Image viewer software
The essential features
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An image viewer or photo viewer is a software that shows you all the pictures in a given folder as thumbnails
(small images)
to give you an overview of what is stored in a given folder.
They are a kind of file manager,
but they have additional features that make them more comfortable than a classic file manager.
They are specially adapted to browse through folders with photos and images.
They should implement a range of tools to work with photos and images.
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An ideal image viewer / photo viewer should be:
- customizable
- convenient and intuitive to the user
- a good photo enhancement tool
- able to print contact sheets
- convenient for aquiring photos from flash memories
- able to manage EXIF data
- able to batch process images
The photo viewers I prefer and use frequently:
Zoner Photo Studio.
Zoner Photo Studio is a user friendly photo viewer, album and photo editor that shows the EXIF infos.
It is very convenient to use and has extended photo editing functions.
Photophilia.
Photophilia is a highly adaptable photo album software, a flexible photo viewer and a versatile image batch processor.
Important image viewer features
The little details that make an image viewer or photo viewer friendly and convenient to use:
Sizeable thumbnails
Displaying thumbnails is the quintessence of image viewers. But if the thumbnails they display are sizeable it is a plus.
Either you will be completely free to choose the size in pixels of the displayed thumbnails
or they offer a reduced choice of
-let's say- 3 available thumbnail sizes.
EXIF info
The EXIF info, saved in JPEG files, contains information about the photo and the settings of the camera when the photo was taken.
E.g. the shutter speed, the aperture, the focal length etc...
Only a few image viewers are able to show the EXIF info hidden in your photos.
File filter
This lets you choose if you want to see all the images in the selected folder or only a specific file format,
e.g. only JPEGs or only png.
Next and previous buttons
Once you did double click a thumbnail to view an image full screen,
these buttons will let you go straight ahead to the next or previous image without coming back to the thumbnail views.
Some viewers do not display a tool bar with such buttons, but the "Page-up" and "Page-down" keys of your keyboard may do the same job.
Slide show
Some photo viewers will let you set up a quick slide show.
Funny transition effects when passing from one image to the next one may be available too.
Editor functions
A good image viewer software may implement a few image editor functions too,
some viewers have even very user friendly image editor functions.
Zoom factor
When you double click a thumbnail the photo will normally be displayed full screen.
Knowing if what you see is the photo at its real size or bigger than real (zoomed in)
or smaller than real (zoomed out) may be important for you.
Hence you may prefer an image viewer software that shows the zoom factor in the title bar or the status bar.
The image size in pixels
Personally I feel that I always need to know the width and height of images (in pixels).
Hence a good image viewer software should always tell you the size of the image you are viewing.
To be convenient, the size in pixels should be visible in the status bar (at bottom of the window)
or even in the title bar of the window when you watch an image full screen.
It should be displayed below every thumbnail or at least appear in a small pop-up box when you pass over the thumbnail with the mouse.
It may be different for you.
I have seen some good image viewer software that do not display the pixel size. One of them may be your choice!
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I'm here again with the zoom factor and the size in pixels. Sorry it's my fad! Hope some of you will find it important too...
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Less important features of image viewer software
but they may be important for you:
Set an image as wallpaper
A menu or button that let you select the present image as a desktop wallpaper for your computer.
I would say it is just blowing up the size of the software and really unnecessary.
Setting up a desktop wallpaper is easily done in the Windows control panel.
But if you change your desktop wallpaper twice daily, you may like such a function...
Email an image
A menu or button that let you send an email with the present image appended to it.
Here again I would say it is just blowing up the size of the software and really unnecessary.
Appending an image to an email is easily done with quite any email client software.
Again, you may like such a function for any reason I ignore, so you know that it exists!
