Photography is a very popular and effective way of expressing our precious moments. Photos are the best way to represent a slice of life to throw light on a significant aspect of the world. They have become a part and parcel of our lives, and we take pictures on a daily basis. Today, photography is not only a hobby but a career too. It has become a considerable source of income and we see a lot of photographers, bloggers and travellers earning through clicking pictures. They need to upload their works of art at various portals via a computer system, edit them and finally use them for a variety of purposes. Although Windows 10 does not have its own photo viewer tool, Microsoft replaced Windows Photo Viewer with the Photos app which undoubtedly has some nice features but many users are not totally satisfied with it. Therefore the users have to install a third-party photo viewer app to view and even edit their images.
Table of Contents
Comparative Study of the Best Photo Viewer Windows 10 Apps
Here’s presenting a compiled list of the best photo viewer windows 10 tools that are widely used by professionals –
1. HoneyView
HoneyView is an essential third-party image viewer, having features more or less similar to Windows Photo Viewer in terms of functionality. Additionally, it supports new file formats like GIF, PNG, etc.
It is an image viewer app that seems to be equipped with all the three basic coverages that a user finds in an ideal photo viewing tool – fast, free and having the support of a number of useful file formats as well as having all the configuration settings. The skinnable app supports slideshow and is integrated into the context menu.
It is ideal for comic lovers. It is quick and consists of all the necessary viewing and display options. It also supports formats like LZH/LHA, IP/CBZ, RAR/CBR, ALZ, TAR, HV3, 7Z and EGG. The images can be stretched, rotated, zoomed in or out as well as display two pages at a time. On a highly technical level, it allows the users to choose Bilinear, Bicubic or Lanczos methods and add additional effects like negative or gamma correction.
The users find it very comfortable to use because the files can be opened quickly. One can use it in the most effective way and easily navigate through images and comics.
Pros
- Simple user interface.
- Supports a wide range of formats.
- Multi-Monitor support
- High-quality Lanczos image interpolation filter for useful zooming.
- Faster and Quicker
Cons
- Lack of built-in editing tools
- No thumbnail viewer
2. IrfanView
IrfanView is a recommended third-party photo viewer app for Windows 10. The app has been named after its creator and founder, Irfan Sklijan. The software is very light, instinctual, and supports a wide range of graphic format base.
The app is optimized to provide high-quality performance with a 2MB footprint. It also has extra features like OCR support to read text on an image and convert it to an editable format. The users can also perform colour correction, add watermarks and text, or add amazing filters to their pictures. It supports an extensive range of formats like BMP, GIF, JP2 & JPM, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, RAW, FSH, ECW, EMF, ICO, PCX, PDF, PBM, PGM, Flash, TGA, Ogg, PPM and other text files.
Pros
- Lightweight and user-friendly
- Capable of handling extensive RAW formats and an adaptable file format base
- Supports 50 plugins and many more
- Multi-lingual support
- Batch processing
Cons
- Doesn’t come with the best user interface
- It makes the act of scrolling through folders really hard, as IrfanView always makes unnecessary efforts on opening a non-image file. Though the issue can be resolved in the Settings of the app.
3. FastStone Image Viewer
This is a lightweight image viewer app with multilingual support. It has so many user-friendly features like image viewing, editing and converting. The users can manage, compare, remove red-eye, resize, send emails, crop, retouch, and adjust the colours of the image. It has an innovative full-screen mode that provides accessibility to EXIF format, thumbnail browsing and primary functions through hidden toolbars. It pops up when the mouse touches any of the four edges on the screen.
It has so many additional features like a high-quality magnifier. It enables a musical slideshow with more than 150 effects including a lossless JPEG transition, image annotation, scan support, histogram, drop shadow effect and many more. It supports an ample range of formats like BMP, JPEG 2000, JPEG, animated GIF, PCX, PNG, PSD, EPS, WMF, ICO, TIFF, CUR and TGA. Along with that, it supports popular digital camera RAW formats like CRW, CR2, CR3, NEF, PEF, RAF, SRF, NRW, RWL, MRW, ORF, X3F, ARW, SRW, SR2, RW2 and DNG.
