20 ms·

IrfanView

520 points by omnibrain 3y ago

antegamisou 3y ago
Along with ImageJ, that is open-source and has found use by researchers among many different disciplines, they're great examples of longstanding projects done right.
- buescher 3y ago
  ImageJ has roots (NIH Image) that predate Photoshop.
baobabKoodaa 3y ago
IrfanView is great, but I'm curious, why is it on top of HN today of all days? Was there something significant happening?
- huytersd 3y ago
  It happens every now and then. Could be as simple as nostalgia.
  - fuzztester 3y ago
    Like Delphi, FreePascal and Lazarus, though less often for those three than for IrfanView, and those three get a good number of sneers by modern ignoramuses, each time. The joke is on them, due to the amount of late night and weekend work (unpaid, often) that many of them have to pull, and tamely accept and try to justify, to save their egos and paychecks. "The emperor has no clothes" kind of thing ... And nowadays, layoffs, too ...
    - nrdvana 3y ago
      Delphi kicked ass. Though, looking back, it didn't have hash tables at your fingertips like modern languages. I really can't imagine writing code without hashmaps anymore. Did that ever get added, and in a convenient way that doesn't require declaring a new object each time?
      - nurettin 3y ago
        You could use TDictionary. It has been around since 15 years.
        nrdvana 3y ago
        Sadly by 2009 I'd moved on to a new job and didn't have much opportunity to use it. It didn't even have generics when I used it last. Looks like you have to allocate and free them manually though, which is less than I hoped for. I rather like the scripting languages where they are part of the syntax and seamlessly decode from JSON.
        fuzztester 3y ago
        No true Delphiman would say that ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
      - fuzztester 3y ago
        Good question. nurettin replied, sibling comment. But it's not difficult to write your own for simple map types at least, like with strings as the keys. Generic maps would be harder.
- thomond 3y ago
  There a post earlier regarding paint.net and people there mentioned irfanview.
meristohm 3y ago
Back when i used Windows, IrfanView was my go-to image viewer, downloaded along with SumatraPDF via ninite.com. There's something similar in the repositories in Software Manager on Linux Mint, and Pix is fuller-featured, but like Foobar2000 for music, I still miss IrfanView from time to time, probably because of muscle memory and being more impressionable back then. (There's almostt certainly a way to get these Windows programs running on LMDE, I just don't care enough to mess with it.)
- dean2432 3y ago
  There's a snap image of Foobar2000 for Linux which works very well :) My #1 music player.
- username923409 3y ago
  Have you looked at DeaDBeeF for a music player that has the foobar2000 aesthetic?
pestatije 3y ago
i use it to see .sid images...never found any other way to open those
- cess11 3y ago
  Is QGIS too bulky?
noufalibrahim 3y ago
One of those things you had to install on a new windows system.
- theoa 3y ago
  Still do
techknight 3y ago
In Windows it's still faster than anything else if you've copied an image to clipboard to open irfanview -> paste -> save, or to do a quick crop or whatever.
- respondo2134 3y ago
  for those increasingly rare times you want to print an image it's great too.
- verstandhandel 3y ago
  or just the batch mode ... very helpful and fast.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  Win + Shift + S
- Leftium 3y ago
  Directory Opus is a little faster: CTRL-P pastes anything (image, text; not sure what else) in clipboard to a file in current directory
respondo2134 3y ago
irfanview for images, vlc for videos, foobar for audio - so much better than anything bundled with windows since forever
- Pigalowda 3y ago
  And greenshot for snipping!
  - haunter 3y ago
    ShareX
  - ukuina 3y ago
    Careful, Greenshot phones home. Verified with a firewall restriction.
- pawelduda 3y ago
  Never could get into foobar... team winamp here
  - poisonborz 3y ago
    That is long dead, try AIMP, it even supports Winamp dsp-s.
    - Moru 3y ago
      The most important part of Winamp is the global keyboard shortcuts you can set up. I have been using wasd controls for my games and my player since forever. Well, since I found the global keyboard shortcuts in winamp... wasd for games, ctrl+shift+qewasd for play/pause/forward/backward/next/prev and so on. Don't need to switch window, don't need to move hand away from wasd. Can't live without it now even though I don't have so much playtime any more. Works just as well in any other environment.
  - theandrewbailey 3y ago
    Same. If I'm listening to music with something other than Winamp (and the default Classic skin), I feel weird.
esafak 3y ago
Windows was good for shareware developers because people had to buy utilities to like Irfanview to basically replace all the junk the OS shipped with. I eventually drop-kicked the whole OS and now life is good.
- Ringz 3y ago
  It's exactly the same for me. I've been using MacOS for 15 years, and just pressing the spacebar to see an image is a huge relief. I never had to install a simple image viewer on macOS. And if I did, xnView would also work, which I had installed on Windows before.
playingalong 3y ago
That's my first memory of a program with keyboard shortcuts not being the typical ones, but still usable and thought through. Enter/return to go full screen (or exit from full screen?).
instagraham 3y ago
Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  Because of a few things: 1. Windows 11 now ships with quite a decent and powerful image viewer/editor that covers most average users' use cases, therefore lowering the demand from people to go out of their way to find alternatives, like in the Windows XP days, which is a good thing (less likely to go download malware from the first Google result of "image viewer for Windows XP"). 2. PC usage behavior has changed a lot since then. Many people don't even have PCs at home anymore, and people now have most of their pics in the cloud or on their phone or some external NAS that comes with it's own browser viewer app, instead of hoarding them all on their home PC hard drive, further lowering the need to seek out dedicated image viewers to manage giant offline collections of digital camera pics(I mean I still do, but I'm a minority nowadays). These two factors combined meant the death of the third party PC image viewer app. Yeah, Irfan might be "the best", but the need for the best in this sector has declined significantly, and most users are now fine with "good enough".
  - typon 3y ago
    The "enshittification" of computing. The Windows 11 default Photo Viewer has probably 20% of the features of IrfanView - and the problem is that normal users don't know a better tool exists for free if they need those extra features. As the resident techie in my house I get asked by people to do simple things like overlay text in a certain style or print a photo with a particular resolution or print multiple photos etc. and these tasks are just harder or impossible with the default tools
    - broast 3y ago
      I'm guessing even if they knew the tool existed they would still rather ask you to do it. Not everyone wants to understand computers or download programs
Ekaros 3y ago
I wish I had corporate credit card... I could get myself copy for work...
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  I paid for a license because Irfanview is an excellent program I use every day. I also happen to use it at work, too.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
4MB to download the installer, back in the days when programs just did the thing they did and didn't include runtimes for entire virtual environments.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  An average PC also had 64-256MB of RAM instead of 8-32GB.
  - vitro 3y ago
    I told my friend once: - "I have 8MB of RAM" - "That's cool, imagine having 16..."
    - stevesimmons 3y ago
      My first computer had 3583 bytes of RAM...
      - Squeeeez 3y ago
        Were those 8-bit bytes?
        Minor49er 3y ago
        Is there any other kind of byte?
