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Add to SafariWhen comparing Irfanview vs FastStone Image Viewer, the Slant community recommends FastStone Image Viewer for most people. In the question“What are the best image viewers for Windows?” FastStone Image Viewer is ranked 1st while Irfanview is ranked 2nd.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Really fast
Pro Great for comparing and sorting multiple images
Pro Lots of features for simple editing
Pro Free
Pro Best keyboard controls
Pro Editing photo levels
Pro Built-in folder browser
Can browse folders, images and videos, all with thumbnails.
Pro Has dark mode
As well as Gray mode. Good for your eyes.
Cons
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.
Con Free version is not valid for business usage
Only good for private use, small business licensing is very expensive.
Con Broken SVG Support
SVG images do not show at all.
Con Sometimes really sluggish
Showing the wait cursor for multiple seconds like executing large operations in the GUI thread.
Con Can't view photos that have a filename over 30 characters
