A nice feature of Mac computers is that it allows you to open images in preview, without therefore opening them in a program but simply by enlarging the photo with a zoom, directly from the desktop. This same magnification effect is available on some websites where, by clicking a photo, the page darkens while remaining in the background and, with a fading effect, you can see the large image.
On Windows, when you click on an image file, it is displayed with the default program which, by default, is the Windows image viewer.
Personally, I believe that the default image viewer in Windows is bad and that the best program to browse and see photos on the PC is IrfanView with which you can view the images going back and forth with the space bar.
But as written in other articles, if you need a program not only to view images and photos but also to manage collections and albums, the best choice is the powerful software, in Italian, Google Picasa .
UPDATE: Picasa is no longer being developed by Google which abandoned it in 2016.
However, its latest version, released at the end of 2015, can still be used on the PC and downloaded from the Softpedia website
READ ALSO: Best alternative programs to Picasa
On Picasa it is also possible to enable the zoom effect with thumbnails of enlarged images, from desktop, without leaving the folder.
To enable image previews in Windows you must then download Picasa for free and install it on your computer.
During the installation you can deselect the various settings on the search engine and on sending anonymous information.
When you start Picasa Photo Viewer the first time, you are asked to scan the images on your computer which you must do.
The next step instead requires you to choose whether to use the Picasa viewer as the default program to open the various image files on your computer including the JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG and RAW formats.
Just by enabling Picasa as the default photo viewer, you activate the image preview function directly from Windows Explorer .
I can assure you that Picasa is an excellent photo album manager, if not the best ever, with multiple image editing options and also with facial recognition.
However, if you close the program, you will notice that, from now on, if you click on an image on the Windows PC, it opens as an enlarged preview.
The screen darkens, everything you see on the desktop goes in the background and the photo will be displayed large, in a full screen panoramic interface.
The preview opens almost instantly and, at the bottom, the thumbnails and the other images that are inside the same folder appear.
Always at the bottom there are buttons that allow you to zoom the photo, enlarge it, turn it, edit it or publish it on the internet in Picasaweb.
The Play button allows you to view photos as a full-screen slideshow.
With the right and left arrows on the keyboard you can browse the images while with up and down or with the mouse wheel, you can zoom in and zoom out.
To close the preview, you can press the Esc key on the keyboard or click the X in the upper right corner.
If you press on the darkened and gray area, the preview becomes a normal window and no longer full screen.
You can easily change the settings of the Photo Viewer from the Tools menu of the Picasa program, by clicking on the " Configure photo viewer " item.
Among the settings you can choose which file types to use this preview mode for and there are some options for the user interface.
If you don't like the viewer or, however, you prefer to use another program like IrfanView that I use, just choose, in the configuration menu of the photo viewer, not to use Picasa Photo Viewer.
The photos and images of the computer will return to open with the default program that was used before.
Honestly, even if I don't use Picasa so often, I think it's an absolutely phenomenal program, both for managing photos and because it has so many easy and powerful functions and allows you to browse photos with a general glance and with previews from the desktop.
In another article, the best 13 functions of Picasa .
READ ALSO: Best programs to view images and photos on the PC .