        hawski 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte > The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.[4][5][6][7] The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as syllables[a] or slab, before the term byte became common. > The modern de facto standard of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient power of two permitting the binary-encoded values 0 through 255 for one byte, as 2 to the power of 8 is 256.[8] The international standard IEC 80000-13 codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers commonly optimize for this usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit byte.[9] Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes, respectively. [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_ref-Buchholz_1956_1_4-0:~:text=used.%5B4%5D-,%5B5%5D,-%5B6%5D%5B7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_ref-Buchholz_1956_1_... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Rao_1989-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Rao_1989-6 [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7 [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_1993-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_... [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-CHM_1964-10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-CHM_1964-10
anta40 3y ago
IrfanView is one of my "must to have apps", going back to Win 98. For simple image editing (resizing, cropping etc) and batch processing, it's though to beat. Now I mostly work on macOS, and miss it. I guess XnView is close enough.
- WXLCKNO 3y ago
  Same, using it since 1998 (I was 9, 35 now). Any windows PC I use doesn't feel right without the irfanview logo somewhere.
- Ylpertnodi 3y ago
  I love(d) infan view, but just got used to (a portable version of) Xnview. I keep going back to irfan, but again - as much as it is an amazing piece of software, Xn for me.
donatj 3y ago
That’s a name I have not heard in a long while. I used to use it back on Windows 95 because it was a faster way to view JPEGs than opening Internet Explorer. Everything about that makes me feel old.
- 101008 3y ago
  I opened the link first and I kept a few seconds trying to remember what we had to use to open JPEGs and GIFs back then. Then I read your comment. Right, IE for images. What a fun world we lived on!
  - integricho 3y ago
    ACDSee 2.4 and 3.1 were similarly legendary and fast in both startup time and overall performance of image loading.
    - omnibrain 3y ago
      When ACDsee got bloated (and the shareware screen to nagging) I switched to IrfanView.
      - DrSiemer 3y ago
        ACDsee just kept getting worse until it just became unbearable. I did miss the image sorting abilities until I found PhotoSift.
        integricho 3y ago
        sadly it did, the 3.1 version was the last one that I remember as still not bloated, 4.x was already bad. But up until that, 1.x, 2.x, ..., they were great.
    - therealmarv 3y ago
      Also remember the times... I think ACDsee 2.3.x was a game changer on Windows systems with little memory back in the day... it was so fast and displayed partially on the fly. Btw I use a Mac nowadays and I get strong ACDsee vibes from open-source Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ https://blyt.net/phxslides/ with browsing through images with the mouse-wheel ;)
bxparks 3y ago
For quick cropping, rescaling, and batch processing, this is the BEST image editor on Linux (using Wine of course).
gedy 3y ago
Was a nice tool, but boy I hated seeing it's weird icon on every image files (before images had icon previews)
scotty79 3y ago
FastStone gang forever
pdntspa 3y ago
Still the best!
Dwedit 3y ago
I wish this program was either open source, or had a plugin API.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I think it must have some plugin API as it has plenty of plugins, but it seems for details you need to contact developer.
pentagrama 3y ago
Around 2000-2007 I used something similar to this one (Windows XP/7 times), I can't recall the name right now. Someone remember other popular image viewers at the time?
- hexagonwin 3y ago
  Maybe ACDSee?
  - dean2432 3y ago
    I found ACDSee to be better than IrfanView.
  - pentagrama 3y ago
    That one! Thank you. Nostalgia hit hard.
- ddon 3y ago
  Probably it was compupic or acdsee
- genewitch 3y ago
  graphic converter for mac OS. I'm still looking for a windows or linux image program that lets you do a slideshow and push a button to move/copy the current image to preset folders - for sorting images.
loughnane 3y ago
6MB feels so refreshing.
redder23 3y ago
Ah, the nostalgia when Windows what so shitty that you actually needed a tool for the simplest of the simplest tasks of viewing images in all kinds of formats. I see no need for it for myself as even Windows has a default image viewer that is enough for me and I mainly use Linux anyway and every decent distro comes with a tool for that. Gnome and KDE both have their own that fit into the DE perfectly.
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  Windows is still shitty. Same way, I've been on Linux for more than a decade already. Windows at work still hugely sucks.
- skeeter2020 3y ago
  Good to hear your smug, self-satisfaction is keeping you warm, but anyone who thinks this is comparable to the default image viewer in Windows (even windows 30+ years after IrfanView) is out of sync.
  - redder23 3y ago
    Next time, try to not let your brain shut off when you read something you do not like. I never said it's comparable. I said it's enough FOR ME, I do not need anything like that. Likewise, I do not even know what the windows' viewer can do, I think it can rotate and save in a different format. I do not even need to rotate. I just need to view images, and if I really need to edit images I would fire up GIMP or try out Krita, but I do not. We just fail to see the need, I either just VIEW images or I want to edit images both ends have excellent tools, I do not need some middle ground tool. Literally everyone else in this thread said the exact same thing, they do not use it anymore because nobody needs it anymore. Speaking of out of sync: Enjoy your self-satisfaction in using some ugly ass looking outdated software that has 100 functions you do not use.
andsoitis 3y ago
Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView Does anyone know what programming language it is made with? I did a cursory search but cannot find any information. Just curious.
- copperx 3y ago
  I don't know for sure, but C++ is always a good guess with that kind of software.
  - rav 3y ago
    I downloaded IrfanView and ran "strings" on the exe file, and one of the strings in there is "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library" - so that would point towards C++ (although it's not certain from that alone).
    - ninkendo 3y ago
      Yeah, Irfanview dates to a time when MS’s C compiler was horribly out of date (still stuck in C89 compatibility), and the only way to get remotely modern language features was to compile it as C++, even if you never used any C++ features. Everyone was programming in “C++” on windows back then even if they were basically writing C. So yeah, it’s C++ but that doesn’t necessarily tell you much, it could still very well be basically C.
refracture 3y ago
Still use it. It’s faster to open and move through photos than the windows built in one.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
Dear Irfan! Thank you very much. From myself (1995-...) and my father (1995-2003).
lencastre 3y ago
When I have a hundred million images scattered on my computer and I need to quickly see them, nothing like a good script to herd them in a plain txt file and piping it to irfanview! No fidgeting with sixels, bat, or any other gui application. Hands down the fastest way… IMHO.
- jeffreygoesto 3y ago
  feh is very fast as well. But it is only a viewer and does not edit. But under Linux it is my go-to viewer, also for cases like the one you describe.
knighthack 3y ago
I've been using IrfanView since at least 1997, if not earlier in 1996. I still use IrfanView to this day. It's my Swiss knife for a lot of simple photo editing work (cropping, resizing, padding, text-adding, etc), batch-processing, and for browsing single photos through directories. It's not just good, it's way faster than the bloated alternatives. To top it off, IrfanView works beautifully on my Linux via Wine, and also on my Mac M1/M2 machines (and as a tool quicker than even Mac's own Preview). It's a primary install for me, whichever any platform I'm working on; and a software that's truly a gift to the world.
- dean2432 3y ago
  For MacOS, I wonder if it's faster than XNView MP. This was the fastest image viewer I could find for Apple Silicon. Also are you running it through Wine on MacOS or how do you get it working?
