In these days where most things have been commercialised to the hilt, it's
always refreshing to come across a free piece of software that performs as
well as its pricey rivals. Irfanview has long been a shining example of such
a program, and I've been using the app for some time for perusing and
managing my ever-growing photo collection. Amazingly, since Bosnian developer
Irfan Skiljan released the image viewer back in 1996, he's generously kept
it free of charge in spite of its massive popularity. Perhaps even more
incredibly, the app still stands at just over 1Mb, bucking the trend of
programs that swell immensely as the feature updates go by. In fact, it's
Irfanview's slimline qualities that are its greatest asset, helping to make
it the fastest image viewer in the West. Images load almost instantaneously
when you click on them and you get rapid-fire results when cycling through a
directory of photos using the Back and Forward buttons. It's only when
you're flicking through vast amounts of images using the thumbnail viewer
that things get a bit slow, which could easily be remedied do with an
improved caching function. Another of Irfanview's crowd-pleasing talents is
its ability to handle an enormous range of different file formats, including
g, somewhat rarely, icon (.ico) files. Unlike many of its rival tools,
Irfanview doesn't try to impose itself as the default viewer for all image
types, giving you the option to specify the formats you wish to associate
with it for yourself. The program's functionality can be expanded by
installing plug-ins that allow Irfanview to open other file types, such as
movies and audio – again a unique feature among photo viewers. You also get
a smattering of basic editing features such as crop, rotate, flip and resize,
along with some bread-and-butter effects like blur and sharpen, plus a smart
crop function. Upon first try, many users might be put off by the somewhat
basic interface and the fact that it loads new images externally, rather than
within the GUI itself. Nevertheless this is a small sacrifice to pay for a
program that proves to be probably the quickest way to view images on your
PC.Download *IrfanView 4.32* in Softonic
