IrfanView(irfanview.com)
irfanview.com
IrfanView
https://www.irfanview.com/
338 comments
You want to open a picture, FAST, no matter the format or resolution ?
You want to open a picture and then move from one picture to the next in the same folder with arrow keys or mouse scroll, again fast and without loading or menus fonctions or whatever ?
You want to batch process a folder to convert all files to png with the larger side limited to 2000px, keep the location data but reset the orientation data, and remove the original file only if conversion succeeded ?
You want to scan something, rotate it and lossy pixelize an area ?
You want to resize, convert, re-encode a picture from one format to another with tonnes of option without resorting to command line because you're on windows and you would like to just do it in the same app you use for every photo thing ?
You want to cut a part of a picture, or identify the pixel color on a picture, or dozens or other every day operations like that ?
You want all of that to be absurdly fast, aka instant, without any complex menu or dozens of clicks to get where you need ?
I've been using irfanview since the beginning too, and it's not for lack of trying other stuff, it's just so much better. It's for me one of those tools, like Everything or Ditto or SumatraPDF or 7zip or NAPS2 or ... That just get what they are and what they should provide, and do just that, and do it right.
You want to open a picture and then move from one picture to the next in the same folder with arrow keys or mouse scroll, again fast and without loading or menus fonctions or whatever ?
You want to batch process a folder to convert all files to png with the larger side limited to 2000px, keep the location data but reset the orientation data, and remove the original file only if conversion succeeded ?
You want to scan something, rotate it and lossy pixelize an area ?
You want to resize, convert, re-encode a picture from one format to another with tonnes of option without resorting to command line because you're on windows and you would like to just do it in the same app you use for every photo thing ?
You want to cut a part of a picture, or identify the pixel color on a picture, or dozens or other every day operations like that ?
You want all of that to be absurdly fast, aka instant, without any complex menu or dozens of clicks to get where you need ?
I've been using irfanview since the beginning too, and it's not for lack of trying other stuff, it's just so much better. It's for me one of those tools, like Everything or Ditto or SumatraPDF or 7zip or NAPS2 or ... That just get what they are and what they should provide, and do just that, and do it right.
Everything is the best program I have ever used.
I couldn't live without it at this point. It would be like cutting off both arms.
I couldn't live without it at this point. It would be like cutting off both arms.
Chipping in dnGrep.
Allows to grep inside XLSX and Word files.
http://dngrep.github.io/
Allows to grep inside XLSX and Word files.
http://dngrep.github.io/
Everything 1.5 beta does this.
Have you tried using Fluent? It uses Everything as the back-end search and then adds steroids to it.
I know about Ansys Fluent, the CFD software. I'm guessing you are not talking about it. Can you provide a link to this software?
I think they mean this: https://github.com/adirh3/Fluent-Search
Looks interesting, thanks. Can't tell yet if it has the same incredible lack of bloat as Everything (the Everything version I used for years was about 350KB all up!) but I'll give it a spin.
I'd be interested in your list of must have, the one you've mentioned mirror mine, though I've never heard of NAPS2. A few of mine:
Treesheets Zim wiki Notepad++ Autohotkey
Treesheets Zim wiki Notepad++ Autohotkey
I use sumatra for how lightweight and fast it is. 7zip is just uncontested. I wish Ditto had copycats on linux and macos. It's just sublime.
I've never used irfanview though, I'm too quick to judge from the UI of an app xD
I see all those buttons on IrfanView and how it opens as an explorer of pictures rather than just a simple Photo Viewer with arrows to go back and forth and closed it. qView is my fav right now. It does exactly what I need from a viewer. It views. I rarely need editing.
Nowadays if I need editing I just open Photopea.
If I need batch editing/converting I open XnConvert.
tl;dr IfranView is probably amazing, but just like all those buttons on np++ I pre-judge and find simpler things
I've never used irfanview though, I'm too quick to judge from the UI of an app xD
I see all those buttons on IrfanView and how it opens as an explorer of pictures rather than just a simple Photo Viewer with arrows to go back and forth and closed it. qView is my fav right now. It does exactly what I need from a viewer. It views. I rarely need editing.
Nowadays if I need editing I just open Photopea.
If I need batch editing/converting I open XnConvert.
tl;dr IfranView is probably amazing, but just like all those buttons on np++ I pre-judge and find simpler things
I haven't used Ditto so I don't know how closely macOS clipboard managers compare to it, but there's certainly a fair number of programs for the Mac out there that sound similar to Ditto's own description, from the free, open source Maccy to the somewhat over-the-top $13 Pastebot. There are other utility programs that include similar functionality; personally, I'm using Alfred, a keyboard-driven launcher, which also includes a pretty good clipboard manager (and is the sort of app that I'd be looking for copycats for on Linux if I ever made the switch back!).
https://maccy.app
https://tapbots.com/pastebot/
https://www.alfredapp.com
https://maccy.app
https://tapbots.com/pastebot/
https://www.alfredapp.com
The laboratory dialogs are worth seeing.
Do you have a link for Ditto? Searching for "Ditto app" and "Ditto software" returns several possible results for me (e.g. clipboard, music app, managing "copy", content sharing).
The most famous is the clipboard one (https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/). I'd be surprised if they were referring to another "Ditto" software.
You are correct, this is the one I meant. It claims to handle windows clipboard "shortcomings" by remember previous entries and allowing you to access it easily (allowing for multi copy paste situation), and it does just that and do it well.
BTW windows now ship with a clipboard tool like this using Windows + V shortcut. I use other tools you mentioned already though. Need to try ditto. Is there a list of similarly *fast* alternatives like this for windows (+other OSes)?
Idk if this is still the case but back when I tried the built in clipboard history when it was first released, it didn’t handle formatted text well, nor did it handle multi-media particularly well, if at all.
One of the best parts about ditto is that you can choose to paste with or without formatting
One of the best parts about ditto is that you can choose to paste with or without formatting
The are indeed many clipboard managers across all platforms, but none have the perfect UI of ditto. Its ditto's UI that needs to be copied everywhere else.
Haven't used Ditto before but I use CopyQ on Linux, at least according to the screenshots of Ditto it appears that CopyQ has been influenced by it
Maccy on MacOS is perfect: https://maccy.app/
I use maccy on my wife’s Mac and don’t love it, maybe it’s bec I’m still not comfortable with Mac keyboard shortcuts or maybe it’s just the UI, but there’s something about it that feels less baked than ditto.
I don’t know ditto but on maccy it’s just the paste shortcut (for the last copy) plus a number (if you need an older copy). Could it be easier?
The Windows clipboard history tool works with images. Screenshots, at least, but I think others as well.
Raycast packages a few of these into a modern app as well. Clipboard, Searching files, Window management. Very lightweight though part of a different generation so more "bloated" in some people's eyes. Low resources used though.
> You want to open a picture and then move from one picture to the next in the same folder with arrow keys or mouse scroll, again fast and without loading or menus fonctions or whatever ?
And moving to an adjacent folder is not much slower, because it includes a custom folder browser that allows quick navigation up and down the directory hierarchy using the arrow keys.
And moving to an adjacent folder is not much slower, because it includes a custom folder browser that allows quick navigation up and down the directory hierarchy using the arrow keys.
"It's not just good, it's way faster than the bloated alternatives."
Another shining endorsement of "modern" software development (no, check that... software "engineering")
Before I gave up Windows permanently, and that was over 20 years ago, I used this program.
The more things "change" the more they stay the same.
Another shining endorsement of "modern" software development (no, check that... software "engineering")
Before I gave up Windows permanently, and that was over 20 years ago, I used this program.
The more things "change" the more they stay the same.
Sounds like IrfanView just needs more PM's and VC's
I remember we had to pull it from our educational institution because his about used to "jokingly" reference soliciting nudes.
> (The dozen women should send me pictures of themselves in the nude ;-) (joke) )
https://web.archive.org/web/20090106143615/https://www.irfan...
> (The dozen women should send me pictures of themselves in the nude ;-) (joke) )
https://web.archive.org/web/20090106143615/https://www.irfan...
Is IRFan Windows-only?
Looks like it, too bad, this would be amazing to have on Linux.
Looks like it, too bad, this would be amazing to have on Linux.
If you didn't happen to see it, this is from knighthack's comment above:
"To top it off, IrfanView works beautifully on my Linux via Wine, and also on my Mac M1/M2 machines (and as a tool quicker than even Mac's own Preview). It's a primary install for me, whichever any platform I'm working on; and a software that's truly a gift to the world."
"To top it off, IrfanView works beautifully on my Linux via Wine, and also on my Mac M1/M2 machines (and as a tool quicker than even Mac's own Preview). It's a primary install for me, whichever any platform I'm working on; and a software that's truly a gift to the world."
I used Gwenview back in the days in Linux. I think it's still great.
For MacOS, I wonder if it's faster than XNView MP. This was the fastest image viewer I could find for Apple Silicon. Also are you running it through Wine on MacOS or how do you get it working?