  - therealmarv 3y ago
    Ever tried Phoenix Slides (open source, long history)? It's definitely faster than Preview for me on large images: https://blyt.net/phxslides/ https://blyt.net/phxslides/
    - dean2432 3y ago
      Never heard of it. Just threw some very highres jpeg2000 images at it and wow, i am blown away. It runs circles around XnView MP (and preview) on these!! Thanks :)
- zerkten 3y ago
  How do you get it on macOS?
  - millzlane 3y ago
    They're doing it via Wine.
  - 3y ago
CodeNest 3y ago
[dead]
flas9sd 3y ago
love that the author still uses the same dithered photos of Jajce, Bosnia - his hometown - as in Win9x days in the about page and website: https://www.irfanview.com/main_about.htm https://www.irfanview.com/main_about.htm .. make me want to visit. Edit: typo (thanks)
- shrx 3y ago
  Jajce, not Jacje. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jajce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jajce
  - lproven 3y ago
    I've been there. It's a lovely little city and the river through the centre has some large and very impressive waterfalls, right in the middle of the city. There's also a small church, underground, which was carved from solid rock rather than built. It's amazing. https://visitbih.ba/en/catacombs-the-mystical-site-built-600-years-ago/ https://visitbih.ba/en/catacombs-the-mystical-site-built-600...
colineartheta 3y ago
Maybe I’ll get some hate for this, but years ago when I worked at a civil engineering firm this was the default image viewer IT had mapped every image file to open with - it was a nightmare! Every coworker I had (myself included) would constantly complain about the number of times they had to change to [literally anything else]. There were three distinct things I remember we all hated: 1. The image never opened full size, the window was always small and you had to manually drag the window frame to make it viewable. 2. It didn’t “zoom in” when you used your mouse wheel correctly, it would instead cycle through all of the images open in the folder you were working in. 3. When you clicked the arrows at the top to flip through a group of photos in the folder you were in (I recall the keyboard arrow keys not working for this, too), once you reached the end it would go to a black “fake” image, that you then couldn’t arrow back. It didn’t just cycle through the images, you had to close the window and reopen the image you were on. Needless to say, I have zero fond memories of this program. Maybe these were nuances of our particular setup (many other such cases at that firm, sadly), but…eh, whatever. There’s better out there.
- airstrike 3y ago
  Those are all settings you could have changed yourself. IrfanView is the best image viewer on Windows, hands down.
  - _wqdq 3y ago
    Expressing a viewpoint necessitates a downvote?
    - baq 3y ago
      See also complaining about downvotes.
    - airstrike 3y ago
      Nothing wrong with expressing an opinion, and I'm not here to defend you against downvoters, but from my perspective it's an uninformed opinion. All of the "issues" you identified are really just preferences and the dev was kind enough to let you configure the app as you'd like. It would be impossible for the dev to create a set of custom settings that every user finds perfect, so your other comment about "hostile defaults" comes across as entitled The app is incredibly good. It does everything you could want, it's less than 10MB, blazing fast and easy to use. Super configurable. I used to have to fight with IT to have it installed or find a way to run some portable version just to have it at work. I can't speak for others, but I think if you had spent a little bit more time trying to figure out the solution to the issues you identify, you would have found the answer, but somehow you are instead blaming the dev, which is what IMHO warrants downvotes.
2-3-7-43-1807 3y ago
this ... and its text file counterpart ... Notepad++ ... glorious Windows 95. sounds strange but one reason why I'm now on Linux (Mint Cinnamon) is because I liked Windows 95 and XP so much. it's practically the same UI. no tile nonsense. a task bar. a start menu. a good ole desktop. beautiful. (and I also want to mention I did at least once donate to IrfanView / https://www.irfanview.com/main_support_engl.htm https://www.irfanview.com/main_support_engl.htm)
- davchana 3y ago
  I like that you can simply start a text file or files, and close the program, it will save the session without any exit dialogs.
grzeshru 3y ago
IrfanView shouldn’t be seen as a relic just because it’s “old”. Software like IV, Opus/Far just highlight how inadequate the OS provided tools for common navigation/viewing patterns are. Anyone who breaks through the “the computer is a magical box and I don’t understand any of it” barrier needs to have a manual tossed at them that covers this software right away. Nevermind gdb/WinDbg.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  TBF current photo viewer for Win11 is decent, and cover the basics pretty well. I reinstalled IrfanView from sheer nostalgia, and while it's still a good program, it doesn't handle pinch/zoom gestures as well as the default app. Same for editing, where IV has more features, yet core stuff like handwriting smoothing isn't as good. The biggest difference between "these days" and now is IMHO the wide availability of other tools to do more advanced stuff. For instance I remember batch processing features and export features in IV that I used a lot, but nowadays I'd do it in Imagemagick or GIMP. There is less need for a swiss army knife when the specialized tools are right there any time you need them.
omnibrain 3y ago
IrfanView has a nice feature where it can monitor a folder and always show the newest picture. I used that for a selfie-photo-station for my wedding. A little more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37219826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37219826 Another feature I use often ist to copy the current image to a preset location. I use that for quickly pre-sorting photos.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
buescher 3y ago
No one else misses Picasa?
- chrnola 3y ago
  Sometimes, but the differences in performance between the two were quite vast if I recall correctly.
  - buescher 3y ago
    I recall the same but the Picasa user experience has not been surpassed.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  I recall it being horrifically slow, and uninstalled shortly after.
creatonez 3y ago
I've found nomacs to be a good alternative: https://nomacs.org/ https://nomacs.org/ It hits the sweet spot when it comes to clipboard functionality -- You can either copy the image itself, or copy its path on the filesystem. Most image viewers only support one of these commands.
- saint11 3y ago
  Same here, it's cropping tool is the thing that makes it for me
devwastaken 3y ago
Irfanview is so fast that I don't need to convert image sequences to video format. I can just press and hold right arrow key. I do wish there was a way to limit the speed though.
n3storm 3y ago
I think I used it from 1997 till 2001, all years I owned a windows pc. And until 2005 at windows pc at work.
joshxyz 3y ago
this is the sumatra pdf of images
9witz 3y ago
Have used it since forever. Just used it today an hour ago. Usually to paste a windows screenshot and then do minor editing or cropping. Now windows has gotten a lot better, with the [WIN][Shift][s] shortcut (so cropping no longer is necessary). But that still misses a feature to quickly draw an arrow. Irfanview has that. Screenshot, crop, F12, put an arrow to point at something, copy, paste into Teams. So fast...
- lazyeye 3y ago
  Fastone Capture is my goto for this. Does everything including drawing etc. Excellent software.
mikl 3y ago
IrfanView. Now, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. Haven’t used that the last couple of decades. Interesting to see that it’s still around.
omgmajk 3y ago
I still use IrfanView to this day, all the way back since mid 90'ies. It's a fantastic piece of software with a great legacy and I wouldn't trade it for any modern photo software. So snappy and functional, works like a charm. With the plugins added to it you can open literally any image.
cromka 3y ago
IrfanView configured to open with space bar in WindowsCommander (as TotalCommander was called at the time) for a quick view. Name a more iconic duo.
agumonkey 3y ago
Still in https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/ selection view
FpUser 3y ago
