Top 8 Photo Viewers of 2022 | Articles | Photo, video, optics, Computer technology

Don’t have a stan­dard image view­er on your com­put­er? Or is it there, but can’t open some of the files? In this arti­cle, we have col­lect­ed the top 8 pho­to view­ers that deserve atten­tion. They will help you struc­ture all the images, view them and even edit them.

You can open images not only using stan­dard pro­grams. Pho­to: pasionmovil.com

Pho­to Gallery
Irfan­View
XnView
fast stone
Pho­toMAS­TER
Zon­er Pho­to Stu­dio
Movavi Pho­to Man­ag­er
Google Pho­tos

Photo Gallery

One of the best pro­grams for view­ing images of all for­mats. This is a prod­uct from the Russ­ian com­pa­ny AMS Soft­ware. The main advan­tages of the util­i­ty:

• free;
• com­plete­ly in Russ­ian — it is easy to under­stand the but­tons and tabs;
• works even on old and weak com­put­ers, on dif­fer­ent soft­ware (can be installed on Win­dows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP);
• sim­ple and intu­itive inter­face;
• you can not only view pho­tos and print them right from the pro­gram, but also improve image qual­i­ty — there is a built-in edi­tor. For exam­ple, you can increase the bright­ness, crop the frame, or straight­en the hori­zon;
• You can view pho­tos in nor­mal mode or as a slideshow. It is enough just to start this mode for the pic­tures to start flip­ping auto­mat­i­cal­ly;
• sup­ports 20 image for­mats. In addi­tion to pop­u­lar PDF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, you can open rare ones (MRW, ORF, RAF, EMF, TGA and oth­ers);
• weighs only 60 MB — you do not need a lot of disk space for instal­la­tion.

Pho­to Gallery is a util­i­ty for view­ing and edit­ing pic­tures. Pho­to: amssoft.ru

IrfanView

A very user-friend­ly appli­ca­tion for com­put­ers. One of the best free pho­to view­er. Before ver­sion 4.6 there was no Russ­ian lan­guage. But it has been added. Now Irfan­View can be down­loaded imme­di­ate­ly in Russ­ian (more than 20 lan­guages ​​are now avail­able).

The util­i­ty weighs very lit­tle — only 5 MB (almost does not take up disk space). And com­bined with speed, this is the best pro­gram for old PCs. For exam­ple, on which mod­ern and heavy­weight edi­tors do not start, or the mem­o­ry is almost com­plete­ly full.

Irfan­View can be installed on Win­dows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11. The pro­gram is free. It can open pho­tos in almost any for­mat (those that the util­i­ty exact­ly sup­ports are not­ed in the table at the end of the arti­cle)

The pro­gram can edit files. But it does­n’t have many tools. You can do basic things: crop the frame, rotate it, increase the bright­ness.

Irfan­View is an appli­ca­tion that can be run even on a weak com­put­er. Pho­to: wincore.ru

XnView

A handy pro­gram for view­ing and edit­ing pho­tos. There is a ver­sion for PC (Windows/MacOS/Linux) and smart­phones (Android/IOS). This is the only app in our top that is opti­mized for so many plat­forms.

There is a built-in edi­tor. You can: crop the pic­ture, add text, resize, add spe­cial effects. There are a lim­it­ed num­ber of fil­ters, you can­not cre­ate your own or add new ones.

Drag and Drop is a built-in func­tion that allows you to quick­ly sort all files by name, weight, cre­ation date, etc. A handy fea­ture is that the pro­gram can con­vert pho­tos from one for­mat to anoth­er (from the avail­able ones).

The only sig­nif­i­cant draw­back of the plat­form is that you can­not view PDF files.

Easy and con­ve­nient util­i­ty for view­ing pic­tures. Pho­to: carlseibert.com

fast stone

Anoth­er pro­gram for view­ing pho­tos and images in Russ­ian, which can be installed for free. She can not only open pic­tures, but also change their for­mat.

The user can view pic­tures in almost all exist­ing for­mats.

The edi­tor has many use­ful fea­tures: crop­ping, red-eye removal, retouch­ing (basic), resiz­ing, col­or cor­rec­tion, adding a per­son­al sig­na­ture. In the util­i­ty, you can make your own busi­ness cards.

You can use Fast­Stone to man­age files. The pro­gram is a bit like the usu­al “Explor­er”. You can sort pic­tures, add them to fold­ers.

Fast­Stone is able to inter­act with scan­ners and print­ers. For exam­ple, a scanned pic­ture will imme­di­ate­ly appear in this appli­ca­tion. And from it you can send a pic­ture “for print­ing” or even send it by mail.