Ever tried Phoenix Slides (open source, long history)? It's definitely faster than Preview for me on large images:
https://blyt.net/phxslides/
https://blyt.net/phxslides/
Never heard of it. Just threw some very highres jpeg2000 images at it and wow, i am blown away. It runs circles around XnView MP (and preview) on these!! Thanks :)
How do you get it on macOS?
If it's for non-commercial use, you might find this a spritual equivalent, cross-platform:
https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/
https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/
Can vouch that this is a nice piece of software, especially the batch convert options (everything from EXIF data, rescaling images and various other transformations, as well as either replacing the original files or various naming options) and supports a bunch of formats.
This comment is baffling. Just so you know, the IrfanView license requires commercial users to pay for a license, just like XnView does. Apparently that's... bad?
I didn't remember what the IrfanView license was/is but IrfanView is not cross-platform which is what I was responding to with an alternative.
also allowed in commercial settings (BSD style license):
Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/
open-source, ignore the simple web page, software is awesome.
Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/
open-source, ignore the simple web page, software is awesome.
Thank God there's a BSD-licensed option. The notion that a business would pay to use software because the license requires it is just... appalling.
They're doing it via Wine.
Is there a Mac version or do you run it on Mac under Wine/Crossover?
> It's not just good, it's way faster than the bloated alternatives.
I use Faststone, what am I missing?
I use Faststone, what am I missing?
That’s a name I have not heard in a long while. I used to use it back on Windows 95 because it was a faster way to view JPEGs than opening Internet Explorer. Everything about that makes me feel old.
Still a part of the standard software I install on every new install.
As an only occasional windows user, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing such a list, maybe in a GitHub gist if you find yourself bored one day :)
Each their own, that's mine. Note that this is not a tech user or developper list, but the list of what I install on any new windows pc, including those at work etc ...
7zip (open any archive)
VLC (open any audio/video file)
IrfanView (+ the "all plugins" installer on the same page, open any picture file)
SumatraPDF (read PDFs)
Libreoffice (to open any office files)
NAPS2 (easy scan, and split/merge/... PDFs)
Ditto (give your clipboard a memory)
Everything (an instant file search that works)
TeraCopy (replace windows copy with queue, queues, add files to the queue instead of starting a second parallel copy, pause that works, ...)
Powertoys (so many to list ... mass rename file easily, screen ruler, text extractor ...)
If it's appropriate : Qbittorent (clean torrent client)
Nvidia graphic card ? NVCleaninstall, so you can install just the clean driver you need
Windows 10 or 11 ? O&O Shut Up (to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one)
Windows 11 ? ExplorerPatcher to remove suggestions in the start menu and the new and terrible castrated contextual menu
And of course your browser of choice and extensions
In ten minutes you have a computer that feels much more smart and usable. There are plenty of great software out there, but I feel like many what to install lists are very topical or include software you won't use in many cases or once every 6 months, so this is my short list of what you will use essentially every time you use the computer.
7zip (open any archive)
VLC (open any audio/video file)
IrfanView (+ the "all plugins" installer on the same page, open any picture file)
SumatraPDF (read PDFs)
Libreoffice (to open any office files)
NAPS2 (easy scan, and split/merge/... PDFs)
Ditto (give your clipboard a memory)
Everything (an instant file search that works)
TeraCopy (replace windows copy with queue, queues, add files to the queue instead of starting a second parallel copy, pause that works, ...)
Powertoys (so many to list ... mass rename file easily, screen ruler, text extractor ...)
If it's appropriate : Qbittorent (clean torrent client)
Nvidia graphic card ? NVCleaninstall, so you can install just the clean driver you need
Windows 10 or 11 ? O&O Shut Up (to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one)
Windows 11 ? ExplorerPatcher to remove suggestions in the start menu and the new and terrible castrated contextual menu
And of course your browser of choice and extensions
In ten minutes you have a computer that feels much more smart and usable. There are plenty of great software out there, but I feel like many what to install lists are very topical or include software you won't use in many cases or once every 6 months, so this is my short list of what you will use essentially every time you use the computer.
I recently started having trouble with 7zip at work due to shared sharepoint folders and the like. I wound up finding ZanaZip which was forked from 7zip but keeps up with modern OS changes.
You only left out Bulk Renamed Utility
https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk
There are many like it but none finer.
Thanks for sharing your list; I already use many of them but learnt about a few new ones that I'll try. I second Everything, the best, nifty little, Windows search utility that is blazing fast.
I find everything is more than just file search. It often works super well as a stand alone file manager.
Not using windows much anymore, but great to hear about O&O and ExplorerPatcher. I notice you don't list an ssh client. I still install cygwin for that. Anything new besides putty?
SSH client is not for non tech users and I tried to keep my list non tech oriented, something you can install on yours, your mom or Janice from accounting and they will all benefit from it.
For SSH I was a die hard team PuTTy for a long time but these days one of the first thing I install on my windows computer is WSL and a Debian inside, that covers all my SSH needs.
For SSH I was a die hard team PuTTy for a long time but these days one of the first thing I install on my windows computer is WSL and a Debian inside, that covers all my SSH needs.
Windows now has OpenSSH https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrat...
Windows now have OpenSSH client (and server) available as optional features. Together with the new terminal the ssh client seems to be working fine. Personally I usually opt in to use the ssh in WSL as I keep it installed on all my Windows machines.
True, right up until you need to use something that must check the SSH_AUTH_SOCK envar and then it's game over man (c.f., Chef Workstation).
If you prefer GUI then bitvise has a solid ssh client
PowerShell. Is there anything that putty do better?
Some alternatives to these items:
I like bandizip for zip needs
MPC-BE for video/audio
XnViewMP
Firefox for PDFs
MS office web (no need to install anything)
Windows 10+ includes clipboard history
PowerToys does have a file search, not sure how it compares to Everything
MPC-BE for video/audio
XnViewMP
Firefox for PDFs
MS office web (no need to install anything)
Windows 10+ includes clipboard history
PowerToys does have a file search, not sure how it compares to Everything
adding mine
TreeSize (to easily find out what is consuming disk space)
picpick/ shareX (screenshotting with annotationsand autosave)
pdftk (pdf merge, split, crop, interleave(
ffmpeg (video trim, split, re-encode, etc.)
Lossless cut (GUI for ffmpeg trim and extract/add tracks)
OpenShot video editor (when DaVinci Resolve is too much for the job and you need simple edits and effects)
OBS Studio (screen record, stream to youtube)
TreeSize (to easily find out what is consuming disk space)
picpick/ shareX (screenshotting with annotationsand autosave)
pdftk (pdf merge, split, crop, interleave(
ffmpeg (video trim, split, re-encode, etc.)
Lossless cut (GUI for ffmpeg trim and extract/add tracks)
OpenShot video editor (when DaVinci Resolve is too much for the job and you need simple edits and effects)
OBS Studio (screen record, stream to youtube)
Wiztree is a good alternative to Tree size, it's almost instantaneous
Or the good (old) Scanner from http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ (a <1MB executable)
I'm partial to spacesniffer for that http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/
Not sure why you're being downvoted.
WinDirStat (which used to be my goto) took over 6 minutes and ate 625mb of ram.
TreeSize Free took over 30 seconds, I'm not sure how much ram as it doesn't report it. It also kept trying to upsell me.
WizTree took less than 8 seconds. What's wrong with it?
edit: 2tb nvme ssd, mostly full of rubbish, windows 10.
WinDirStat (which used to be my goto) took over 6 minutes and ate 625mb of ram.
TreeSize Free took over 30 seconds, I'm not sure how much ram as it doesn't report it. It also kept trying to upsell me.
WizTree took less than 8 seconds. What's wrong with it?
edit: 2tb nvme ssd, mostly full of rubbish, windows 10.
Directory Report has a 64bit version so that you can scan millions of files without running out of memory
wow it's even fast at samba shares, that's amazing. The NAS did sound like it was having a seizure, though.
I'd love to know what you see in TeraCopy... Doesn't Win11 now do parallel copies?
The reason I started with TeraCopy was that it could to automatic verify after a move but before deleting the originals. Had lots of problems with corrupt transfers and wanted to be certain.
Now it's just what I use, I know it works and my files are safe.
Now it's just what I use, I know it works and my files are safe.
+Autohotkey
>VLC (open any audio/video file)
SMPlayer using mpv on the backend
>VLC (open any audio/video file)
SMPlayer using mpv on the backend
A worthy competitor to vlc is potplayer
Not the OP but I use a subset of the software available on https://ninite.com/ (IrfanView included)
Used to use that as well, but the selection was too limited for me, so I first switched to chocolatey, and nowadays, winget.
This way I can install almost everything I want with one command.
I'll post my list tomorrow when I'm back on my PC.
This way I can install almost everything I want with one command.
I'll post my list tomorrow when I'm back on my PC.
[deleted]
This is my list, but it’s pretty opinionated and is missing some pieces: Backblaze Backupper, Canon CaptureOnTouch, YNAB CLassic, and GPSoft’s Directory Opus
https://gist.github.com/Christoph-Wagner/c26ee84105edd12b4d3...
https://gist.github.com/Christoph-Wagner/c26ee84105edd12b4d3...