I very much prefer FastStone image viewer
myfonj 3y ago
Also my daily driver for any bitmap-related operations. One little thing that became my muscle memory over the years is using it to view/edit/crop latest clipboard entry, most often screenshots, through simple hotkey (olden AutoHotkey) launcher with `/clippaste` command line parameter. ; open / view current clipboard in irfanView ; win alt i #!i::run,path\to\IrfanView\i_view32.exe /clippaste (Funny, totally forgot I still use 32 bit version.) There are lots of command line options available i_view32 provides.
pknerd 3y ago
I guess anyone who has used windows would have come across irfanview one way or another
UberFly 3y ago
Yes, we've heard of it. It's been around for 25+ years.
smusamashah 3y ago
There is also JPEG View which is really fast and simple image viewer for windows https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview (fork of unmaintained https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/) and another one vjpeg http://stereopsis.com/vjpeg/ http://stereopsis.com/vjpeg/ These are both small and fast image viewers, specially noticeable on very large images. We need a list/directory of fast tools like these, specially now when every tool is bloated by default.
mark-r 3y ago
Was there a special reason this was posted today? Irfanview has been around forever.
purplepatrick 3y ago
My dad introduced me to it after he started using it when it came out in 1996. It’s great, quick image editing. My only gripe with it is that cropping is unnecessarily convoluted…
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  > My only gripe with it is that cropping is unnecessarily convoluted… What are you talking about? Make a rectangular selection on the image (click and drag across the image), then CTRL+Y. Couldn't be easier.
  - HeckFeck 3y ago
    That shortcut is permanently burned into my muscle memory. I still instinctively hit Cmd + Y in Preview.app when meaning to crop.
dezsiszabi 3y ago
Great program, I use it to this day.
viksit 3y ago
i’ve been using irfanview since i was in grade 4? and it’s one of the first things i install on every laptop i’ve owned ever since.
maxlin 3y ago
I've used irfanview for more than 15 years now. Mostly for looking at pictures. It's plenty fast. Doesn't work super well with multimonitor and should just ignore non-image files though imho
ComputerGuru 3y ago
Great software but it isn’t color correct and has issues with embedded color profiles and conversion between color spaces.
therealmarv 3y ago
If somebody searching a good native Mac alternative I strongly recommend this fast open source image viewer (ignore the simple web page, software is great!): Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ https://blyt.net/phxslides/ It replaced the (abandoneware) Xee3 on my system.
movetheworld 3y ago
I personally like "FSViewer" way more. It's customizable, portable and free. It was my favorite software, which was replaced by "XYPlorer", which is a fileExplorer alternative. FSViewer link: https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm XYPlorer link: https://www.xyplorer.com/ https://www.xyplorer.com/
- theSuda 3y ago
  I tried the Irfan view but I am just more comfortable with FSViewer.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Always have to install Quicklook on my windows machines, too used to it on Mac https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
rgovostes 3y ago
Lest Mac users miss out on the nostalgia trip the Windows users are enjoying in this thread: Remember GraphicConverter? It's still around and actively developed. 32 years old! https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/ https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/
- genewitch 3y ago
  In this thread someone mentioned photosift which does the 1 thing i miss about graphicconverter - sorting while watching a slideshow and pressing buttons to copy to specified, arbitrary folders. downloaded, and testing soon. Long gone are the days where people would come to me asking if i could open some file, so the other uses i had for graphicconverter are gone too.
mcfist 3y ago
Some 15 years ago I wanted to contribute/fix bugs and asked the author if the sources are available. He answered yes, for $10000. Screw that guy, I wrote my own image viewer )
ktosobcy 3y ago
Tried to get into it many times but just couldn't and finally found XnView and it was awesome. Sadly after switching to mac it was no longer available and later on Qt version wasn't that good
YPPH 3y ago
Related question: Is there any way to view HEIC files on Windows without installing the extensions from the Microsoft Store, or dodgy proprietary software? Even Irfanview requires the former.
SillyHNDorks 3y ago
Uh, another noob one discovering an age-old, well known tool. Now post the link to its Wikipedia article!
FerretFred 3y ago
This is all-time favourite, indispensable graphics utility! I've used it for years and it's never let me down! If Irfan is reading this, can we pleeeeease have a native Linux version?
isodev 3y ago
I love IrfanView, have been using it since I started using Total Commander back in ... 2003? Have donated/purchased a licence several times for both projects.
iamthepieman 3y ago
Been using irfanview since i heard about it in college from a classmate. I've included it in a number of image processing pipelines when i just need a few simple modifications to a lot of images. Its faster than a number of libraries that do thr same thing
0cVlTeIATBs 3y ago
ACDSee old versions (2.6.1?) would preload the next image in memory while scrolling through a folder, making it extremely useful in the age of hard drives. It became bloated, but the only reasons to switch were for newer image formats, and sometimes .gifs would crash it. FastStone Image Viewer is the performant, slick image viewer I use now. IrfanView has some rough defaults like if you scroll to the end of a folder, a window pops up that you have to click away before you can scroll back. I use it all the time for simple editing, not viewing.
fagrobot 3y ago
Irfanview. For the people
riversflow 3y ago
I switched to FastStone image viewer several years ago after getting curious when I saw it on ninite and haven’t looked back. It virtually instantly displays even large JPEGs from a cold start.
reddit_clone 3y ago
The _only_ application I still miss years after moving to Mac osx.
sombragris 3y ago
A GPLv3 similar app for Windows, very useful, is ImageGlass: https://imageglass.org https://imageglass.org
- zimmund 3y ago
  For Linux users looking for something similar to IrfanView, nomacs is the closest I found to IrfanView since I moved away from Windows: https://nomacs.org/ https://nomacs.org/
asgrdz 3y ago
My list is a bit smaller, but has some overlap. For all platforms (Linux, Windows, MacOS): 1. Sublime Text & VIM (for all things text) 2. Firefox with tampermonkey & ublock origin (browsing 101) For Windows additionally and in general: 3. Everything (Uses it as my launcher and finder of everything on my computer) 4. Irfanview (must-have for everything image-related) 5. Classic Shell/Explorer (to get a usable winXP-like desktop) 6. Gamma Panel (Adjust brightness via keyboard shortcut presets) 7. O&O Shut Up (for same reason as you) 8. Autoruns (to disable all useless services & scheduled crap-ware in windows) 9. MSys (for linuxy everyday tools, can't work without 'em). 10. Conda (with opencv, torch ... for automation and graphics munging) 11. Winamp (For all things music consumption) 12. VirtualDub ("Irfanview" for Video) 13. MediaPlayer Home Cinema + ffdshow & LAV filters/splitter (Better VLC) 14. Avisynth (All things video processing) For Linux: 3. Irfanview (must-have for everything image-related) 4. Conda (for heavier automation than bash) 5. Wine + (Irfanview, Virtualdub, Avisynth) For Mac: 3. iTerm (for a usable terminal) 4 Homebrew (to get linux tools so I can work) 5. iStat Menu (to know what the heck my laptop is doing) 6. Conda (for automation) Mac's built-in brighness buttons serve sufficiently well as an alternative to Gamma Panel. (Haven't found a wine-variant for MacOS, so I have to make do with the shtty preview instead of irfanview. For Video stuff I'm forced to use Linux or Windows for via remote desktop). I wish there was cross-platform install bundle that contained: * Irfanview, Everything, Avisynth, Virtualdub, MPCHC with LAV filters ... wrapped up in whatever emulation layer suitable for the platform (cross-over/wine or whatever) If someone aims to create such, that'd be awesome :)

