IrfanView

Reviewed by: Seth Rosenblatt on November 08, 2008

This image viewer and editor is a longtime favorite among our staff, and with good reason. IrfanView is simple, fast, and free for individual use. Upon installation, the app attempts to install two Google programs, but you can opt out.

The program lets you open and edit images, as well as multiple media formats. You can cut and crop images, apply batch conversions, add, sharpen, or blur effects, create panoramas, and change color modes easily. The program continues to add support for an array of file formats and has plug-in support for most image, video, and sound formats, including MP3, AVI, audio CD, and WMA. The interface is far from fancy but should be easy enough for most users to figure out. An IrfanView Thumbnails shortcut on the desktop offers an Explorer-like file tree that quickly displays all images in a particular folder. The latest version includes a basic drawing palette made accessible by hitting F12. It contains simple Erase, Draw, Fill, Rotate, Draw an Arrow, and Color Picker commands, perfect for grabbing screenshots and highlighting image specifics.

IrfanView does what it does well. It's not going to replace a major paint program, but why use a meat cleaver to cut a stick of butter?

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Publisher's description

From Irfan Skiljan:

IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. It supports file formats and features. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop, IPTC edit, capturing, lossless JPG operations, effects, ICC support, EXE/SCR creating, many hotkeys, command line options and plugins.

What's new in this version: Version 4.28 adds multipage image preview, video play-bar, new selection features, many new hotkeys, new command-line options

Read more: IrfanView - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com http://download.cnet.com/IrfanView/3000-2192_4-10021962.html#ixzz1IdrcQHl5