I opened the link first and I kept a few seconds trying to remember what we had to use to open JPEGs and GIFs back then. Then I read your comment. Right, IE for images. What a fun world we lived on!
ACDSee 2.4 and 3.1 were similarly legendary and fast in both startup time and overall performance of image loading.
Also remember the times... I think ACDsee 2.3.x was a game changer on Windows systems with little memory back in the day... it was so fast and displayed partially on the fly.
Btw I use a Mac nowadays and I get strong ACDsee vibes from open-source Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ with browsing through images with the mouse-wheel ;)
Btw I use a Mac nowadays and I get strong ACDsee vibes from open-source Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ with browsing through images with the mouse-wheel ;)
When ACDsee got bloated (and the shareware screen to nagging) I switched to IrfanView.
ACDsee just kept getting worse until it just became unbearable. I did miss the image sorting abilities until I found PhotoSift.
sadly it did, the 3.1 version was the last one that I remember as still not bloated, 4.x was already bad. But up until that, 1.x, 2.x, ..., they were great.
Everybody was down with either IrfanView or ACDSee to look at their collection of uudecoded por--er, photographic human figure studies they got off USENET.
>I used to use it back on Windows 95 because it was a faster way to view JPEGs than opening Internet Explorer.
That's an amazing sentence. We should frame it and put it in a museum. Actually someone should make a book filled just with quotes like this, call it "Life Before the Gigahertz" or something.
That's an amazing sentence. We should frame it and put it in a museum. Actually someone should make a book filled just with quotes like this, call it "Life Before the Gigahertz" or something.
I see so many comments these days bemoaning how slow modern software has gotten, but no one seems to remember/have been alive for the time when just rendering an image would take multiple seconds.
Just goes to show that our expectations scale with the available technology.
Just goes to show that our expectations scale with the available technology.
And now decoding a jpeg takes the blink of an eye, but we wait five seconds for a widget to render. When it does, we click somewhere else, because in that exact moment the layout was reflown.
i remember watching images download and how relevant progressive rendering was. blurry shapes!
News quotes followed by a link to an audio file that discloses its length and probable (larger) time to download.
IrfanView is great, but I'm curious, why is it on top of HN today of all days? Was there something significant happening?
There a post earlier regarding paint.net and people there mentioned irfanview.
It happens every now and then. Could be as simple as nostalgia.
Like Delphi, FreePascal and Lazarus, though less often for those three than for IrfanView, and those three get a good number of sneers by modern ignoramuses, each time. The joke is on them, due to the amount of late night and weekend work (unpaid, often) that many of them have to pull, and tamely accept and try to justify, to save their egos and paychecks.
"The emperor has no clothes" kind of thing ...
And nowadays, layoffs, too ...
"The emperor has no clothes" kind of thing ...
And nowadays, layoffs, too ...
Delphi kicked ass. Though, looking back, it didn't have hash tables at your fingertips like modern languages. I really can't imagine writing code without hashmaps anymore. Did that ever get added, and in a convenient way that doesn't require declaring a new object each time?
You could use TDictionary. It has been around since 15 years.
Sadly by 2009 I'd moved on to a new job and didn't have much opportunity to use it. It didn't even have generics when I used it last. Looks like you have to allocate and free them manually though, which is less than I hoped for. I rather like the scripting languages where they are part of the syntax and seamlessly decode from JSON.
No true Delphiman would say that ;)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Good question.
nurettin replied, sibling comment.
But it's not difficult to write your own for simple map types at least, like with strings as the keys. Generic maps would be harder.
nurettin replied, sibling comment.
But it's not difficult to write your own for simple map types at least, like with strings as the keys. Generic maps would be harder.
Back when i used Windows, IrfanView was my go-to image viewer, downloaded along with SumatraPDF via ninite.com. There's something similar in the repositories in Software Manager on Linux Mint, and Pix is fuller-featured, but like Foobar2000 for music, I still miss IrfanView from time to time, probably because of muscle memory and being more impressionable back then. (There's almostt certainly a way to get these Windows programs running on LMDE, I just don't care enough to mess with it.)
There's a snap image of Foobar2000 for Linux which works very well :) My #1 music player.
Have you looked at DeaDBeeF for a music player that has the foobar2000 aesthetic?
4MB to download the installer, back in the days when programs just did the thing they did and didn't include runtimes for entire virtual environments.
An average PC also had 64-256MB of RAM instead of 8-32GB.
I told my friend once:
- "I have 8MB of RAM"
- "That's cool, imagine having 16..."
My first computer had 3583 bytes of RAM...
Were those 8-bit bytes?
Is there any other kind of byte?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
> The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.[4][5][6][7] The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as syllables[a] or slab, before the term byte became common.
> The modern de facto standard of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient power of two permitting the binary-encoded values 0 through 255 for one byte, as 2 to the power of 8 is 256.[8] The international standard IEC 80000-13 codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers commonly optimize for this usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit byte.[9] Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes, respectively.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_ref-Buchholz_1956_1_...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Rao_1989-6
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_...
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-CHM_1964-10
> The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.[4][5][6][7] The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as syllables[a] or slab, before the term byte became common.
> The modern de facto standard of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient power of two permitting the binary-encoded values 0 through 255 for one byte, as 2 to the power of 8 is 256.[8] The international standard IEC 80000-13 codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers commonly optimize for this usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit byte.[9] Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes, respectively.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_ref-Buchholz_1956_1_...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Rao_1989-6
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_...
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-CHM_1964-10
Must be a VIC20.
[deleted]
But what if you want to display Full HD video in the image viewer from an URL? Wouldn't you need Electron for that?
Also I was under the impression just the DLLs for all the image formats would be over 4 MB. I wonder how large is it uncompressed.
Also I was under the impression just the DLLs for all the image formats would be over 4 MB. I wonder how large is it uncompressed.
https://mpc-hc.org
This is the lightest fastest yet feature rich media player for windows I know. Its 12 MB compressed though. Didn't know irfanview could do that
This is the lightest fastest yet feature rich media player for windows I know. Its 12 MB compressed though. Didn't know irfanview could do that
Your link is the old/abandonware mpc-hc, here you'll find a more recent version
https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc
https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc
The Windows standard file open dialog allows you to paste a http(s) link in, which will be downloaded and opened from the Temp folder. This works with all applications that use that dialog.
FYI, Irfanview might not be able to pull it from an url, but it's playing ful hd video just fine although I wouldn't use it for that.
>it plays full HD video
WHAT? IN 4 MB??? WHAT???
That's amazing!
WHAT? IN 4 MB??? WHAT???
That's amazing!
I'm just at the Revision demoparty in Germany, you should see the audiovisual stuff people are doing in 4kb (yes, 4096 bytes)!
Modern operating systems and especially web dev have made entire generations forget how powerful computers and software are / can be.
Modern operating systems and especially web dev have made entire generations forget how powerful computers and software are / can be.
https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/ 256 bytes
the mp3 is 2.1MB ;-)
irfanview for images, vlc for videos, foobar for audio - so much better than anything bundled with windows since forever
Never could get into foobar... team winamp here
Same. If I'm listening to music with something other than Winamp (and the default Classic skin), I feel weird.
That is long dead, try AIMP, it even supports Winamp dsp-s.
The most important part of Winamp is the global keyboard shortcuts you can set up. I have been using wasd controls for my games and my player since forever. Well, since I found the global keyboard shortcuts in winamp...
wasd for games, ctrl+shift+qewasd for play/pause/forward/backward/next/prev and so on. Don't need to switch window, don't need to move hand away from wasd. Can't live without it now even though I don't have so much playtime any more. Works just as well in any other environment.
wasd for games, ctrl+shift+qewasd for play/pause/forward/backward/next/prev and so on. Don't need to switch window, don't need to move hand away from wasd. Can't live without it now even though I don't have so much playtime any more. Works just as well in any other environment.
Is Winamp as we know it still around?
WACUP = WinAmp Community Update
Even works as a portable app.
https://getwacup.com/
Even works as a portable app.
https://getwacup.com/
I am often disappointed by the lack of shortcuts and features in VLC compared to Potplayer.
Just some of the few keyboard shortcuts in Potplayer I use regularly:
"<" and ">" to shift the subtitle sync by half a secondd "shift-<" and "shift->" to adjust the audio sync by half a second "[" and "]" to set an A-B repeat of that awesome scene or soundtrack "D" and "F" to move by a single frame forward and backward there's also shortcut to decrease and increase things like saturation and brightness by 1% or shortcuts for 0.5x, 1x, 2x size.
I have to make do with SMplayer in Linux which is awesome but you have to setup the keyboard shortcuts manually yourself.
Just some of the few keyboard shortcuts in Potplayer I use regularly:
"<" and ">" to shift the subtitle sync by half a secondd "shift-<" and "shift->" to adjust the audio sync by half a second "[" and "]" to set an A-B repeat of that awesome scene or soundtrack "D" and "F" to move by a single frame forward and backward there's also shortcut to decrease and increase things like saturation and brightness by 1% or shortcuts for 0.5x, 1x, 2x size.
