Photo viewer

molested_cow · Sep 9, 2012

What's the best light weight photo viewer for windows?

Photos look best when I open them with photoshop, but that's a huge hassle if I just want to see and rotate them. Window picture viewer is easy, but the colors and sharpness really suffer. Is there a good and easy photo viewer that will preserve the color profile and sharpness? Preferably free!

SCraig · Sep 9, 2012

I really, really like Fast Stone Image Viewer. It's free, it's fast, it renders RAW files pretty well, and all in all just does a really good job for me.

FanBoy · Sep 9, 2012

I've been using IrfanView for years.

molested_cow · Sep 12, 2012

Craig, I downloaded and tried faststone but still find the image quite a bit dull (not as bright and saturated) as compared to photoshop. I will try IrfanView later when I get better internet access.

Big Mike · Sep 12, 2012

I've used Irfanview for a while as well. It's nice a lightweight and you can get the add-on for viewing Raw files. I don't use it for evaluating images though, so I've never noticed if the colors are correct or not.

SCraig · Sep 12, 2012

molested_cow said:
Craig, I downloaded and tried faststone but still find the image quite a bit dull (not as bright and saturated) as compared to photoshop. I will try IrfanView later when I get better internet access.

Big Mike said:
I've used Irfanview for a while as well. It's nice a lightweight and you can get the add-on for viewing Raw files. I don't use it for evaluating images though, so I've never noticed if the colors are correct or not.

I agree with Big Mike (only FastStone in place of IrfanView). I don't use it to evaluate photos, just to take a quick look and see if I want to edit them or not. I have two monitors and run my editor on one and FastStone on the other to select what I want to edit. The monitors are not the same and display colors differently, so I've learned to ignore what things look like on that monitor. If a shot looks interesting I press the "[E]" key and FastStone opens it in my editor.

Sorry you didn't like it. It may not be for everyone but I like it very well.