IrfanView is a fast and compact image editor cum viewer of all time. It is best for use of beginners to professionals. IrfanView supports almost every image format available; moreover plugins are available to enhance the support. IrfanView is well suited for single image editing tool to multi batch image processing.
If you’re working with images and computers for sometime you must have explored about this tool long back before. It is the cool tool for image editing for all ages right from Windows 9x to VISTA. Now we have a great news as well; latest version of IrfanView 4.-0 has been released. You can download the installation file right here. This release is little bulkier than all its previous release I believe. The size of the IrfanView installer is 1.10 MB (first time reaching Megabytes). This may be because of the improved Vista compatibility in the new release.
IrfanView is written by Irfan Skiljan, a graduate student of Vienna University of Technology. This compact software is completely free for non-commercial use. The development is supported by donation; feel free to donate towards this. IrfanView is especially useful when working with digital photos and their retouching. My top use of IrfanView is to watermark and resize my entire digital collection; so it is ready for Web.
Features Glimpse
- Many supported file formats ( almost every image format)
- Multi-language support
- Thumbnail / Preview option
- Slideshow (Save as EXE / SCR)
- Fast directory browsing
- Batch conversion / editing
- Multipage editing
- File search
- Email Option
- Multimedia Playe (plays popular video)
- Change color depth
- Scan Support
- Cut/Crop
- IPTC editing
- Capturing
- Lossless JPG operations
- Effects (sharpen, blur, Adobe Photoshop filters)
- Extracts icons from EXE/DLL
- Lot of shortcut keys for ease of use
- Command line options for experts
- Customized plugins
Edward de Leau lists the 10 ways of using IrfanView. He writes clearly about how IrfanView can help in day to day image processing needs. Here is the quick summary on how IrfanView can be used,
- To take Screenshots
- To preview, sort, rotate albums
- To resize image
- To create thumbnails for online photo album
- To scan image
- To watermark my photographs
- To preform batch processing
- To apply effects / filters
- To set Windows wallpaper
- To do lot more with the image
Update:- Pallab has written a Ten Things you can do with Irfanview with more explanation.
IrfanView has been around for many years and keeps getting better. It might still require lot of improvement towards the UI. Hope it gets better too.
IrfanView is my favorite when it comes to basic image editing / viewing. If you never tried it before give a try today. Visit their homepage.
hey thanx for the share,
i didnt find watermarking feature
You can do visible digital watermarking to your images using the Add overlay text option.
In IrfanView, goto File –> Batch Conversion/ Rename; In the Batch Conversion dialog box select “Set Advanced Option” then enable “Add Overlay Text” and goto to “Settings” . In the dialog, provide your overlay text.
woh thanx for the info
Irfan Rocks :o-)
Nice post btw.
Ram, You’re welcome.
Thank you Agnel for the comments.
I’ve to agree with you on this one that Irfanview is a great software when it comes to image viewing and sometimes small editing too. XNView was another software which impressed me but Irfanview has been the no. 1 choice for me…for image viewing.
Thanks Mayank for your valuable comments here first time 🙂 The great thing about irfanview is lightweight which we can’t get it from most advanced image browsers. XNView is good alternative find and thanks for sharing.
Irfan View is fading now…….
Its charm is lost somehow – probably because of other good tools
True, these days people are not much aware of IrfanView but you know what.. IrfanView is the best when is comes to simple / light weight browser; Others come with lot of advanced features I agree but they Suck lot of Memory too..!!!
I use it quite extensively.
Thanks Satish for your comments here.. I will come back to your site to learn Ruby 😉
I love IrfanView. It just rocks. It’s so lightweight.
Sure it is! Thanks Sankar for stopping by here!!
Thanks for including my article. I have already completed second article of the series. Expect to see it soon.
I prefer IrfanView as its so light weight. It opens almost instantaneously unlike many other heavy weight programs.
You’re welcome! The article which you have written is much explainatory!! I’m really glad to see that IrfanView is gaining its attention now! IrfanView Rock!
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I prefer FS MaxView. Another lightweight open source program that will blow you away. It is actually faster and more intuitive to use than Irfanview.
You can find it in my list of applications here: Top 25 Microsoft Substitutes. Please come and leave a comment on my post.
Your blog is great as well.. found you again via Aaron Cook.
Mayank, Pallab , Mark – Thanks for the link love!
ilker – MaxView seems to be a decent alternative to IrfanView. But still IrfanView rocks! 😉 MaxView can be used only for basic purpose whereas with IrfanView you can do a lot of things. Pallab has written a great list of what you can do with IrfanView. It is a recommended reading.
BTW, Thanks for rediscovering my site again 🙂
Wow! discovered this post after such a long time. I commented on your blog for the first time on this same post 🙂
Mayank – Thats when we became friends 🙂
irfanview is the best out there. alternatively, you can use photoscape. it is one of the simplest that i have used.