I have to make do with SMplayer in Linux which is awesome but you have to setup the keyboard shortcuts manually yourself.
voidtools/everything for filesystem
I've found nomacs to be a good alternative:
https://nomacs.org/
It hits the sweet spot when it comes to clipboard functionality -- You can either copy the image itself, or copy its path on the filesystem. Most image viewers only support one of these commands.
https://nomacs.org/
It hits the sweet spot when it comes to clipboard functionality -- You can either copy the image itself, or copy its path on the filesystem. Most image viewers only support one of these commands.
Same here, it's cropping tool is the thing that makes it for me
IrfanView is one of my "must to have apps", going back to Win 98.
For simple image editing (resizing, cropping etc) and batch processing, it's though to beat.
Now I mostly work on macOS, and miss it. I guess XnView is close enough.
Now I mostly work on macOS, and miss it. I guess XnView is close enough.
I love(d) infan view, but just got used to (a portable version of) Xnview. I keep going back to irfan, but again - as much as it is an amazing piece of software, Xn for me.
Same, using it since 1998 (I was 9, 35 now).
Any windows PC I use doesn't feel right without the irfanview logo somewhere.
Any windows PC I use doesn't feel right without the irfanview logo somewhere.
In Windows it's still faster than anything else if you've copied an image to clipboard to open irfanview -> paste -> save, or to do a quick crop or whatever.
Directory Opus is a little faster:
CTRL-P pastes anything (image, text; not sure what else) in clipboard to a file in current directory
CTRL-P pastes anything (image, text; not sure what else) in clipboard to a file in current directory
or just the batch mode ... very helpful and fast.
Win + Shift + S
for those increasingly rare times you want to print an image it's great too.
IrfanView has a nice feature where it can monitor a folder and always show the newest picture. I used that for a selfie-photo-station for my wedding. A little more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37219826
Another feature I use often ist to copy the current image to a preset location. I use that for quickly pre-sorting photos.
Another feature I use often ist to copy the current image to a preset location. I use that for quickly pre-sorting photos.
IrfanView shouldn’t be seen as a relic just because it’s “old”. Software like IV, Opus/Far just highlight how inadequate the OS provided tools for common navigation/viewing patterns are. Anyone who breaks through the “the computer is a magical box and I don’t understand any of it” barrier needs to have a manual tossed at them that covers this software right away. Nevermind gdb/WinDbg.
TBF current photo viewer for Win11 is decent, and cover the basics pretty well.
I reinstalled IrfanView from sheer nostalgia, and while it's still a good program, it doesn't handle pinch/zoom gestures as well as the default app. Same for editing, where IV has more features, yet core stuff like handwriting smoothing isn't as good.
The biggest difference between "these days" and now is IMHO the wide availability of other tools to do more advanced stuff. For instance I remember batch processing features and export features in IV that I used a lot, but nowadays I'd do it in Imagemagick or GIMP.
There is less need for a swiss army knife when the specialized tools are right there any time you need them.
I reinstalled IrfanView from sheer nostalgia, and while it's still a good program, it doesn't handle pinch/zoom gestures as well as the default app. Same for editing, where IV has more features, yet core stuff like handwriting smoothing isn't as good.
The biggest difference between "these days" and now is IMHO the wide availability of other tools to do more advanced stuff. For instance I remember batch processing features and export features in IV that I used a lot, but nowadays I'd do it in Imagemagick or GIMP.
There is less need for a swiss army knife when the specialized tools are right there any time you need them.
Windows was good for shareware developers because people had to buy utilities to like Irfanview to basically replace all the junk the OS shipped with. I eventually drop-kicked the whole OS and now life is good.
It's exactly the same for me. I've been using MacOS for 15 years, and just pressing the spacebar to see an image is a huge relief. I never had to install a simple image viewer on macOS. And if I did, xnView would also work, which I had installed on Windows before.
love that the author still uses the same dithered photos of Jajce, Bosnia - his hometown - as in Win9x days in the about page and website: https://www.irfanview.com/main_about.htm .. make me want to visit.
Edit: typo (thanks)
Edit: typo (thanks)
Jajce, not Jacje. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jajce
I've been there. It's a lovely little city and the river through the centre has some large and very impressive waterfalls, right in the middle of the city.
There's also a small church, underground, which was carved from solid rock rather than built. It's amazing.
https://visitbih.ba/en/catacombs-the-mystical-site-built-600...
There's also a small church, underground, which was carved from solid rock rather than built. It's amazing.
https://visitbih.ba/en/catacombs-the-mystical-site-built-600...
When I have a hundred million images scattered on my computer and I need to quickly see them, nothing like a good script to herd them in a plain txt file and piping it to irfanview! No fidgeting with sixels, bat, or any other gui application. Hands down the fastest way… IMHO.
feh is very fast as well. But it is only a viewer and does not edit. But under Linux it is my go-to viewer, also for cases like the one you describe.
Lest Mac users miss out on the nostalgia trip the Windows users are enjoying in this thread: Remember GraphicConverter? It's still around and actively developed. 32 years old!
https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/
https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/
In this thread someone mentioned photosift which does the 1 thing i miss about graphicconverter - sorting while watching a slideshow and pressing buttons to copy to specified, arbitrary folders. downloaded, and testing soon.
Long gone are the days where people would come to me asking if i could open some file, so the other uses i had for graphicconverter are gone too.
Long gone are the days where people would come to me asking if i could open some file, so the other uses i had for graphicconverter are gone too.
Some 15 years ago I wanted to contribute/fix bugs and asked the author if the sources are available. He answered yes, for $10000. Screw that guy, I wrote my own image viewer )
ACDSee old versions (2.6.1?) would preload the next image in memory while scrolling through a folder, making it extremely useful in the age of hard drives. It became bloated, but the only reasons to switch were for newer image formats, and sometimes .gifs would crash it.
FastStone Image Viewer is the performant, slick image viewer I use now.
IrfanView has some rough defaults like if you scroll to the end of a folder, a window pops up that you have to click away before you can scroll back. I use it all the time for simple editing, not viewing.
FastStone Image Viewer is the performant, slick image viewer I use now.
IrfanView has some rough defaults like if you scroll to the end of a folder, a window pops up that you have to click away before you can scroll back. I use it all the time for simple editing, not viewing.
I personally like "FSViewer" way more. It's customizable, portable and free. It was my favorite software, which was replaced by "XYPlorer", which is a fileExplorer alternative.
FSViewer link: https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm XYPlorer link: https://www.xyplorer.com/
FSViewer link: https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm XYPlorer link: https://www.xyplorer.com/
I tried the Irfan view but I am just more comfortable with FSViewer.
Still use it. It’s faster to open and move through photos than the windows built in one.
Have used it since forever. Just used it today an hour ago. Usually to paste a windows screenshot and then do minor editing or cropping.
Now windows has gotten a lot better, with the [WIN][Shift][s] shortcut (so cropping no longer is necessary). But that still misses a feature to quickly draw an arrow.
Irfanview has that. Screenshot, crop, F12, put an arrow to point at something, copy, paste into Teams.
So fast...
Now windows has gotten a lot better, with the [WIN][Shift][s] shortcut (so cropping no longer is necessary). But that still misses a feature to quickly draw an arrow.
Irfanview has that. Screenshot, crop, F12, put an arrow to point at something, copy, paste into Teams.
So fast...
Fastone Capture is my goto for this. Does everything including drawing etc.
Excellent software.
Dear Irfan!
Thank you very much.
From myself (1995-...) and my father (1995-2003).
Thank you very much.
From myself (1995-...) and my father (1995-2003).
Was a nice tool, but boy I hated seeing it's weird icon on every image files (before images had icon previews)
I still use IrfanView to this day, all the way back since mid 90'ies. It's a fantastic piece of software with a great legacy and I wouldn't trade it for any modern photo software. So snappy and functional, works like a charm. With the plugins added to it you can open literally any image.
Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView
Does anyone know what programming language it is made with? I did a cursory search but cannot find any information. Just curious.
Does anyone know what programming language it is made with? I did a cursory search but cannot find any information. Just curious.
I don't know for sure, but C++ is always a good guess with that kind of software.
I downloaded IrfanView and ran "strings" on the exe file, and one of the strings in there is "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library" - so that would point towards C++ (although it's not certain from that alone).
Yeah, Irfanview dates to a time when MS’s C compiler was horribly out of date (still stuck in C89 compatibility), and the only way to get remotely modern language features was to compile it as C++, even if you never used any C++ features. Everyone was programming in “C++” on windows back then even if they were basically writing C.
So yeah, it’s C++ but that doesn’t necessarily tell you much, it could still very well be basically C.
So yeah, it’s C++ but that doesn’t necessarily tell you much, it could still very well be basically C.
There is also JPEG View which is really fast and simple image viewer for windows https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview (fork of unmaintained https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/) and another one vjpeg http://stereopsis.com/vjpeg/
These are both small and fast image viewers, specially noticeable on very large images.
We need a list/directory of fast tools like these, specially now when every tool is bloated by default.
These are both small and fast image viewers, specially noticeable on very large images.
We need a list/directory of fast tools like these, specially now when every tool is bloated by default.
Also my daily driver for any bitmap-related operations.
