinion the clear winner for image viewer is IrfanView while the winner for image organizer is Zoner Photo Studio FREE.
IrfanView doesn’t have a very fancy interface but the interface is decluttered which makes the program not only dead-simple to use but also makes it light on resources (relatively speaking)… all while maintaining an insane amount of features ranging from support for dozens of image, audio, and video formats (including animated GIFs and Photoshop PSDs), basic image editing, image conversion capabilities with batch processing, unicode support, and much more. To top it off, IrfanView is true freeware (free for all use, home and business) plus has a portable version you can download (although the portable version isn’t native, it is through PortableApps).
Zoner Photo Studio Free, on the other hand, is an image organizer that not only helps you organize your images but also has basic editing and sharing features. Very handy for those that work a lot with images.
CONCLUSION AND DOWNLOAD LINKS
If you are tired of Windows Photo Viewer or work with a lot of images, then the software mentioned above are here to help. Hit up the links below to download your favorite one and enjoy!
ACDSee Free homepage | dotTech review of ACDSee Free
Osiva homepage | dotTech review of Osiva
Zoner Photo Studio FREE homepage
FastStone Image Viewer homepage | dotTech review of FastStone Image Viewer
[Some screenshots are via developers]
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![[Windows] Minimize and lock open windows to prevent unauthorized access with WinLock](http://cdn.dottech.org/media/2013/05/WinLock-UI-134x90.png)
Image viewers and image viewers + organisers are two different beasts.
I would think breaking it down in two different categories makes more sense.
As to which image viewer would suit someone’s need, there are many factors to considered.
- How fast program loads. (Bloated vs lightweight)
- User interface (usually a deal maker/breaker for me)
- Does it meet your needs in terms of image formats?
- Does it allow for minimal (decent) image retouching (color, saturation, brightness etc)
- Does it allow lossless rotation?
- Useful additional tools such as batch converter, resizer, etc)
Having considered all these and having used acdsee before, given irfanview, zoner, picasa, xnview and many more a try, I can say that faststone viewer gets my recommendation.
However, the new xnview is a serious contender and might soon become my defacto viewer. (faststone has slow updates cycle)
[@Mountainking] I agree, they are. This article was originally written for image viewers and I quickly modified it for image organizers today because I didn’t have time to write a separate article. :-(
OK, you are sending me off to and island with a camera, tele-lens, PC and a choice of two photo tools and I would choose 1) focus on and use basic digital photography techniques – rule of thirds, composition, aperture and shutter controls, 2) install Picasa for quick and easy photo ‘editing’ and 3) install Zoner for photo organizing and management (and maybe some editing Picasa cannot do) … and 4) Google+ for photo sharing.
No offense meant Ashraf. Continue your great work! GOTD sure was boring w/o your reviews!
I just wanted to point it out in case less experienced users would make their choice on the above offerings. I also offered a brief guideline on what they should look for :)