Pros
- Crystal clear and customizable single-click image magnifier
- Users can choose among eleven re-sampling algorithms while resizing
- Multi-level Undo capability
- Configurable batch processing to convert or rename small or large collections of image
- Capable of creating a totally configurable contact sheet
- Capable of creating artistic image montages
- Versatile screen capturing
- Supports dual-monitor configuration
- Supports dual touch interface
Cons
- The thumbnail generation is prolonged in this app
- Scrolling becomes slow at times
4. ACDSee Ultimate
This exceptional software has the ability to satisfy all your creative, graphic and photographic needs swiftly. ACDSee Ultimate is an advanced app combined with FPU-accelerated layers, world-class digital asset management and RAW editing. It comprises of features like HDR, focus stacking, blended cloning. It allows the users to create their own colour arrangements with improved facial recognition, extended control over text and layers and so many other features which provide flexibility to the users to create a composite, innovative and manipulative graphic that they fantasize about.
It has all the options that a pro editor would like to use. All these features are available in its paid version. The users can test the app using its trial version. This app supports a lot of formats like – PNG, BMP, JPG, PSD and GIF. Along with that, it supports almost all the raw file formats.
Pros
- It has High dynamic range imaging that is designed to achieve luminosity by merging multiple images.
- It has Focus stacking that adds depth of field in the image.
- It has improved face detection and facial recognition feature.
- Images can be viewed under zipped archives without extracting.
- Comes with FPU-accelerated layers.
Cons
- Not for beginners
- Free trial available only for 30 days
5. Nomacs
Nomacs is a free, open-source image viewer that offers an extensive range of features. It has a mosaic generation that overlays the database of an image based on histograms. It allows the viewers to see images in full-screen mode without any frame. One of the most distinctive features of this app is that it will enable the users to add notes to their picture while working on it. The software allows the extraction of multi-page TIFF files along with extracting media files from archives.
Nomacs offers a wide range of picture editing tools that automatically enhances the quality of the image, sharpen the images, rotate, flip, resize, crop, saturate, expose, adjust the hue and normalize the image. The software has the capability to read images in zipped files and preview MS office documents. It can support all the popular formats of images, including raw camera formats.
Pros
- It is easy to access and fast
- Unlike other software, it can open large images faster
- It provides a full screen and frameless image viewing option
- Several instances can be synchronized locally or over LAN
- It has cross-platform integration
- Capable of comparing multiple images
Cons
- Unclear zooming
- Some standard functions are assigned to unexpected menus
- Getting slower with updates
6. Apowersoft Photo Viewer
Apowersoft Photo Viewer is an exceptional best photo viewer for windows. It can be navigated easily by simply dragging a photo to the program window to open it. It consists of some basic editing options such as adding text, effects, resizing, rotating, deleting the unnecessary parts and many such features. It also allows users to take screenshots. It has a thumbnail gallery located at the bottom of the program window that helps to juggle between multiple photos. It also allows sorting your pictures by adding them as favourites.
The user can upload the images to cloud or any of their social media profiles right after they finish editing them. Apowersoft Photo Viewer supports HEIC image files. It is capable of viewing images in other common image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF and so on.
Pros
- It is super easy to install
- Supports multilingual user interface
- One can edit images and take screenshots
Cons
- This software sets itself as a default image viewer without asking for the permission of the users
- Does not read PDF files
How to set a default photo viewer?
The users who have upgraded from a previous version to Windows 10, they would see Windows Photo Viewer directly in the Default Apps menu under the Setting option. If you are the one who has installed Windows 10 from scratch need to follow these steps to set your preferred photo viewer as default.
- Download Windows photo viewer file.
- Extract and double click on the file named as “Activate Windows Photo Viewer on Windows 10″.
- Restart your device, and you will see that your favourite Windows Photo Viewer is there.
In case you want to deactivate, just click on the “Deactivate Windows Photo Viewer’’ on the Windows 10 file and again restart your system.
This is applicable to all other photo viewing tools as well.
Install a suitable photo viewer tool today and enjoy viewing, editing or sharing your favourite images.