One little thing that became my muscle memory over the years is using it to view/edit/crop latest clipboard entry, most often screenshots, through simple hotkey (olden AutoHotkey) launcher with `/clippaste` command line parameter.
; open / view current clipboard in irfanView
; win alt i
#!i::run,path\to\IrfanView\i_view32.exe /clippaste
this ... and its text file counterpart ... Notepad++ ... glorious Windows 95. sounds strange but one reason why I'm now on Linux (Mint Cinnamon) is because I liked Windows 95 and XP so much. it's practically the same UI. no tile nonsense. a task bar. a start menu. a good ole desktop. beautiful. (and I also want to mention I did at least once donate to IrfanView / https://www.irfanview.com/main_support_engl.htm)
I like that you can simply start a text file or files, and close the program, it will save the session without any exit dialogs.
I've used irfanview for more than 15 years now. Mostly for looking at pictures. It's plenty fast.
Doesn't work super well with multimonitor and should just ignore non-image files though imho
Doesn't work super well with multimonitor and should just ignore non-image files though imho
Irfanview is so fast that I don't need to convert image sequences to video format. I can just press and hold right arrow key. I do wish there was a way to limit the speed though.
That's my first memory of a program with keyboard shortcuts not being the typical ones, but still usable and thought through.
Enter/return to go full screen (or exit from full screen?).
Enter/return to go full screen (or exit from full screen?).
Along with ImageJ, that is open-source and has found use by researchers among many different disciplines, they're great examples of longstanding projects done right.
ImageJ has roots (NIH Image) that predate Photoshop.
Great software but it isn’t color correct and has issues with embedded color profiles and conversion between color spaces.
Still in https://ninite.com/ selection view
If somebody searching a good native Mac alternative I strongly recommend this fast open source image viewer (ignore the simple web page, software is great!):
Phoenix Slides
https://blyt.net/phxslides/
It replaced the (abandoneware) Xee3 on my system.
Phoenix Slides
https://blyt.net/phxslides/
It replaced the (abandoneware) Xee3 on my system.
Been using irfanview since i heard about it in college from a classmate. I've included it in a number of image processing pipelines when i just need a few simple modifications to a lot of images. Its faster than a number of libraries that do thr same thing
I switched to FastStone image viewer several years ago after getting curious when I saw it on ninite and haven’t looked back. It virtually instantly displays even large JPEGs from a cold start.
Tried to get into it many times but just couldn't and finally found XnView and it was awesome. Sadly after switching to mac it was no longer available and later on Qt version wasn't that good
This is all-time favourite, indispensable graphics utility! I've used it for years and it's never let me down! If Irfan is reading this, can we pleeeeease have a native Linux version?
Related question: Is there any way to view HEIC files on Windows without installing the extensions from the Microsoft Store, or dodgy proprietary software? Even Irfanview requires the former.
Maybe I’ll get some hate for this, but years ago when I worked at a civil engineering firm this was the default image viewer IT had mapped every image file to open with - it was a nightmare! Every coworker I had (myself included) would constantly complain about the number of times they had to change to [literally anything else]. There were three distinct things I remember we all hated: 1. The image never opened full size, the window was always small and you had to manually drag the window frame to make it viewable. 2. It didn’t “zoom in” when you used your mouse wheel correctly, it would instead cycle through all of the images open in the folder you were working in. 3. When you clicked the arrows at the top to flip through a group of photos in the folder you were in (I recall the keyboard arrow keys not working for this, too), once you reached the end it would go to a black “fake” image, that you then couldn’t arrow back. It didn’t just cycle through the images, you had to close the window and reopen the image you were on.
Needless to say, I have zero fond memories of this program. Maybe these were nuances of our particular setup (many other such cases at that firm, sadly), but…eh, whatever. There’s better out there.
Needless to say, I have zero fond memories of this program. Maybe these were nuances of our particular setup (many other such cases at that firm, sadly), but…eh, whatever. There’s better out there.
Dysfunction in the IT of civil engineering (and similar) professions is fairly common. I remember this exact phenomenon too - of Irfanview's default UI controls not suiting what the staff were used to. And the staff didn't need The Most Powerful Tool Under The Sun, they just wanted to view and zoom and browse, and a few other tools, using the keypresses and mouse movements they were used to from previous software.
And Irfanview could do those things in it's sleep with both hands tied, with a few simple config changes. But the dysfunction - often rooted in the minimal, grudging acknowledgement given to IT by (non-IT) old professions - led to a lot of half-assed setups where staff butted their heads against obstacles that were often a mere few clicks away from improvement, if only they'd known to put their attention there. But of course, they were too busy being civil engineers.
And if I may shoehorn another point in here : it's not as though AutoCAD and other such industry software comes with ready default settings. If you used those straight out of the box with no customisation for your own situation, you'd be in deep trouble.
And Irfanview could do those things in it's sleep with both hands tied, with a few simple config changes. But the dysfunction - often rooted in the minimal, grudging acknowledgement given to IT by (non-IT) old professions - led to a lot of half-assed setups where staff butted their heads against obstacles that were often a mere few clicks away from improvement, if only they'd known to put their attention there. But of course, they were too busy being civil engineers.
And if I may shoehorn another point in here : it's not as though AutoCAD and other such industry software comes with ready default settings. If you used those straight out of the box with no customisation for your own situation, you'd be in deep trouble.
Those are all settings you could have changed yourself. IrfanView is the best image viewer on Windows, hands down.
Expressing a viewpoint necessitates a downvote?
Nothing wrong with expressing an opinion, and I'm not here to defend you against downvoters, but from my perspective it's an uninformed opinion. All of the "issues" you identified are really just preferences and the dev was kind enough to let you configure the app as you'd like. It would be impossible for the dev to create a set of custom settings that every user finds perfect, so your other comment about "hostile defaults" comes across as entitled
The app is incredibly good. It does everything you could want, it's less than 10MB, blazing fast and easy to use. Super configurable. I used to have to fight with IT to have it installed or find a way to run some portable version just to have it at work.
I can't speak for others, but I think if you had spent a little bit more time trying to figure out the solution to the issues you identify, you would have found the answer, but somehow you are instead blaming the dev, which is what IMHO warrants downvotes.
The app is incredibly good. It does everything you could want, it's less than 10MB, blazing fast and easy to use. Super configurable. I used to have to fight with IT to have it installed or find a way to run some portable version just to have it at work.
I can't speak for others, but I think if you had spent a little bit more time trying to figure out the solution to the issues you identify, you would have found the answer, but somehow you are instead blaming the dev, which is what IMHO warrants downvotes.
[deleted]
on HN only few people can downvote, I wonder why, in order to make sure down votes are justified? If so, that fails miserably :D
See also complaining about downvotes.
I'm with you. To me IrfanView always felt incredibly archaic and chaotic, and I never wanted to wade through its 5 billion settings to "fix" it for me. But I guess some people just care more about UX while others just want as many features as possible, and I'm glad it's there for the latter camp.
And not once in all this time did you open settings and change these behaviours (which you can)? Weird.
Not once in all that time did I consider using a program with hostile default settings. Weird how hard this might be for an image viewer.
Agreed that the Irfanview default settings are questionable in some cases. And I personally find the UI hard to work with because nothing is ever where I expect it to be, with the important display option settings buried in a nested menu.
But it is highly configurable, and I think you're catching grief because it really doesn't sound like you or your colleagues made any attempt to take advantage of that.
But it is highly configurable, and I think you're catching grief because it really doesn't sound like you or your colleagues made any attempt to take advantage of that.
Always have to install Quicklook on my windows machines, too used to it on Mac
https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
I wish I had corporate credit card... I could get myself copy for work...
I paid for a license because Irfanview is an excellent program I use every day. I also happen to use it at work, too.
My dad introduced me to it after he started using it when it came out in 1996. It’s great, quick image editing. My only gripe with it is that cropping is unnecessarily convoluted…
> My only gripe with it is that cropping is unnecessarily convoluted…
What are you talking about? Make a rectangular selection on the image (click and drag across the image), then CTRL+Y. Couldn't be easier.
What are you talking about? Make a rectangular selection on the image (click and drag across the image), then CTRL+Y. Couldn't be easier.
That shortcut is permanently burned into my muscle memory. I still instinctively hit Cmd + Y in Preview.app when meaning to crop.
I love IrfanView, have been using it since I started using Total Commander back in ... 2003? Have donated/purchased a licence several times for both projects.
A GPLv3 similar app for Windows, very useful, is ImageGlass:
https://imageglass.org
https://imageglass.org
For Linux users looking for something similar to IrfanView, nomacs is the closest I found to IrfanView since I moved away from Windows:
https://nomacs.org/
https://nomacs.org/
Around 2000-2007 I used something similar to this one (Windows XP/7 times), I can't recall the name right now.
Someone remember other popular image viewers at the time?
Someone remember other popular image viewers at the time?
Maybe ACDSee?
I found ACDSee to be better than IrfanView.
That one! Thank you. Nostalgia hit hard.
graphic converter for mac OS. I'm still looking for a windows or linux image program that lets you do a slideshow and push a button to move/copy the current image to preset folders - for sorting images.