520 points by omnibrain 3y ago

Along with ImageJ, that is open-source and has found use by researchers among many different disciplines, they're great examples of longstanding projects done right.

buescher 3y ago
ImageJ has roots (NIH Image) that predate Photoshop.

baobabKoodaa 3y ago

IrfanView is great, but I'm curious, why is it on top of HN today of all days? Was there something significant happening?

huytersd 3y ago
It happens every now and then. Could be as simple as nostalgia.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  Like Delphi, FreePascal and Lazarus, though less often for those three than for IrfanView, and those three get a good number of sneers by modern ignoramuses, each time. The joke is on them, due to the amount of late night and weekend work (unpaid, often) that many of them have to pull, and tamely accept and try to justify, to save their egos and paychecks. "The emperor has no clothes" kind of thing ... And nowadays, layoffs, too ...
  - nrdvana 3y ago
    Delphi kicked ass. Though, looking back, it didn't have hash tables at your fingertips like modern languages. I really can't imagine writing code without hashmaps anymore. Did that ever get added, and in a convenient way that doesn't require declaring a new object each time?
    - nurettin 3y ago
      You could use TDictionary. It has been around since 15 years.
      - nrdvana 3y ago
        Sadly by 2009 I'd moved on to a new job and didn't have much opportunity to use it. It didn't even have generics when I used it last. Looks like you have to allocate and free them manually though, which is less than I hoped for. I rather like the scripting languages where they are part of the syntax and seamlessly decode from JSON.
        fuzztester 3y ago
        No true Delphiman would say that ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
    - fuzztester 3y ago
      Good question. nurettin replied, sibling comment. But it's not difficult to write your own for simple map types at least, like with strings as the keys. Generic maps would be harder.
thomond 3y ago
There a post earlier regarding paint.net and people there mentioned irfanview.

meristohm 3y ago

Back when i used Windows, IrfanView was my go-to image viewer, downloaded along with SumatraPDF via ninite.com. There's something similar in the repositories in Software Manager on Linux Mint, and Pix is fuller-featured, but like Foobar2000 for music, I still miss IrfanView from time to time, probably because of muscle memory and being more impressionable back then. (There's almostt certainly a way to get these Windows programs running on LMDE, I just don't care enough to mess with it.)

dean2432 3y ago
There's a snap image of Foobar2000 for Linux which works very well :) My #1 music player.
username923409 3y ago
Have you looked at DeaDBeeF for a music player that has the foobar2000 aesthetic?

pestatije 3y ago

i use it to see .sid images...never found any other way to open those

cess11 3y ago
Is QGIS too bulky?

noufalibrahim 3y ago

One of those things you had to install on a new windows system.

theoa 3y ago
Still do

techknight 3y ago

In Windows it's still faster than anything else if you've copied an image to clipboard to open irfanview -> paste -> save, or to do a quick crop or whatever.

respondo2134 3y ago
for those increasingly rare times you want to print an image it's great too.
verstandhandel 3y ago
or just the batch mode ... very helpful and fast.
t0bia_s 3y ago
Win + Shift + S
Leftium 3y ago
Directory Opus is a little faster: CTRL-P pastes anything (image, text; not sure what else) in clipboard to a file in current directory

respondo2134 3y ago

irfanview for images, vlc for videos, foobar for audio - so much better than anything bundled with windows since forever

Pigalowda 3y ago
And greenshot for snipping!
- haunter 3y ago
  ShareX
- ukuina 3y ago
  Careful, Greenshot phones home. Verified with a firewall restriction.
pawelduda 3y ago
Never could get into foobar... team winamp here
- poisonborz 3y ago
  That is long dead, try AIMP, it even supports Winamp dsp-s.
  - Moru 3y ago
    The most important part of Winamp is the global keyboard shortcuts you can set up. I have been using wasd controls for my games and my player since forever. Well, since I found the global keyboard shortcuts in winamp... wasd for games, ctrl+shift+qewasd for play/pause/forward/backward/next/prev and so on. Don't need to switch window, don't need to move hand away from wasd. Can't live without it now even though I don't have so much playtime any more. Works just as well in any other environment.
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  Same. If I'm listening to music with something other than Winamp (and the default Classic skin), I feel weird.

esafak 3y ago

Windows was good for shareware developers because people had to buy utilities to like Irfanview to basically replace all the junk the OS shipped with. I eventually drop-kicked the whole OS and now life is good.

Ringz 3y ago
It's exactly the same for me. I've been using MacOS for 15 years, and just pressing the spacebar to see an image is a huge relief. I never had to install a simple image viewer on macOS. And if I did, xnView would also work, which I had installed on Windows before.

playingalong 3y ago

That's my first memory of a program with keyboard shortcuts not being the typical ones, but still usable and thought through. Enter/return to go full screen (or exit from full screen?).

instagraham 3y ago

Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Rinzler89 3y ago
Because of a few things: 1. Windows 11 now ships with quite a decent and powerful image viewer/editor that covers most average users' use cases, therefore lowering the demand from people to go out of their way to find alternatives, like in the Windows XP days, which is a good thing (less likely to go download malware from the first Google result of "image viewer for Windows XP"). 2. PC usage behavior has changed a lot since then. Many people don't even have PCs at home anymore, and people now have most of their pics in the cloud or on their phone or some external NAS that comes with it's own browser viewer app, instead of hoarding them all on their home PC hard drive, further lowering the need to seek out dedicated image viewers to manage giant offline collections of digital camera pics(I mean I still do, but I'm a minority nowadays). These two factors combined meant the death of the third party PC image viewer app. Yeah, Irfan might be "the best", but the need for the best in this sector has declined significantly, and most users are now fine with "good enough".
- typon 3y ago
  The "enshittification" of computing. The Windows 11 default Photo Viewer has probably 20% of the features of IrfanView - and the problem is that normal users don't know a better tool exists for free if they need those extra features. As the resident techie in my house I get asked by people to do simple things like overlay text in a certain style or print a photo with a particular resolution or print multiple photos etc. and these tasks are just harder or impossible with the default tools
  - broast 3y ago
    I'm guessing even if they knew the tool existed they would still rather ask you to do it. Not everyone wants to understand computers or download programs

Ekaros 3y ago

I wish I had corporate credit card... I could get myself copy for work...

theandrewbailey 3y ago
I paid for a license because Irfanview is an excellent program I use every day. I also happen to use it at work, too.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

4MB to download the installer, back in the days when programs just did the thing they did and didn't include runtimes for entire virtual environments.

Rinzler89 3y ago
An average PC also had 64-256MB of RAM instead of 8-32GB.
- vitro 3y ago
  I told my friend once: - "I have 8MB of RAM" - "That's cool, imagine having 16..."
  - stevesimmons 3y ago
    My first computer had 3583 bytes of RAM...
    - Squeeeez 3y ago
      Were those 8-bit bytes?
      - Minor49er 3y ago
        Is there any other kind of byte?
        hawski 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte > The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used.[4][5][6][7] The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as syllables[a] or slab, before the term byte became common. > The modern de facto standard of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient power of two permitting the binary-encoded values 0 through 255 for one byte, as 2 to the power of 8 is 256.[8] The international standard IEC 80000-13 codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers commonly optimize for this usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit byte.[9] Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes, respectively. [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Buchholz_1956_1... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_ref-Buchholz_1956_1_4-0:~:text=used.%5B4%5D-,%5B5%5D,-%5B6%5D%5B7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_ref-Buchholz_1956_1_... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Rao_1989-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Rao_1989-6 [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-Tafel_1971-7 [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_1993-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-ISO_IEC_2382-1_... [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-CHM_1964-10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#cite_note-CHM_1964-10

anta40 3y ago

IrfanView is one of my "must to have apps", going back to Win 98. For simple image editing (resizing, cropping etc) and batch processing, it's though to beat. Now I mostly work on macOS, and miss it. I guess XnView is close enough.

