FastStone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer is a free for home users as well as educational program for viewing, editing and managing images of many common formats.
Functions and user interface
The interface uses the full screen mode, the entire screen and is not covered by menu bar. Only when you move the mouse pointer to one of the four screen edges, the corresponding menus that offer editing and organizing functions appear.
In the main window of the program, a file browser is included, with the help of which folders can be selected with digital images on disk. The program creates a folder after opening a display with thumbnails that are stored in an internal database and thus accelerate the next access to this folder.
FastStone Image Viewer supports not only the most common image formats JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF, PCX, TGA, JPEG2000, PSD, WMF, CUR and ICO also with the RAW and special formats of different manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji, Adobe, Minolta, Pentax, Panasonic, and Sony.
However, until now it does not support Unicode.
A click on one of the thumbnails displays a magnified image with a double full-screen and at the same time also the editing screen opens.
The program knows the usual windows shortcuts for fast operation as well as many additional function keys and can be comfortably operated by context and the aforementioned fold-out side menu.
Development and revision history
Since version 2.50 also text insertions, freehand drawing, drawing of geometric elements and inserting watermarks are possible, images can be marked for batch processing.
In batch mode, the pictures can be deleted, moved, copied, converted, renamed and transformed. Also, you can print images have watermarks or compare two or four images in an enlarged view each other. The program also supports twain -compatible scanner and thus allows the direct insertion and editing of scanned images.
Exif information can be accessed from any view out, including any GPS data. There, it is also possible to insert comments in JPEG files.
External image editing programs can be started from within the program that allow to processing beyond.
The images in a folder can be played back in a slide show with various configuration options, also available with background music.
A short time was version 2.70 of the Image Viewer available as standard and as a paid "Pro " version. Since version 2.8 there is the FastStone Image Viewer again only one version, which is free for private use.
With version 3.0, the Viewer Vista compatible. Other new features include the ability to save PDF files ( multi-page ) as well as for creating multi-page TIFF files. Furthermore, now cropped images in batch mode and also according to the exif data (date, time) will be renamed.
Since version 3.1 there is next to the English a multilingual version in Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, and Spanish.
With version 3.3 further image processing functions such as brightness, contrast, gamma, saturation, sharpening and similar have been added. Furthermore, the slideshow feature has been enhanced and incorporates a download function for memory card.
In the published in November 2007 Version 3.4 enhancements were added in the user interface, improved color matching functions and introduced batch processing for RAW files. Published in January 2008, version 3.5 introduced a small improvements, such as improved user interface and expand text formatting. Version 3.6 of September 2008 brought then includes support for 64 -bit Windows systems, extend batch processing capabilities and improved video support. In version 3.7, some functions have been improved, bugs fixed and added support for the RAW format Panasonic RW2. Further improvements and bug fixes is available in version 3.8, which was first published as a uniform version (in English and 14 other languages). New in this release balloons, selectable number of copies in the print dialog and color subsampling (also called " chroma subsampling "). Version 4 has, inter alia, through improved handling and new frame effects and processed in the image contained GPS information. In version 4.3, the following new features have been added: cloning and healing temple, automatic color correction, shadows or lights brighten / darken, change Levels Curves, blurred mask, pencil drawing and oil paint filter, new drawing elements for text objects, setting the order of images, support the EPS and the Sony SR2 format, revised storage management.
New in version 4.7: touch interface throughout the application, new mouse gestures to change images, improved dialogs for Copy / Move, Straighten / Rotate, wallpaper, image comparison and printing, additional browser mode tool to reduce the image noise, updated RAW format library, optional new interface
New in version 4.9: " Design and Print " is added, making it possible to have multiple pictures with text and effects to a page to print Improved " Curves ". By clicking and dragging in the image, the curves can be set directly. The end points of the curves can be adjusted. "Paper size " for batch conversion tab Added option " Auto Size " about the tool " to scan images " Added additional support for video files (avi, mpeg, mpg, wmv, mov, mp4) in the Batch Rename "View in Google Maps " and " View in Google Earth " button in the" Image properties " window added. Is visible if the image contains GPS information Other minor improvements and bug fixes