Probably it was compupic or acdsee
FastStone gang forever
[deleted]
For quick cropping, rescaling, and batch processing, this is the BEST image editor on Linux (using Wine of course).
I think I used it from 1997 till 2001, all years I owned a windows pc. And until 2005 at windows pc at work.
My list is a bit smaller, but has some overlap. For all platforms (Linux, Windows, MacOS):
(Haven't found a wine-variant for MacOS, so I have to make do with the shtty preview instead of irfanview. For Video stuff I'm forced to use Linux or Windows for via remote desktop).
I wish there was cross-platform install bundle that contained:
If someone aims to create such, that'd be awesome :)
1. Sublime Text & VIM (for all things text)
2. Firefox with tampermonkey & ublock origin (browsing 101)
3. Everything (Uses it as my launcher and finder of everything on my computer)
4. Irfanview (must-have for everything image-related)
5. Classic Shell/Explorer (to get a usable winXP-like desktop)
6. Gamma Panel (Adjust brightness via keyboard shortcut presets)
7. O&O Shut Up (for same reason as you)
8. Autoruns (to disable all useless services & scheduled crap-ware in windows)
9. MSys (for linuxy everyday tools, can't work without 'em).
10. Conda (with opencv, torch ... for automation and graphics munging)
11. Winamp (For all things music consumption)
12. VirtualDub ("Irfanview" for Video)
13. MediaPlayer Home Cinema + ffdshow & LAV filters/splitter (Better VLC)
14. Avisynth (All things video processing)
3. Irfanview (must-have for everything image-related)
4. Conda (for heavier automation than bash)
5. Wine + (Irfanview, Virtualdub, Avisynth)
3. iTerm (for a usable terminal)
4 Homebrew (to get linux tools so I can work)
5. iStat Menu (to know what the heck my laptop is doing)
6. Conda (for automation)
(Haven't found a wine-variant for MacOS, so I have to make do with the shtty preview instead of irfanview. For Video stuff I'm forced to use Linux or Windows for via remote desktop).
I wish there was cross-platform install bundle that contained:
* Irfanview, Everything, Avisynth, Virtualdub, MPCHC with LAV filters
If someone aims to create such, that'd be awesome :)
Was there a special reason this was posted today? Irfanview has been around forever.
The _only_ application I still miss years after moving to Mac osx.
No one else misses Picasa?
I recall it being horrifically slow, and uninstalled shortly after.
Yes, we've heard of it. It's been around for 25+ years.
6MB feels so refreshing.
i’ve been using irfanview since i was in grade 4? and it’s one of the first things i install on every laptop i’ve owned ever since.
I very much prefer FastStone image viewer
IrfanView configured to open with space bar in WindowsCommander (as TotalCommander was called at the time) for a quick view. Name a more iconic duo.
Still the best!
Great program, I use it to this day.
this is the sumatra pdf of images
Irfanview. For the people
IrfanView. Now, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. Haven’t used that the last couple of decades. Interesting to see that it’s still around.
Uh, another noob one discovering an age-old, well known tool. Now post the link to its Wikipedia article!
I guess anyone who has used windows would have come across irfanview one way or another
Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least
Because of a few things:
1. Windows 11 now ships with quite a decent and powerful image viewer/editor that covers most average users' use cases, therefore lowering the demand from people to go out of their way to find alternatives, like in the Windows XP days, which is a good thing (less likely to go download malware from the first Google result of "image viewer for Windows XP").
2. PC usage behavior has changed a lot since then. Many people don't even have PCs at home anymore, and people now have most of their pics in the cloud or on their phone or some external NAS that comes with it's own browser viewer app, instead of hoarding them all on their home PC hard drive, further lowering the need to seek out dedicated image viewers to manage giant offline collections of digital camera pics(I mean I still do, but I'm a minority nowadays).
These two factors combined meant the death of the third party PC image viewer app. Yeah, Irfan might be "the best", but the need for the best in this sector has declined significantly, and most users are now fine with "good enough".
1. Windows 11 now ships with quite a decent and powerful image viewer/editor that covers most average users' use cases, therefore lowering the demand from people to go out of their way to find alternatives, like in the Windows XP days, which is a good thing (less likely to go download malware from the first Google result of "image viewer for Windows XP").
2. PC usage behavior has changed a lot since then. Many people don't even have PCs at home anymore, and people now have most of their pics in the cloud or on their phone or some external NAS that comes with it's own browser viewer app, instead of hoarding them all on their home PC hard drive, further lowering the need to seek out dedicated image viewers to manage giant offline collections of digital camera pics(I mean I still do, but I'm a minority nowadays).
These two factors combined meant the death of the third party PC image viewer app. Yeah, Irfan might be "the best", but the need for the best in this sector has declined significantly, and most users are now fine with "good enough".
Does the Windows 11 photo viewer still have that gross flickering when changing images and absurdly slow startup that the Windows 10 photo viewer added when they replaced the old Vista/7 viewer, which had none of these issues?
What flickering do you have? I don't see any. As for startup time, I dunno, seems to open in less than half a second for me, though on a relatively high end laptop. On a 10 year old machine it might suffer.
I rarely use Windows these days, but IrfanView feels lightning fast compared to the built-in Photos app or whatever they call it. I started using IV I think on Win 98 and it's still as snappy and reliable as it always has been.
I haven't used the latest Windows viewer because I'm no longer prepared to upgrade to the latest versions of Windows, but the old version was a dog of a program compared to IrfanView, it was slow, couldn't display many formats and would misbehave if the image files were damaged.
And yes, at times it flickers and or images can tear.
And yes, at times it flickers and or images can tear.
The recent photo viewer is great. I never felt the need to install Irfan anymore just to view photos since .. a long time now.
I mean why would I? If all I need is viewing a couple of photos every now and then, cropping and rotating one or two and drawing some circles on them to highlight something in a screenshot and Windows already does that then why bother with Irfan other than habit and nostalgia.
I mean why would I? If all I need is viewing a couple of photos every now and then, cropping and rotating one or two and drawing some circles on them to highlight something in a screenshot and Windows already does that then why bother with Irfan other than habit and nostalgia.
"...and people now have most of their pics in the cloud or on their phone,"
...until Google closes their account or their data becomes otherwise inaccessible!
It horrifies me that so many people are so willing to commit their valuable data to the cloud just because of convenience.
Leaving aside Big Tech's spying on users and selling away their privacy, users who commit data to the cloud put its integrity and ultimately its long-term survival in the hands of third parties who couldn't give a damn whether it was lost or destroyed—their only interest is the income it generates.
That the shift to the cloud has been so complete is very disconcerting. It never ceases to amaze me that so many are so trusting of others that they'd actually hand over their valuable data for safekeeping to the likes of Google, et al. I've used the internet since before the inception of the Web and I've never once committed any of my data to the cloud (but if I had to then it'd be an encrypted backup).
Re IrfanView, I used to use Ed Hamrick's rather excellent image viewer VuePrint until I came across IrfanView about two decades ago. For numerous reasons IrfanView is the best viewer out there.
...until Google closes their account or their data becomes otherwise inaccessible!
It horrifies me that so many people are so willing to commit their valuable data to the cloud just because of convenience.
Leaving aside Big Tech's spying on users and selling away their privacy, users who commit data to the cloud put its integrity and ultimately its long-term survival in the hands of third parties who couldn't give a damn whether it was lost or destroyed—their only interest is the income it generates.
That the shift to the cloud has been so complete is very disconcerting. It never ceases to amaze me that so many are so trusting of others that they'd actually hand over their valuable data for safekeeping to the likes of Google, et al. I've used the internet since before the inception of the Web and I've never once committed any of my data to the cloud (but if I had to then it'd be an encrypted backup).
Re IrfanView, I used to use Ed Hamrick's rather excellent image viewer VuePrint until I came across IrfanView about two decades ago. For numerous reasons IrfanView is the best viewer out there.
> It horrifies me that so many people are so willing to commit their valuable data to the cloud just because of convenience.
I used to get horrified too until I learned that average user doesn't care much about losing pictures. My wife has lost phone full of pics multiple times and she's upset for like few hours.
I used to get horrified too until I learned that average user doesn't care much about losing pictures. My wife has lost phone full of pics multiple times and she's upset for like few hours.
You don't know what you've lost until it's something you want to re-live or remember.
I go back through photos and videos of my kids and it reminds me that I succeeded at something worthwhile and difficult for at least a period of my life. They had a blessed childhood.
Food or selfies and even holiday snaps mean little. But the kids... that's the raison d'être.
Overall it's these photos and videos that are my strongest motivation for the paranoia-level backup setup I have.
I go back through photos and videos of my kids and it reminds me that I succeeded at something worthwhile and difficult for at least a period of my life. They had a blessed childhood.
Food or selfies and even holiday snaps mean little. But the kids... that's the raison d'être.
Overall it's these photos and videos that are my strongest motivation for the paranoia-level backup setup I have.
This is an important insight.
It's easy to obsess over the idea of any data loss, because the value of some data is quite high. But for most people in most circumstances losing their cloud hosted photos is probably not a big deal, and it's also probably far less likely than the users losing locally stored photos due to some mistake of their own.
