While nearly every operating system comes with a default image viewer, they often… well, suck. That’s part of the reason why there’s so many third-party image viewers, and there’s three in particular I want to share with you today.
The first is IrfanView. It’s one I’ve been using for probably over a decade, and is one of the programs I automatically use WINE for when I’m running something other than Windows. Yup, it’s Windows-only, but its simplicity, flexibility, and ease of use keep it as a go-to for me. In particular its batch-conversion (with tons of options and ease of use) and easy cropping make this lightweight bit of freeware a required bit of software for me. (Note: I’m using a portable version of version 4.36; you can get a portable version from PortableApps.)
The second is a cross-platform tool, and seriously feature-filled. XNView MP is freeware (for private use; scroll down on the page until you see it) and supports over 500 image formats. In particular, I like this tool for its ability to let me browse a directory and to mass-rename images with a pattern make it a particularly useful tool for working with large numbers of images
Finally, we get to a cross-platform and open source image viewer: nomacs. It is seriously fast, rivaling feh on my system, but with a more user-friendly interface. It also – unlike feh or many other lightweight image viewers – handles GIF files just fine. It also has a fairly intuitive cropping feature, making it (for me) the closest to a FOSS Irfanview that there is. While there are plugins for nomacs, they are not crossplatform. Still, the plugins are not things that I’d use frequently and I have other, heavy-duty tools to handle them. As it stands, nomacs has quickly become my default image viewer.
Even though they all do somewhat of the same tasks, each has its own strengths which will fit differently into your workflow. Hopefully you’ll find one or more of these image viewers helpful!
Featured Photo by Soragrit Wongsa on Unsplash