WXLCKNO 3y ago
Same, using it since 1998 (I was 9, 35 now). Any windows PC I use doesn't feel right without the irfanview logo somewhere.
Ylpertnodi 3y ago
I love(d) infan view, but just got used to (a portable version of) Xnview. I keep going back to irfan, but again - as much as it is an amazing piece of software, Xn for me.

donatj 3y ago

That’s a name I have not heard in a long while. I used to use it back on Windows 95 because it was a faster way to view JPEGs than opening Internet Explorer. Everything about that makes me feel old.

101008 3y ago
I opened the link first and I kept a few seconds trying to remember what we had to use to open JPEGs and GIFs back then. Then I read your comment. Right, IE for images. What a fun world we lived on!
- integricho 3y ago
  ACDSee 2.4 and 3.1 were similarly legendary and fast in both startup time and overall performance of image loading.
  - omnibrain 3y ago
    When ACDsee got bloated (and the shareware screen to nagging) I switched to IrfanView.
    - DrSiemer 3y ago
      ACDsee just kept getting worse until it just became unbearable. I did miss the image sorting abilities until I found PhotoSift.
      - integricho 3y ago
        sadly it did, the 3.1 version was the last one that I remember as still not bloated, 4.x was already bad. But up until that, 1.x, 2.x, ..., they were great.
  - therealmarv 3y ago
    Also remember the times... I think ACDsee 2.3.x was a game changer on Windows systems with little memory back in the day... it was so fast and displayed partially on the fly. Btw I use a Mac nowadays and I get strong ACDsee vibes from open-source Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ https://blyt.net/phxslides/ with browsing through images with the mouse-wheel ;)

bxparks 3y ago

For quick cropping, rescaling, and batch processing, this is the BEST image editor on Linux (using Wine of course).

gedy 3y ago

Was a nice tool, but boy I hated seeing it's weird icon on every image files (before images had icon previews)

scotty79 3y ago

FastStone gang forever

pdntspa 3y ago

Still the best!

Dwedit 3y ago

I wish this program was either open source, or had a plugin API.

Ekaros 3y ago
I think it must have some plugin API as it has plenty of plugins, but it seems for details you need to contact developer.

pentagrama 3y ago

Around 2000-2007 I used something similar to this one (Windows XP/7 times), I can't recall the name right now. Someone remember other popular image viewers at the time?

hexagonwin 3y ago
Maybe ACDSee?
- dean2432 3y ago
  I found ACDSee to be better than IrfanView.
- pentagrama 3y ago
  That one! Thank you. Nostalgia hit hard.
ddon 3y ago
Probably it was compupic or acdsee
genewitch 3y ago
graphic converter for mac OS. I'm still looking for a windows or linux image program that lets you do a slideshow and push a button to move/copy the current image to preset folders - for sorting images.

loughnane 3y ago

6MB feels so refreshing.

redder23 3y ago

Ah, the nostalgia when Windows what so shitty that you actually needed a tool for the simplest of the simplest tasks of viewing images in all kinds of formats. I see no need for it for myself as even Windows has a default image viewer that is enough for me and I mainly use Linux anyway and every decent distro comes with a tool for that. Gnome and KDE both have their own that fit into the DE perfectly.

cynicalsecurity 3y ago
Windows is still shitty. Same way, I've been on Linux for more than a decade already. Windows at work still hugely sucks.
skeeter2020 3y ago
Good to hear your smug, self-satisfaction is keeping you warm, but anyone who thinks this is comparable to the default image viewer in Windows (even windows 30+ years after IrfanView) is out of sync.
- redder23 3y ago
  Next time, try to not let your brain shut off when you read something you do not like. I never said it's comparable. I said it's enough FOR ME, I do not need anything like that. Likewise, I do not even know what the windows' viewer can do, I think it can rotate and save in a different format. I do not even need to rotate. I just need to view images, and if I really need to edit images I would fire up GIMP or try out Krita, but I do not. We just fail to see the need, I either just VIEW images or I want to edit images both ends have excellent tools, I do not need some middle ground tool. Literally everyone else in this thread said the exact same thing, they do not use it anymore because nobody needs it anymore. Speaking of out of sync: Enjoy your self-satisfaction in using some ugly ass looking outdated software that has 100 functions you do not use.

andsoitis 3y ago

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView Does anyone know what programming language it is made with? I did a cursory search but cannot find any information. Just curious.

copperx 3y ago
I don't know for sure, but C++ is always a good guess with that kind of software.
- rav 3y ago
  I downloaded IrfanView and ran "strings" on the exe file, and one of the strings in there is "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library" - so that would point towards C++ (although it's not certain from that alone).
  - ninkendo 3y ago
    Yeah, Irfanview dates to a time when MS’s C compiler was horribly out of date (still stuck in C89 compatibility), and the only way to get remotely modern language features was to compile it as C++, even if you never used any C++ features. Everyone was programming in “C++” on windows back then even if they were basically writing C. So yeah, it’s C++ but that doesn’t necessarily tell you much, it could still very well be basically C.

refracture 3y ago

Still use it. It’s faster to open and move through photos than the windows built in one.

justsomehnguy 3y ago

Dear Irfan! Thank you very much. From myself (1995-...) and my father (1995-2003).

lencastre 3y ago

When I have a hundred million images scattered on my computer and I need to quickly see them, nothing like a good script to herd them in a plain txt file and piping it to irfanview! No fidgeting with sixels, bat, or any other gui application. Hands down the fastest way… IMHO.

jeffreygoesto 3y ago
feh is very fast as well. But it is only a viewer and does not edit. But under Linux it is my go-to viewer, also for cases like the one you describe.

knighthack 3y ago

I've been using IrfanView since at least 1997, if not earlier in 1996. I still use IrfanView to this day. It's my Swiss knife for a lot of simple photo editing work (cropping, resizing, padding, text-adding, etc), batch-processing, and for browsing single photos through directories. It's not just good, it's way faster than the bloated alternatives. To top it off, IrfanView works beautifully on my Linux via Wine, and also on my Mac M1/M2 machines (and as a tool quicker than even Mac's own Preview). It's a primary install for me, whichever any platform I'm working on; and a software that's truly a gift to the world.

dean2432 3y ago
For MacOS, I wonder if it's faster than XNView MP. This was the fastest image viewer I could find for Apple Silicon. Also are you running it through Wine on MacOS or how do you get it working?
- therealmarv 3y ago
  Ever tried Phoenix Slides (open source, long history)? It's definitely faster than Preview for me on large images: https://blyt.net/phxslides/ https://blyt.net/phxslides/
  - dean2432 3y ago
    Never heard of it. Just threw some very highres jpeg2000 images at it and wow, i am blown away. It runs circles around XnView MP (and preview) on these!! Thanks :)
zerkten 3y ago
How do you get it on macOS?
- millzlane 3y ago
  They're doing it via Wine.
- 3y ago