It's easy to obsess over the idea of any data loss, because the value of some data is quite high. But for most people in most circumstances losing their cloud hosted photos is probably not a big deal, and it's also probably far less likely than the users losing locally stored photos due to some mistake of their own.
Because the chances of Google closing accounts or losing data is much lower than a consumer's usb drive being damaged or lost.
Plus, it is convenient to sync photos directly from mobile to the cloud without the need to set up syncing software or do periodic transfer/backup from mobile to PC.
…that wasn’t the point? Keeping possessions safe is the responsibility of the possessor. If you keep them all in one place with no backups, you can lose them more easily.
And by the way, you don’t actually know the probability of a random person losing access to a Google account vs losing physical mediums, let alone how many of those cases were cases where their only photos were stored there. It’s obviously different from person to person, and maybe you can estimate that one is safer than the other in individual cases, but you can’t extrapolate that and say it applies in every person’s case. But the GP was referring to cases where it was implied the only copy was stored on the cloud.
And by the way, you don’t actually know the probability of a random person losing access to a Google account vs losing physical mediums, let alone how many of those cases were cases where their only photos were stored there. It’s obviously different from person to person, and maybe you can estimate that one is safer than the other in individual cases, but you can’t extrapolate that and say it applies in every person’s case. But the GP was referring to cases where it was implied the only copy was stored on the cloud.
Wait a minute, if you don't have copies of data in the cloud, you have copies on HDDs and CDRWs? From experience I know that those fail within 10 years or so. Lot's of my data is already 20+ years in the cloud.
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The "enshittification" of computing. The Windows 11 default Photo Viewer has probably 20% of the features of IrfanView - and the problem is that normal users don't know a better tool exists for free if they need those extra features. As the resident techie in my house I get asked by people to do simple things like overlay text in a certain style or print a photo with a particular resolution or print multiple photos etc. and these tasks are just harder or impossible with the default tools
I'm guessing even if they knew the tool existed they would still rather ask you to do it. Not everyone wants to understand computers or download programs
More importantly, not everybody wants to be entirely self reliant. They're ok with small task delegation.
Sometimes you don’t realize things about yourself until someone else puts it into words. Thank you, internet stranger
It made more sense to go through the effort to install IrfanView when there was no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000. Those only had MS Paint, and I think some versions only supported bmp files (no jpeg or gif). Windows XP had an ok image previewer.
Windows 98 did have an image viewer but it was an optional component. It was called Imaging for Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_for_Windows
There was also a Microsoft Photo Editor that was bundled with Office 97: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Photo_Editor
There was also a Microsoft Photo Editor that was bundled with Office 97: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Photo_Editor
> no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000
Windows has shipped with an image previewer since Windows ME. You can see it in this screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows98/comments/y1lj7x/winme_ima...
Windows has shipped with an image previewer since Windows ME. You can see it in this screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows98/comments/y1lj7x/winme_ima...
IIRC the killer "feature" that gave these previewers traction (ACDSee, IrfanView etc.) was that you could just preview a bunch of images in a folder using your arrow keys. So you'd just load one and use arrow keys to see the other images in the same folder. With the built-in options, you'd have to double click images one by one (and close their windows one by one) which was a horrible UX compared to what these provided.
That’s the “Preview pane” in explorer. It only supports the file types you could preview in explorer, it only “opens” the file currently selected in Explorer, and didn’t let you zoom in or inspect the image in any way that I recall. It was a plain preview that was supported (in ME) by the integrations Explorer had with Internet Explorer, I believe. Often installing IrfanView let you preview more file types in Explorer, and you could open more than one, display them full screen, edit them, resize them, and more…
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I used to use irfranview for many years, but I rarely ever use Windows anymore. I recently started to use oculante [1] for image viewer because its cross os. Before that, I used imv on Linux and xee on macOS.
1: https://github.com/woelper/oculante
1: https://github.com/woelper/oculante
This is amazing! Thank you for sharing it.
IMO it's up there, I've been using it for over 20+ years.
IrfanView and foobar2000 (mp3 player) haven't left my side since I started using them. Ditto (clipboard manager) has also earned its place.
IrfanView and foobar2000 (mp3 player) haven't left my side since I started using them. Ditto (clipboard manager) has also earned its place.
Of the three, ditto easily takes no. 1 spot. Must’ve saved me weeks of juggling windows and trying to remember where stuff was at this point. It’s a superpower, a true game changer if I ever saw one.
Maccy on macOS is about half as good which is still an absolute unit of a tool. Couldn’t use a Mac without it.
Maccy on macOS is about half as good which is still an absolute unit of a tool. Couldn’t use a Mac without it.
Yep, funny enough I have a Macbook for work (company laptop) and I also stumbled upon Maccy. You're right in that it's not Ditto but it's quite good and I'm overall happy using it.
Right, foobar2000 is great isn't it?
To add to that, for me mplayer was clutch for a long time, nowadays I opt for VLC though.
mv2player was a really good option for a period of time, it's a shame it just disappeared, not even it's source code can be found.
That sounds bad. Is it on any old shareware sites ?
https://web.archive.org/web/20120210051507/http://mv2.czweb....
it can be found here, and a few other places as well, but unfortunately the source code was never shared. Though it was such an amazing, blazing fast and bloatfree app, such a shame the code was never shared, and now it seems lost, unless the author is around somewhere?
it can be found here, and a few other places as well, but unfortunately the source code was never shared. Though it was such an amazing, blazing fast and bloatfree app, such a shame the code was never shared, and now it seems lost, unless the author is around somewhere?
For me it’s because I haven’t run Windows for ages
I've run it via wine for probably close to twenty years now.
I use JPEGView nowadays https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview
Agreed - I'm still using it everyday to view and do some minor editing (trimming and resizing pics). It, along with browsers, VLC, Putty, and SublimeText (and now also ObsidianMD) are the first things I will download to a new Windows PC.
XnView is great. Although I had to tweak the CSS to have a clean UX removing all the excess edges and separators and add dark background.
The built in photos app is quite good now, although it can't open apple heif files yet.
It should with the Microsoft HEIF plugin: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pmmsr1cgpwg?hl=en-us
Doesn’t work with “live” photos.
Thanks! Good to know.
It is very much present tense at least to me. It’s among the first programs on all new Windows machines that I set up.
Plus, there are Windows Store and portable versions which help to use it on otherwise locked-down company computers.
Plus, there are Windows Store and portable versions which help to use it on otherwise locked-down company computers.
I was like this too. I moved away from windows machines (to Linux) for good in 2019 though so now I don’t use it.
If I had to go back it would def be one the first I installed.
If I had to go back it would def be one the first I installed.
Most people look at images via browser these days.
Who cares what 'most people do'? Why are we constantly resorting to this tired refrain of "majority rules"? Have you all forgotten that niche things exist?
> Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense?
> Who cares what 'most people do'?
Someone trying to understand why _most_ comments reflect a certain behaviour is, by definition, someone who cares about understanding what "what most people do".
> Who cares what 'most people do'?
Someone trying to understand why _most_ comments reflect a certain behaviour is, by definition, someone who cares about understanding what "what most people do".
>Who cares what 'most people do'?
Democracy and economics.
>Why are we constantly resorting to this tired refrain of "majority rules"?
It's not constantly, it's the answer to this question. Why are you getting your knickers in a twist?
In this case he gave the answer to the question of why Irfan view isn't popular anymore and the answer is because the majority of people have moved on.
It's not something he decided or that he can change, it's just the fact and he's reported it to you. The fact that you don't like the reality, is your own issue.
Democracy and economics.
>Why are we constantly resorting to this tired refrain of "majority rules"?
It's not constantly, it's the answer to this question. Why are you getting your knickers in a twist?
In this case he gave the answer to the question of why Irfan view isn't popular anymore and the answer is because the majority of people have moved on.
It's not something he decided or that he can change, it's just the fact and he's reported it to you. The fact that you don't like the reality, is your own issue.
Niche things by definition are less popular. In my grandparent comment I was explaining why standalone image viewers are less popular. Looks like we agree.
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"...via browser these days."
'Most people' = LCD/lowest common denominator.
If one doesn't mind grovelling around at the bottom then that's fine.
'Most people' = LCD/lowest common denominator.
If one doesn't mind grovelling around at the bottom then that's fine.
This seems unnecessarily harsh.
It may be, but by whose or what standard?
We are now in an age where expected norms in society are such that the slightest criticism of anyone—even if justified—is taken as offensive by both the recipient and by onlookers.
Unfortunately, keeping mum and not saying anything just lets people off the hook, they no longer have to justify their actions either to themselves or anyone else. In fact, I'd argue that in recent years the trend has gotten so bad and out of hand that it's having a very noticeable negative impact on society.
Clearly, I'm older than you, when I was younger this comment would have hardly raised an eyebrow (right, I'm old enough to have noticed this societal change and the negative impact it's had).
When I was at school we were actively taught to ignore unwarranted critism, and even if it were justified to consider carefully what was actually said before responding. In fact, the old adage that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was drummed into us kids at a very early age (in infants school). Can you imagin teachers teaching that today? I'd reckon they'd likely be lynched.
