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Add to SafariWhen comparing nomacs vs Irfanview, the Slant community recommends Irfanview for most people. In the question“What are the best image viewers for Windows?” Irfanview is ranked 2nd while nomacs is ranked 5th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Highly customizable
Pro Detailed view of image metadata
Pro Lots of image adjustment tools
Pro Simple and pleasant look
No cramped toolbars or large icons; the UI is cohesive, minimal and keeps out of your way.
Pro Lightweight
Starts very quickly and has a small memory footprint.
Pro You can work with hot keys that can be reassigned as you want them
Pro Frameless view
Pro Allows to cut (frame) images
It is important if you have to work with photos of documents and want to cut off the background on which you made photos.
Pro Flexible thumbnail views
Can display thumbnails in a strip or a zoomable grid as well, also has hotkey for both of these. Opening a folder is one of the main actions on the toolbar!
Pro Cross-platform
Has builds for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Pro Remembers last used folders
Often used folders (e.g., screenshots) can be quickly accessed.
Pro Batch image processing
Has tools for applying conversions etc. to many files at once.
Pro Can print to printer
Unlike most other image viewers.
Pro Supports new image formats out of the box
Such as WebP, AVIF, etc.
Pro Comparing two images
This feature is called Synchronization. With the synchronization it is possible that multiple viewers perform the same action (like panning, zooming, etc.). This feature is useful when comparing two images. See more here.
Pro Some editing tools included (cropping, color correcting, etc...)
Pro Lots of plugins available
Plugins can be found here.
Pro Batch processing
Even exif information can be batch processed.
Pro Recognizes virtually any image format
Pro You can just scroll with your mouse to explore images
Pro Ultra fast
If you press and hold the right-arrow button (for displaying the next image), you can watch images pass by as if they are a video, it's that fast. No stuttering, it loads images as fast as your hard drive can keep up.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Can use 8bf (Photoshop) filters
Pro Easy updates
Very easy to update the program and its associated plugins.
Pro Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer is a convenient way to view all image files easily
Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer is a great way to view thumbnails of all image files, including thumbnails of WMF files which Windows cannot natively display.
Cons
Con No support for JPEG-XL
Con Only partial support for HEIC
Apple's HEIC format is only partially supported. Nomacs can open individual images, but can't navigate among them.
Con Heavy compared to other Linux image viewers
Uses more memory and CPU than other lightweight image viewers. High CPU usage when starting.
Con Returns to default settings after update
Con Recent version has slowed down
The latest version (3.8) suddenly became very slow in Fedora 26. Slow to step from image to image; slow to open a directory; slow slow slow. Downgrading to the previous version (3.6) restored speed.
Con GIF viewing is buggy
GIF viewing has longstanding problems like flickering, incorrect framerate or artifacts, and it is very unlikely that it will be ever fixed.
Con Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer crashes on accessing AVI files
For some reason, the Irfanview Thumbnail Viewer crashes when it tries to access any .AVI movie file.
Con No transparency support
The alpha is converted to the selected background color upon opening a picture. When saving the picture again, you can select a color which is converted to alpha again.
Con Missing some utilities
Like browsing files utility.
Con Preferences are hard to find
Con Windows only
Con UI is far from ideal
Sometimes the interface is confusing.
