Free Digital Image Viewing and Editing with IrfanView

If you need to view your digital pictures, make modifications to your digital photographs, or burn a slideshow of pictures to a CD-ROM, then IrfanView will be a great addition to your free software library!

Free Software: IrfanView

Homepage: http://www.irfanview.com/

Developer: Irfan Skiljan

Optional PlugIns: http://www.irfanview.com/plugins.htm

IrfanView (pronounced Earfan-View) has been around for years, and it has always been my first choice for free image viewing. I take thousands of digital pictures every year, and I’m constantly emailing pictures to friends and family members. I send a lot of pictures, and my family saves many of these pictures onto their hard drives. I’ll often recommend IrfanView because it’s very simple to use when viewing pictures. It’s also extremely fast when displaying full-screen digital pictures, which is useful when older computers are involved.

Digital Image Manipulation

Viewing digital images is only the beginning of IrfanView’s capabilities. IrfanView also includes functions to cut, paste, or crop and image, as well as image rotation, resizing, and color modifications. I often find that my images need to be cropped and resized, and IrfanView makes the task easy!

Effects and Filters

IrfanView can remove red-eye with a single menu selection, or sharpen a photograph to enhance the final result (the sharpen feature is great for those cheap mobile telephone cameras!). It also includes many built-in effects, including blur, emboss, and pixelize. These effects can be selected with a mouse-click, or a built-in effects browser can be used to try the effect before applying it to the image. An undo feature is always available in case you make the wrong decision!

One unique capability of IrfanView is the integration of Adobe Photoshop 8BF filters. Although not all 8BF filters will work with 100% compatibility, I’ve found that most 8BF filters seem to operate extremely well. I often download free 8BF-compatible filters from popular filter websites and use them in IrfanView without a problem.

IrfanView is More Than a Viewer!

IrfanView’s functionality goes well beyond the typical digital image viewer. The IrfanView Options menu includes a ‘Send file by EMail…’ function, a built-in screenshot capture function (including the unique ability to capture the mouse in the screen shot!), and a multimedia player. The IrfanView multimedia player can load AVI video files and capture frames from the movie with a mouse-click!

Input and Output

IrfanView will open digital images directly from disk or import images from a TWAIN-compliant scanner. The scanner interface also provides a batch-scanning process that will load multiple pictures from a scanner in a single pass. There’s also a ‘Copy Shop’ option that will grab an image from a scanner and send it directly to a printer.

It’s also easy to create slideshows that include automatic slide advancements, music, and randomization options. The slideshows can be saved as an executable file for emailing to friends, or as an SCR-formatted screen saver! If Nero Burning ROM is installed (the full commercial version) and the Nero Plugin for IrfanView is added, IrfanView will burn the slideshow files to a CD-ROM as data files or in Video CD (VCD) format for use in a DVD player.

There’s so much more!

IrfanView also include hex editors, different viewing options, and much more! IrfanView is a great choice for simple digital picture viewing, but it also makes a very capable editing platform for cleaning up your digital pictures. If you need to view, edit, or share your digital library, then IrfanView is a great choice!