Image viewers belong to a category of software in which the quantity and quality of the free programs available makes it difficult to choose a single product to be taken as the best ever. The only sure thing is that, having a Windows PC, one must not be satisfied with the standard image viewer and the installation of an external program is mandatory for everyone. It is therefore worth seeing what alternatives you have and what are the best free programs to use to view, manage and organize photos and computer images .
READ ALSO: Best programs to organize photos and order images on PC
When you open a photo with the Windows image viewer you are faced with a rather slow and inflexible image browser (intended as a browser), without additional and too basic functions. Average users do not require many additional features, but at least the ability to quickly view computer photos, whatever they are, and to be able to browse them using a mouse or keyboard, without making too many clicks.
The characteristics of a good program for viewing images on a PC are basically those of being able to view them in series without having to open them one by one, being able to change their orientation, being able to read EXIF data, being able to open any image format including RAW, TIFF, DNG and PSD, WebP in addition to the classic JPG, PNG, GIF . Compatibility is a point that cannot be overlooked, so it is also important to use programs that can convert a variety of files without problems. Some of these programs also support video viewing.
1) I have repeatedly pointed out Irfanview as the best program to view and browse the images on the computer. Irfanview is an exceptional free program that also allows you to perform basic photo editing functions such as resizing images and converting between formats. This is a first class program, easy to use and very fast, capable of showing photos from a folder to view them in full screen or in a window and to scroll through the images using the mouse wheel or the space bar. Some of the features (its scaling algorithm, for example) are exceptional comparable to those of Photoshop.
2) Photos in Windows 10 is the default app already included in the installation, which can still be a valid alternative if you do not want to install external programs. The Photos app relies above all for the synchronization functions on OneDrive and for the ability to create photo presentations.
3) XNView is probably the most versatile of all image viewers because it can read 500 types of files and convert them. It displays images very quickly and these can be viewed in full screen, as presentations or as thumbnails. It is also able to process images, rotate them, crop them, resize them, adjust brightness and color, apply filters or effects, create a web page and much more. The preview window is customizable with different layouts and sizes. It also allows you to have several images open at the same time and, like Irfanview, also the execution of multiple instances of the program. XNView is available for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs.
4) EZView is a portable application for Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 that weighs less than 150 KB, which allows you to open images of different digital formats such as JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, ICO, CUR, TIFF, DNG, HEIC, DDS, Webp, to name a few. Animated GIFs are also supported, as are Microsoft's HEIF and RAW Camera image formats. The interface of the program is simpler than IrfanView, with a toolbar (there are no editing options here), a menu bar and the viewing pane and allows you to switch from one photo to another by going back and forth with the keyboard or mouse, very quickly.
5) FastStone Image Viewer is another excellent choice.
There are various reasons for choosing this, but perhaps the main one is its superb interface in full screen mode, with several panels that appear automatically when the mouse cursor is moved to the sides of the screen. You can easily access all the functions of the program from this full screen window without noise. The zoom system has a very clever feature and zooms in to a custom preset level with just one click. You can then move around the image by holding down the button and returning to full view when released. Photos are displayed quickly and their thumbnails are generated immediately. FastStone suffers a bit with bigger images, but this won't be a problem for most people. Another notable integrated tool is batch processing, which is quite extensive and really easy to set up and run. FastStone supports all major graphic formats and RAW formats of digital cameras.
6) WildBit Viewer is another alternative for viewing photos on the computer, very handy and functional. In addition to the usual functions, it offers an easy zoom with the mouse wheel and a very intuitive and tool-rich image editor. There is also a function for side-by-side comparison of images and a highly customizable presentation mode. It supports over 70 formats (including videos, from which frames can be extracted in multipage view) and works on Windows 7 as well as on Windows 19.
7) Picasa is the perfect program to view photos on the computer for those who want effective image management software. Picasa is also excellent for viewing RAW images. Unfortunately, for several years, it is no longer supported.
8) ACDSee Free is the free version of the famous commercial program ACDSee, one of the simplest and most powerful programs for managing, organizing and viewing photos on a Windows PC (described in another post).
9) Zoner Software Free is the free version of one of the best commercial programs of its kind. The interface is very professional, although not as simple as Irfanview and other more basic programs. It is organized in a file manager which shows the thumbnail of the photos and the folder structure. The full screen viewer also has a limited but functional editor. ZPSF is really a fast program to upload images and thumbnails, which also allows you to search for photos on your computer. The functions are too many to mention and can be discovered using the program every day. The downside is that ZPSF occupies 350 MB on the disk and 1 GB of memory, more than any other competing program.
To download Free Zoner Software it is better to use Softpedia .
10) Nexus Image is a simple image viewing program, among the most beautiful to use. You can change the opacity and color and browse files in folders easier than other programs.
11) Nomacs is a free image viewer for Windows, Linux and Mac, completely open source.
