I wrote earlier about a new image viewer — FastStone. I did like it, but it turned out the “Fast” part was an exaggeration. For a quick, efficient, feature-rich picture viewer\/editor, there are really only two alternatives: irfanview and XnView. Which one is the right one, depends on your needs, but they’re both free and small, so why choose? — you can use them both.<\/p>\n
Irfanview<\/strong><\/a> is the fastest viewer around. If what you have is collections of images off the net, this may not make much of a difference, but if you have the occasional 18 Mb scan on a CD, you’ll be grateful for the speed. It is also quite versatile in the handling of images.
\nThe cons are, as always, a reflection of the pros: it is<\/em> a bare-bones viewer\/editor, and there is not much frills — not even the frills that may improve usability. There is a thumbnails viewer, but it opens in a separate window and you have to switch back and forth between them, so in practice, it has no thumbnail browser. There are also quite a few configuration settings you can do, but they tend to be well hidden, both in terms of placement in menus, and in terms of lingo — you have to know quite precisely what you’re looking for. <\/p>\n