Fast­Stone is a sim­ple file man­ag­er with image view­er. Pho­to: zav.ucoz.net

PhotoMASTER

A com­plete pho­to edit­ing pro­gram for view­ing and edit­ing pho­tos (in PDF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, RAW). The util­i­ty is com­plete­ly in Russ­ian, intu­itive. There­fore, even an inex­pe­ri­enced user will cope with it.

In the edi­tor, you can: change the expo­sure, sat­u­ra­tion, con­trast, sharp­ness, remove defects, improve the por­trait, add fil­ters.

The pro­gram is paid. There are 3 ver­sions:

• stan­dard — 693 rubles. Includes only basic func­tions (retouch­ing and delet­ing objects);
• pre­mi­um — 980 rubles. Basic func­tions + 100 effects and func­tions to improve land­scapes;
• pro — 1470 rubles. Basic and pre­mi­um fea­tures + back­ground replace­ment.

The license includes all sub­se­quent free updates.

Pho­toMAS­TER is a con­ve­nient edi­tor with the func­tion of view­ing pic­tures. Pho­to: rusgames.org

Zoner Photo Studio

You can down­load this pro­gram to view pho­tos and pic­tures on your com­put­er for free for 30 days. After that, you will need to buy a license (for 1 month or a year). The price is from 400 rubles.

The devel­op­er com­pa­ny posi­tions this pro­gram as a full-fledged replace­ment for Pho­to­shop and Light­room. To work with the pro­gram, you need a good PC (4+ cores, at least 4 GB of RAM, an Intel i3 proces­sor or high­er).

In the pro­gram, you can not only view pic­tures, enlarge them and reduce them, crop, rotate them. You can apply pre­sets, do auto-cor­rec­tion, detailed retouch­ing.

With Zon­er Pho­to Stu­dio, you can cre­ate pho­to­books, cal­en­dars, share pho­tos to the cloud and social net­works.

Zon­er Pho­to Stu­dio is a ver­sa­tile pro­gram for orga­niz­ing, retouch­ing and view­ing pic­tures. Pho­to: en.giveawayoftheday.com

Movavi Photo Manager

A sim­ple image view­er. It is paid, the price is 1,700 rubles per year. There is a ver­sion for both Win­dows and Mac. Its main task is to struc­ture pho­tos and open them.

This is a con­ve­nient mod­ern pho­to man­ag­er that auto­mat­i­cal­ly sorts pic­tures, col­lects them in fold­ers. Albums are cre­at­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly. For exam­ple, the util­i­ty can col­lect albums by the date of cre­ation of images, geolo­ca­tion. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence rec­og­nizes peo­ple in pic­tures. This allows him to col­lect fold­ers that con­tain pho­tos of cer­tain peo­ple.

The edi­tor has many func­tions: remov­ing the back­ground and indi­vid­ual objects, improv­ing image qual­i­ty, chang­ing bright­ness, con­trast, etc.

Impor­tant: the pro­gram can­not be run on a weak com­put­er. Sys­tem require­ments: Intel Core i5 proces­sor, RAM — from 6 GB, Win­dows 7 and high­er.

Movavi Pho­to Man­ag­er is a pro­fes­sion­al file man­age­ment and image retouch­ing soft­ware. Pho­to: dailysocial.id

Google Photos

Free pho­to view­er (almost all for­mats) for phone and com­put­er (PC). You can use the util­i­ty online (in the brows­er). Or install on PC, phone. On your smart­phone, you can enable auto-down­load. As a result, the pho­tos you take on your smart­phone or upload will be auto­mat­i­cal­ly saved in the vir­tu­al cloud.

To enable autoload, you need:

• go to the Google Pho­tos app;
• log into your account (enter your user­name and pass­word);
• in the upper right cor­ner, click on the cir­cle — the pro­file icon;
• go to “Set­tings”;
• select “Start­up and sync”;
• enable the fea­ture.

The appli­ca­tion has many advan­tages:

• free;
• saves space on your phone and PC (you can store every­thing in a vir­tu­al cloud);
• you can store pho­tos and videos;
• there is a small edi­tor (you can crop the pho­to, change the bright­ness) — but it will not replace a full-fledged pho­to edi­tor;
• all files are arranged in chrono­log­i­cal order, but you can cre­ate your own fold­ers. And move the pho­to there;
• some­times the appli­ca­tion makes fun­ny sur­pris­es. For exam­ple: “How it was” col­lec­tions with sev­er­al pho­tos tak­en in dif­fer­ent years, but on the same date and month.

Google Pho­tos is a sim­ple appli­ca­tion for PC and smart­phone. Pho­to: droidov.com

Com­pared all the pro­grams for view­ing graph­ic images in this table.