Irfan Photo Viewer
Here and even at home, I’m constantly working with groups of images. Looking through folders and working with one picture from here and one from there can take some time. I usually copy the ones I want and paste them into a new folder, just to keep everything conveniently organized.
From here I usually do some simple editing: a little cropping, image resizing, and maybe even applying some filters to sharpen or blur. This means I have to open up each photo in Photoshop, make the changes, and save it. This may not seem like much, but if you’re working with more than two or three files at a time, this slows things down horribly. I would appreciate a faster way to do the little things. This is 2005! If Madonna can write a children’s book, then somebody’s got to be able to write a program that can manage images and perform simple image editing.
This week’s download of the week will stop all of this nonsense. I just found out about this little gem by reading an email from one of our thoughtful readers. Thank you, Veronica! I loved the program from the start. Then I found out that our new editor Chris has been using it to manage her extensive photo database for some time. You’d think she’d have shared the wealth before now!
Irfan is an image viewer with some fundamental editing tools, an easy-to-use interface, and copious amounts of help documentation. I’ve never seen a program move from the thumbnails view to the editing interface so fast and seamlessly. In Windows XP, the thumbnail view isn’t bad for seeing what images are in a folder, but forget about doing any editing. With Irfan, your list of options is enormous.
If you see an image that needs a little nip-and-tuck, so to speak, then simply double-click the image and release the Editing Tools. Your Image will come up in an image-editing interface. If you find an image that needs a little more TLC, then you can pull up your big robust image editing software from the Right-Click menu and lay on the serious changes.
To give you a better idea of what you can expect from this program, you need to take a look at Irfan’s impressive list of features:
· Many supported file formats (click here for the list of formats)
· Multi language support
· Thumbnail/preview option
· Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
· Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Full screen etc.
· Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
· Fast directory view (moving through directory)
· Batch conversion (with image processing)
· Multi page TIF editing
· Email option
· Multimedia player
· Print option
· Change color depth
· Scan (batch scan) support
· Cut/crop
· IPTC editing
· Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
· Capturing
· Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
· Lossless JPG rotation
· Many hotkeys
· Many command line options
· Many PlugIns
· Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like “I Agree” or “Evaluation expired”
· No registry changes without user action/permission
· And many more
You can also use plug-ins that allow Irfan to work with some of your existing programs, such as Nero to burn Slideshows for viewing on any DVD player. I just started using Irfan while testing it out for the download of the week, and it convinced me. If you enjoy working with digital photos, this program is a must have.
~ Chad Stelnicki
Irfanview home page: http://www.irfanview.com/
Irfanview .exe file download: http://imgsrv.worldstart.com/ct-images/iview397.exe
Irfanview plugins: http://imgsrv.worldstart.com/ct-images/irfanview_plugins_397.exe
** WorldStart is not the developer of this software and cannot offer technical support. We have no control over pages we link to.