IrfanView

Description

IrfanView is a fast, compact, small and free image viewer and converter that will work on almost all Microsoft Windows versions (including XP,Vista,7,8 and latest version 10). A powerful graphic viewer, designed from the scratch to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. IrfanView is the first Windows graphic viewer that comes with support for multiple (animated) GIF, Multipage TIF and Multiple ICO. It has support for many graphic file formats (constantly updated). Just a couple of them: BMP, DIB, JPG, JPEG, PSD, PDF, GIF, TTF, TXT, ANI, CUR, CLP, DDS, CAM, Mac PICT, QTIF, MP4, WAD, WBMP, RAS, SUN, SFF, PPM ( and many other graphic file formats supported). Support has been extend over the years for video and audio files. Just a shortlist of them: WAV, AVI, WMA, WMV, MPG, MPEG, MP3, MID and many others (keep in mind that for some video and audio files like RA or MOV, MP4 - Real Player/Apple Quicktime required). It offers support for many languages, has preview and paint roles (you can draw arrows, lines or circles etc.), toolbar skins, slideshow is also present at this free and powerful graphic software. Also it has support for Adobe Photoshop Filters, batch conversion (with his image processing), email, file search, printing, it can change color depth, it can add effects (Blur, Filter Factory, Sharpen etc.). Capturing, extracting icons from DLL, EXE, ICLs are just a couple of other features that comes with this free graphic software.

Important: You can also download and use the IrfanView plugins from this page, available on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. They are listed below the 32-bit and 64-bit setup files. Please note that according to Irfan the standard IrfanView version includes ony the most important PlugIns: Effects, Paint, Ansi2Unicode, Icons, Slideshow-EXE, RegionCapture Tools, Video, Metadata and JPG-Transform.

IrfanView Review

If you are on the prowl for a free image editing tool, IrfanView software might be just what you are looking for. Years ago, IrfanView was strictly used as an image viewing tool. Nowadays, it has extensive editing capabilities. Both beginners and professionals alike will find that IrfanView provides considerable assistance for image editing.

Basic Design

Aside from empowering users to view and edit images, IrfanView also lets them read and save an array of video, graphic and audio files. All in all, the total number of supported formats and extensions is 115 graphic file formats plus 17 video / audio file formats. However, it is necessary to use some plug-ins to view certain file types. This no-cost graphic tool is supported by Windows OS including Windows Vista, XP, 2008, 2003, 2000, 9x, NT ME, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. The program can also run with Mac OS X's Winebottler and Linux's Wine.

Support

Aside from providing support for over 130 file extensions, the software also provides multi-language support (22 total), Adobe Photoshop Filters support, an uber-popular slide show, the ability to save scr / exe files, the ability to burn files to CDs and DVDs and the ability to draw shapes on-screen. A full installation of IrfanView with all of its features and plugins takes up considerably less space (10MB) than a lot of competing image viewers. Thankfully, the software is easy to install. All one has to do is browse to a mirrored site, download the executable file, click the file and install.

Image Editing

IrfanView has an array of image editing options. It is also capable of directing images to be opened through existing external graphics editors like Photoshop. Open an image and you'll see a status bar that provides the beginning size in pixel dimensions as well as the bits per pixel. The program displays an abundance of other information like zoom, image number in the folder, file date / time etc. Go ahead and edit the image as you desire. Editing is made easy thanks to the program's clean and simple interface. Just click the tool bars and menu to access editing options. You can rotate, apply watermarks, tweak the filters, add brightness, modify the color depth, flip, alter the canvas size or create picture frames with your own customized colors and sizes.

Obviously, it doesn't have extensive painting abilities such as GIMP or Adobe Photoshop. However this is a lightweight player and viewer that has a different purpose. It is fast, easy to use and it can handle many graphic file formats. It is small - his size at the time that I am writing this review is fewer than 2 MB in size. Additionally you can download plug-ins and other skins from official website (see download links up). When you use IrfanView you’re limited only by your imagination. For example, did you know that you can create screensavers and slide shows? (all you need is IrfanView, install it and learn how to use it plus a small collection of images).

The best part after you created a screensaver or a slideshow is this: you can run them as stand alone executable on other computers (Microsoft Windows) that doesn’t have this program installed. I guess this says a lot about this free image viewer.

Negatives (none really)

Some have complained that there is no right-click menu on the main frame.
Update: Right click menu: the context menu for window can be enabled in: Properties->Viewing ... "Use right mouse button for context menu".

Others have commented that some of the program's commands aren't intuitive (I disagree but some might have another opinion).

The Bottom Line

In the end, IrfanView is an excellent graphic viewer/editor. It reads an incredible number of file types, loads an array of external plugins and has a well-organized design. IrfanView's abundance of positives certainly outweigh its few negatives.

I guess my words won't be enough to describe this program at his real value. Many thanks to Irfan Skiljan for creating such a useful graphic software. This is my favorite graphic viewer software for Windows. I used this gem for the first time back in 2001 and the program has two decades (20 YEARS!) of development behind. If you appreciate the author devotion, spread the word or even better; if possible please donate.