This is one of the most heartfelt articles written on this blog, to celebrate what has been the best program on Windows 10, Windows 7 or 8.1 PCs for years to view, browse and edit images and photos : Irfanview . This historical Windows program that everyone should always install on each computer, allows you to quickly view the image files on the PC disk, with extreme simplicity, scrolling them by pressing the bar on the keyboard or the mouse.
While the default Windows 7 image viewer and the Windows 10 Photos app always require pressing the forward and back buttons to browse photos in a folder and while other programs like Picasa can be useful for managing your photos and creating albums customized, when the need is only to open an image file or a photo quickly, Irfanview becomes the perfect program, to always be used as default.
With Irfanview you can browse photos in the most comfortable way possible, even in full screen, in different order, simply by pressing the bar on the keyboard or a mouse button and you can set up automatic slideshows and save them for a screensaver.
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Irfanview can be downloaded completely free of charge on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows PC, in any version, from XP to Windows 7 and Windows 10 .
The program is also in Italian and is capable of opening any image file format, such as ASF, AU / SND, AVI, BMP / DIB, CLP, EMF / WMF, GIF, ICO / ICL / EXE / DLL, JPG, MPG / M2TS / MP4 / MKV, PBM / PGM, PPM, PCX / DCX, PNG, PSD, TGA, TIF, TTF, TXT, WAV, etc.
The beauty of IrfanView is that you can also make changes to the images, compress them, rotate them, change the size, resolution, DPI, add basic effects, filters and other format conversion operations, all from the main menu, which is very neat and clear .
The best functions of Irfanview are:
- The option of previewing in thumbnails, i.e. in boxes to have a tree view of the directories (very useful for viewing images in all folders).
- Use the common image editing functions as if you were using Paint, also to set effects and filters.
- Support for Adobe Photoshop filters, TIF and RAW files.
- Batch conversion or conversion of the image from one format to another, also useful for creating dynamic GIF images and for transforming
large .BMP files into lighter .JPEG files and very useful for creating icons for use on Windows or on web pages by converting an image into an .ICO file.
- Image resizing, cropping, rotation, inserting text and writing boxes, changing colors and adjusting image quality in a semi-automatic way.
- Change the resolution and image quality
- Rename files also in groups using the Batch Conversion tool, so as to rename the names generated by the cameras such as P1010001.JPG, P1010002.JPG, P6280001.JPG in more understandable names, such as Vacanze2008_001.JPG, Vacanze2008_002.JPG, Vacanze2008_003 .JPG and so on.
- Set a desktop wallpaper on Windows, rotate wallpapers every time and take automatic screenshots.
- Save screenshots of the screen or part of it.
- Compression of image files
Each Irfanview operation then has a keyboard shortcut.
You can then add functions to the program by downloading the Irfanview plugins .
To change language and download Irfanview in Italian, on the official website, press the Languages button on the left and download the installer for Italian which will automatically change the language.
Irfanview can also be downloaded as an app for Windows 10 from the Microsoft store and, in this version, it is identical to the desktop program, even if only in a 32-bit version.
In this case, to install the plugins, you must first find the App folder in Windows 10 as explained in another article and then copy the plugins folder inside it.