CodeNest 3y ago

[dead]

flas9sd 3y ago

love that the author still uses the same dithered photos of Jajce, Bosnia - his hometown - as in Win9x days in the about page and website: https://www.irfanview.com/main_about.htm https://www.irfanview.com/main_about.htm .. make me want to visit. Edit: typo (thanks)

shrx 3y ago
Jajce, not Jacje. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jajce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jajce
- lproven 3y ago
  I've been there. It's a lovely little city and the river through the centre has some large and very impressive waterfalls, right in the middle of the city. There's also a small church, underground, which was carved from solid rock rather than built. It's amazing. https://visitbih.ba/en/catacombs-the-mystical-site-built-600-years-ago/ https://visitbih.ba/en/catacombs-the-mystical-site-built-600...

colineartheta 3y ago

Maybe I’ll get some hate for this, but years ago when I worked at a civil engineering firm this was the default image viewer IT had mapped every image file to open with - it was a nightmare! Every coworker I had (myself included) would constantly complain about the number of times they had to change to [literally anything else]. There were three distinct things I remember we all hated: 1. The image never opened full size, the window was always small and you had to manually drag the window frame to make it viewable. 2. It didn’t “zoom in” when you used your mouse wheel correctly, it would instead cycle through all of the images open in the folder you were working in. 3. When you clicked the arrows at the top to flip through a group of photos in the folder you were in (I recall the keyboard arrow keys not working for this, too), once you reached the end it would go to a black “fake” image, that you then couldn’t arrow back. It didn’t just cycle through the images, you had to close the window and reopen the image you were on. Needless to say, I have zero fond memories of this program. Maybe these were nuances of our particular setup (many other such cases at that firm, sadly), but…eh, whatever. There’s better out there.

airstrike 3y ago
Those are all settings you could have changed yourself. IrfanView is the best image viewer on Windows, hands down.
- _wqdq 3y ago
  Expressing a viewpoint necessitates a downvote?
  - baq 3y ago
    See also complaining about downvotes.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    Nothing wrong with expressing an opinion, and I'm not here to defend you against downvoters, but from my perspective it's an uninformed opinion. All of the "issues" you identified are really just preferences and the dev was kind enough to let you configure the app as you'd like. It would be impossible for the dev to create a set of custom settings that every user finds perfect, so your other comment about "hostile defaults" comes across as entitled The app is incredibly good. It does everything you could want, it's less than 10MB, blazing fast and easy to use. Super configurable. I used to have to fight with IT to have it installed or find a way to run some portable version just to have it at work. I can't speak for others, but I think if you had spent a little bit more time trying to figure out the solution to the issues you identify, you would have found the answer, but somehow you are instead blaming the dev, which is what IMHO warrants downvotes.

2-3-7-43-1807 3y ago

this ... and its text file counterpart ... Notepad++ ... glorious Windows 95. sounds strange but one reason why I'm now on Linux (Mint Cinnamon) is because I liked Windows 95 and XP so much. it's practically the same UI. no tile nonsense. a task bar. a start menu. a good ole desktop. beautiful. (and I also want to mention I did at least once donate to IrfanView / https://www.irfanview.com/main_support_engl.htm https://www.irfanview.com/main_support_engl.htm)

davchana 3y ago
I like that you can simply start a text file or files, and close the program, it will save the session without any exit dialogs.

grzeshru 3y ago

IrfanView shouldn’t be seen as a relic just because it’s “old”. Software like IV, Opus/Far just highlight how inadequate the OS provided tools for common navigation/viewing patterns are. Anyone who breaks through the “the computer is a magical box and I don’t understand any of it” barrier needs to have a manual tossed at them that covers this software right away. Nevermind gdb/WinDbg.

makeitdouble 3y ago
TBF current photo viewer for Win11 is decent, and cover the basics pretty well. I reinstalled IrfanView from sheer nostalgia, and while it's still a good program, it doesn't handle pinch/zoom gestures as well as the default app. Same for editing, where IV has more features, yet core stuff like handwriting smoothing isn't as good. The biggest difference between "these days" and now is IMHO the wide availability of other tools to do more advanced stuff. For instance I remember batch processing features and export features in IV that I used a lot, but nowadays I'd do it in Imagemagick or GIMP. There is less need for a swiss army knife when the specialized tools are right there any time you need them.

omnibrain 3y ago

IrfanView has a nice feature where it can monitor a folder and always show the newest picture. I used that for a selfie-photo-station for my wedding. A little more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37219826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37219826 Another feature I use often ist to copy the current image to a preset location. I use that for quickly pre-sorting photos.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

buescher 3y ago

No one else misses Picasa?

chrnola 3y ago
Sometimes, but the differences in performance between the two were quite vast if I recall correctly.
- buescher 3y ago
  I recall the same but the Picasa user experience has not been surpassed.
Modified3019 3y ago
I recall it being horrifically slow, and uninstalled shortly after.

creatonez 3y ago

I've found nomacs to be a good alternative: https://nomacs.org/ https://nomacs.org/ It hits the sweet spot when it comes to clipboard functionality -- You can either copy the image itself, or copy its path on the filesystem. Most image viewers only support one of these commands.

saint11 3y ago
Same here, it's cropping tool is the thing that makes it for me

devwastaken 3y ago

Irfanview is so fast that I don't need to convert image sequences to video format. I can just press and hold right arrow key. I do wish there was a way to limit the speed though.

n3storm 3y ago

I think I used it from 1997 till 2001, all years I owned a windows pc. And until 2005 at windows pc at work.

joshxyz 3y ago

this is the sumatra pdf of images

9witz 3y ago

Have used it since forever. Just used it today an hour ago. Usually to paste a windows screenshot and then do minor editing or cropping. Now windows has gotten a lot better, with the [WIN][Shift][s] shortcut (so cropping no longer is necessary). But that still misses a feature to quickly draw an arrow. Irfanview has that. Screenshot, crop, F12, put an arrow to point at something, copy, paste into Teams. So fast...

lazyeye 3y ago
Fastone Capture is my goto for this. Does everything including drawing etc. Excellent software.

mikl 3y ago

IrfanView. Now, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. Haven’t used that the last couple of decades. Interesting to see that it’s still around.

omgmajk 3y ago

I still use IrfanView to this day, all the way back since mid 90'ies. It's a fantastic piece of software with a great legacy and I wouldn't trade it for any modern photo software. So snappy and functional, works like a charm. With the plugins added to it you can open literally any image.

cromka 3y ago

IrfanView configured to open with space bar in WindowsCommander (as TotalCommander was called at the time) for a quick view. Name a more iconic duo.

agumonkey 3y ago

Still in https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/ selection view

FpUser 3y ago

I very much prefer FastStone image viewer

myfonj 3y ago

Also my daily driver for any bitmap-related operations. One little thing that became my muscle memory over the years is using it to view/edit/crop latest clipboard entry, most often screenshots, through simple hotkey (olden AutoHotkey) launcher with `/clippaste` command line parameter. ; open / view current clipboard in irfanView ; win alt i #!i::run,path\to\IrfanView\i_view32.exe /clippaste (Funny, totally forgot I still use 32 bit version.) There are lots of command line options available i_view32 provides.