Now, what's the situation nowadays when kids are no longer taught how to develop and strengthen their resilience? Well, one only has to look at the fallout on social media. Now we have kids taking such great offense at something someone has said to them and they're getting upset to such an extent that some even resort to suicide. (When I was a kid suicide was something that only adults with disturbed minds did—never kids or teenagers, it was unheard of. No doubt there were isolated instances but we kids never heard of them.)
We are now in an age where expected norms in society are such that the slightest criticism of anyone—even if justified—is taken as offensive by both the recipient and by onlookers.
Unfortunately, keeping mum and not saying anything just lets people off the hook, they no longer have to justify their actions either to themselves or anyone else. In fact, I'd argue that in recent years the trend has gotten so bad and out of hand that it's having a very noticeable negative impact on society.
Clearly, I'm older than you, when I was younger this comment would have hardly raised an eyebrow (right, I'm old enough to have noticed this societal change and the negative impact it's had).
When I was at school we were actively taught to ignore unwarranted critism, and even if it were justified to consider carefully what was actually said before responding. In fact, the old adage that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was drummed into us kids at a very early age (in infants school). Can you imagin teachers teaching that today? I'd reckon they'd likely be lynched.
Now, what's the situation nowadays when kids are no longer taught how to develop and strengthen their resilience? Well, one only has to look at the fallout on social media. Now we have kids taking such great offense at something someone has said to them and they're getting upset to such an extent that some even resort to suicide. (When I was a kid suicide was something that only adults with disturbed minds did—never kids or teenagers, it was unheard of. No doubt there were isolated instances but we kids never heard of them.)
I prefer JPEGView on Windows. What do you think is the best alternative for Linux?
I have not found a faster image viewer on Linux than 'feh'. And I've tried a lot.
Just saw this mentioned above, might as well ask here: why? It looks to only support a small fraction of features.
It opens instantly. It shows just the image by default (no toolbars, scroll bars, menu bars, or status bars). I can disable linear interpolation with F3 and show width/height of an image with F2. It zooms with the scroll wheel, pans by dragging, and it lets me go to the next, previous, first, and last image of a directory instantly, and doing that won't resize the window.
I suppose the key difference is that some people want just a read-only image viewer that traverses a directory, while others want a photo viewer, or image metadata editor, or photo management system. I haven't used Windows' default image viewer in ages, but I recall when I used it, rotating an image actually rotated the image, as in it changed the orientation header of JPEG files and rewrote the files. This is why I have trust issues. If even image viewers can't just view the image, how can I possibly trust the software that drives cars, flies planes, or does the banking?
I suppose the key difference is that some people want just a read-only image viewer that traverses a directory, while others want a photo viewer, or image metadata editor, or photo management system. I haven't used Windows' default image viewer in ages, but I recall when I used it, rotating an image actually rotated the image, as in it changed the orientation header of JPEG files and rewrote the files. This is why I have trust issues. If even image viewers can't just view the image, how can I possibly trust the software that drives cars, flies planes, or does the banking?
> I suppose the key difference is
Not really the difference in context of IrfanView which is also just an image viewer.
I tried JpegView, but it’s lacking several features I use in IV, and stuff I commonly do in IV is harder to do, so for me IV is a clear and easy winner. Performance is a little better, but not in a way I’d actually care about (mainly superfast skipping through images is slightly faster)
Not really the difference in context of IrfanView which is also just an image viewer.
I tried JpegView, but it’s lacking several features I use in IV, and stuff I commonly do in IV is harder to do, so for me IV is a clear and easy winner. Performance is a little better, but not in a way I’d actually care about (mainly superfast skipping through images is slightly faster)
Could you tell me which features do you use in IrfanView that JpegView lacks?
Just from memory as I uninstalled it already:
* Settings in one place, that way I could have probably easily found out how to remove the annoying zoom-features.
* Batch conversion
* Slideshow: Add files/folders, not just a textfile or folder
* Slideshow: More options in general, e.g. random or unique random.
* Settings in one place, that way I could have probably easily found out how to remove the annoying zoom-features.
* Batch conversion
* Slideshow: Add files/folders, not just a textfile or folder
* Slideshow: More options in general, e.g. random or unique random.
Thanks. I never use the slideshow features so I guess I didn't notice.
I do think it's odd to expect an image viewer to be able to do batch conversion, though. That's what I meant by a read-only image viewer.
I do think it's odd to expect an image viewer to be able to do batch conversion, though. That's what I meant by a read-only image viewer.
It does support batch rename, though. And generally I want to resize images while looking at them, and not go elsewhere for that. But only when I want it to, no automation.
It's faster to load images
It's not.
Alternative?
The built-in viewer in windows is fine. I can't really think of a feature that it doesn't have that I need. Could you say why irfanview gets your vote?
The speed, plugins ecosystem, many more formats supported out of the box, crop being faster and more intuitive, often good enough auto adjust.
Irfan for images and vlc for video is the name of the game for me (and total commander for file management, the efficiency compared to simpler stuff is still in wow territory).
Irfan for images and vlc for video is the name of the game for me (and total commander for file management, the efficiency compared to simpler stuff is still in wow territory).
It's about speed mostly. And I got used to the shortcuts, ctrl+r to resize, 'i' to check image metadata. I don't really use any of the editing features (I use Paint.NET for edits).
In theory I don't need a dedicated image viewer but I like IrfanView so much that I even paid for it so I can have it on company's laptop.
Install it and you'll see within 5-10 minutes the next time you have go through a bunch of images, or do something to a bunch of images.
IrfanView likely still supports more formats, since it was earlier than any other tool. This means any edge cases in file encoding that might not work, or render ideally likely has been solved there first.
It probably has some batch file conversion tricks in it too.
IrfanView also provided for free for a lot of years what was hard to get without paying. If it existed on mac I'd be all over it.
Ah, the windows viewer always wasn't that good.
And if I remember the big first improvement of it was copying a lot of IrfanView.
Since this post, I remembered another old friend that was excellent on windows, AcdSEE. Also worth looking into.
IrfanView likely still supports more formats, since it was earlier than any other tool. This means any edge cases in file encoding that might not work, or render ideally likely has been solved there first.
It probably has some batch file conversion tricks in it too.
IrfanView also provided for free for a lot of years what was hard to get without paying. If it existed on mac I'd be all over it.
Ah, the windows viewer always wasn't that good.
And if I remember the big first improvement of it was copying a lot of IrfanView.
Since this post, I remembered another old friend that was excellent on windows, AcdSEE. Also worth looking into.
The batch image manipulation features it offers are pretty handy. Plus you can press L or R to rotate an image and it has lossless rotate options as well.
It's also a paint tool (edit->show paint dialog), and does tricks like swapping channels or repeating the image as a grid of tiles, which are handy when programming something involving raster graphics or textures.
FastPictureViewer
Because many HN readers have moved on from Windows.
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Ah, the nostalgia when Windows what so shitty that you actually needed a tool for the simplest of the simplest tasks of viewing images in all kinds of formats.
I see no need for it for myself as even Windows has a default image viewer that is enough for me and I mainly use Linux anyway and every decent distro comes with a tool for that. Gnome and KDE both have their own that fit into the DE perfectly.
I see no need for it for myself as even Windows has a default image viewer that is enough for me and I mainly use Linux anyway and every decent distro comes with a tool for that. Gnome and KDE both have their own that fit into the DE perfectly.
Good to hear your smug, self-satisfaction is keeping you warm, but anyone who thinks this is comparable to the default image viewer in Windows (even windows 30+ years after IrfanView) is out of sync.
Next time, try to not let your brain shut off when you read something you do not like. I never said it's comparable. I said it's enough FOR ME, I do not need anything like that. Likewise, I do not even know what the windows' viewer can do, I think it can rotate and save in a different format. I do not even need to rotate. I just need to view images, and if I really need to edit images I would fire up GIMP or try out Krita, but I do not. We just fail to see the need, I either just VIEW images or I want to edit images both ends have excellent tools, I do not need some middle ground tool.
Literally everyone else in this thread said the exact same thing, they do not use it anymore because nobody needs it anymore.
Speaking of out of sync: Enjoy your self-satisfaction in using some ugly ass looking outdated software that has 100 functions you do not use.
Literally everyone else in this thread said the exact same thing, they do not use it anymore because nobody needs it anymore.
Speaking of out of sync: Enjoy your self-satisfaction in using some ugly ass looking outdated software that has 100 functions you do not use.
Windows is still shitty. Same way, I've been on Linux for more than a decade already. Windows at work still hugely sucks.
I still use IrfanView to this day. It's my Swiss knife for a lot of simple photo editing work (cropping, resizing, padding, text-adding, etc), batch-processing, and for browsing single photos through directories.
It's not just good, it's way faster than the bloated alternatives.
To top it off, IrfanView works beautifully on my Linux via Wine, and also on my Mac M1/M2 machines (and as a tool quicker than even Mac's own Preview). It's a primary install for me, whichever any platform I'm working on; and a software that's truly a gift to the world.