pknerd 3y ago

I guess anyone who has used windows would have come across irfanview one way or another

UberFly 3y ago

Yes, we've heard of it. It's been around for 25+ years.

smusamashah 3y ago

There is also JPEG View which is really fast and simple image viewer for windows https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview (fork of unmaintained https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/) and another one vjpeg http://stereopsis.com/vjpeg/ http://stereopsis.com/vjpeg/ These are both small and fast image viewers, specially noticeable on very large images. We need a list/directory of fast tools like these, specially now when every tool is bloated by default.

mark-r 3y ago

Was there a special reason this was posted today? Irfanview has been around forever.

purplepatrick 3y ago

My dad introduced me to it after he started using it when it came out in 1996. It’s great, quick image editing. My only gripe with it is that cropping is unnecessarily convoluted…

theandrewbailey 3y ago
> My only gripe with it is that cropping is unnecessarily convoluted… What are you talking about? Make a rectangular selection on the image (click and drag across the image), then CTRL+Y. Couldn't be easier.
- HeckFeck 3y ago
  That shortcut is permanently burned into my muscle memory. I still instinctively hit Cmd + Y in Preview.app when meaning to crop.

dezsiszabi 3y ago

Great program, I use it to this day.

viksit 3y ago

i’ve been using irfanview since i was in grade 4? and it’s one of the first things i install on every laptop i’ve owned ever since.

maxlin 3y ago

I've used irfanview for more than 15 years now. Mostly for looking at pictures. It's plenty fast. Doesn't work super well with multimonitor and should just ignore non-image files though imho

ComputerGuru 3y ago

Great software but it isn’t color correct and has issues with embedded color profiles and conversion between color spaces.

therealmarv 3y ago

If somebody searching a good native Mac alternative I strongly recommend this fast open source image viewer (ignore the simple web page, software is great!): Phoenix Slides https://blyt.net/phxslides/ https://blyt.net/phxslides/ It replaced the (abandoneware) Xee3 on my system.

movetheworld 3y ago

I personally like "FSViewer" way more. It's customizable, portable and free. It was my favorite software, which was replaced by "XYPlorer", which is a fileExplorer alternative. FSViewer link: https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm XYPlorer link: https://www.xyplorer.com/ https://www.xyplorer.com/

theSuda 3y ago
I tried the Irfan view but I am just more comfortable with FSViewer.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Always have to install Quicklook on my windows machines, too used to it on Mac https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook

rgovostes 3y ago

Lest Mac users miss out on the nostalgia trip the Windows users are enjoying in this thread: Remember GraphicConverter? It's still around and actively developed. 32 years old! https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/ https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/

genewitch 3y ago
In this thread someone mentioned photosift which does the 1 thing i miss about graphicconverter - sorting while watching a slideshow and pressing buttons to copy to specified, arbitrary folders. downloaded, and testing soon. Long gone are the days where people would come to me asking if i could open some file, so the other uses i had for graphicconverter are gone too.

mcfist 3y ago

Some 15 years ago I wanted to contribute/fix bugs and asked the author if the sources are available. He answered yes, for $10000. Screw that guy, I wrote my own image viewer )

ktosobcy 3y ago

Tried to get into it many times but just couldn't and finally found XnView and it was awesome. Sadly after switching to mac it was no longer available and later on Qt version wasn't that good

YPPH 3y ago

Related question: Is there any way to view HEIC files on Windows without installing the extensions from the Microsoft Store, or dodgy proprietary software? Even Irfanview requires the former.

SillyHNDorks 3y ago

Uh, another noob one discovering an age-old, well known tool. Now post the link to its Wikipedia article!

FerretFred 3y ago

This is all-time favourite, indispensable graphics utility! I've used it for years and it's never let me down! If Irfan is reading this, can we pleeeeease have a native Linux version?

isodev 3y ago

I love IrfanView, have been using it since I started using Total Commander back in ... 2003? Have donated/purchased a licence several times for both projects.

iamthepieman 3y ago

Been using irfanview since i heard about it in college from a classmate. I've included it in a number of image processing pipelines when i just need a few simple modifications to a lot of images. Its faster than a number of libraries that do thr same thing

0cVlTeIATBs 3y ago

ACDSee old versions (2.6.1?) would preload the next image in memory while scrolling through a folder, making it extremely useful in the age of hard drives. It became bloated, but the only reasons to switch were for newer image formats, and sometimes .gifs would crash it. FastStone Image Viewer is the performant, slick image viewer I use now. IrfanView has some rough defaults like if you scroll to the end of a folder, a window pops up that you have to click away before you can scroll back. I use it all the time for simple editing, not viewing.

fagrobot 3y ago

Irfanview. For the people

riversflow 3y ago

I switched to FastStone image viewer several years ago after getting curious when I saw it on ninite and haven’t looked back. It virtually instantly displays even large JPEGs from a cold start.

reddit_clone 3y ago

The _only_ application I still miss years after moving to Mac osx.

sombragris 3y ago

A GPLv3 similar app for Windows, very useful, is ImageGlass: https://imageglass.org https://imageglass.org

zimmund 3y ago
For Linux users looking for something similar to IrfanView, nomacs is the closest I found to IrfanView since I moved away from Windows: https://nomacs.org/ https://nomacs.org/

asgrdz 3y ago

My list is a bit smaller, but has some overlap. For all platforms (Linux, Windows, MacOS): 1. Sublime Text & VIM (for all things text) 2. Firefox with tampermonkey & ublock origin (browsing 101) For Windows additionally and in general: 3. Everything (Uses it as my launcher and finder of everything on my computer) 4. Irfanview (must-have for everything image-related) 5. Classic Shell/Explorer (to get a usable winXP-like desktop) 6. Gamma Panel (Adjust brightness via keyboard shortcut presets) 7. O&O Shut Up (for same reason as you) 8. Autoruns (to disable all useless services & scheduled crap-ware in windows) 9. MSys (for linuxy everyday tools, can't work without 'em). 10. Conda (with opencv, torch ... for automation and graphics munging) 11. Winamp (For all things music consumption) 12. VirtualDub ("Irfanview" for Video) 13. MediaPlayer Home Cinema + ffdshow & LAV filters/splitter (Better VLC) 14. Avisynth (All things video processing) For Linux: 3. Irfanview (must-have for everything image-related) 4. Conda (for heavier automation than bash) 5. Wine + (Irfanview, Virtualdub, Avisynth) For Mac: 3. iTerm (for a usable terminal) 4 Homebrew (to get linux tools so I can work) 5. iStat Menu (to know what the heck my laptop is doing) 6. Conda (for automation) Mac's built-in brighness buttons serve sufficiently well as an alternative to Gamma Panel. (Haven't found a wine-variant for MacOS, so I have to make do with the shtty preview instead of irfanview. For Video stuff I'm forced to use Linux or Windows for via remote desktop). I wish there was cross-platform install bundle that contained: * Irfanview, Everything, Avisynth, Virtualdub, MPCHC with LAV filters ... wrapped up in whatever emulation layer suitable for the platform (cross-over/wine or whatever) If someone aims to create such, that'd be awesome :)