IrfanView

IrfanView: Tiny App, Massive Use

IrfanView is a small but powerful image viewer and editor for Windows. Despite being tiny it can do a lot! A great guy named Irfan Skiljan created it in 1996 and people were using it since its very first days. I was using Windows Me or 2000 if I recall correctly - back in 2000 or 2001.

IrfanView doesn’t mess about. It’s small, light, opens instantly and runs great even on older computers. After so many years it is still free. Doesn’t nag you with popups. Doesn’t try to sell you a pro version. You just use it.

It opens nearly anything—JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WEBP, HEIC, RAW formats, even odd ones like DDS or medical image files. No need to search for another app every time someone sends you something weird. It just opens.

Fast?

Yes. One image or a hundred, doesn’t blink. You want to batch resize, convert, rename, rotate, or sharpen 400 images at once? It does that and finishes before you’ve opened your email.

Looks? Basic. That’s the point. You won’t get lost in a maze of buttons. Still, it has image correction tools—brightness, colour fix, red-eye removal, even effects if you're into that. Nothing fancy but it’s more than enough.

You can use it for various scenarios

Make pictures brighter or darker fast Fix colors that don’t look right Remove red-eye from flash photos Apply fun filters to your images Look through your vacation photos quickly Change pictures from one format to another Make a cool slideshow

And if that’s not enough, it has plugins. Want more formats? More editing tools? Animation? OCR? Install what you want. Leave the rest.

Feature	IrfanView	Alternatives
File support	100+ formats, including RAW, ICO	Windows Photos: limited
Batch editing	Resize, convert, rename fast	Paint.NET: slower, fewer controls
Plugins	Optional, expandable	XnView: built-in, less flexible
Speed	Instant open, even on old machines	GIMP: heavy
Size	Under 3MB	Photoshop: GBs

Want to carry it with you? Stick it on a USB. Doesn’t leave a trace.

Need to flip through holiday pics? Convert screenshots for work? Slap a slideshow together in 10 minutes? IrfanView. Every time.

Final thought

It’s fast, small and gets on with it. What more do you want?

• New option in Batch dialog: Use Multithreading for conversion Note 1: Some old/third party PlugIns do NOT support multithreading! Note 2: Save format options with a preview do NOT support multithreading! Note 3: Multithreading uses (much) more system memory.
• New Edit menu: Restore last selection
• New zoom feature: CTRL + Middle mouse button click; Fit to window and back
• New option in EXIF dialog: Choose tags for the display (in Context menu)
• A confirmation dialog is shown for the wallpaper change menus
• New effect in Image->Effects menu: Stained Glass (thanks to Mathias Westerdahl)
• Add Border effects can work on selections
• New Add Border effects: Broken lines/frame
• New option in Export Tiles dialog: Add extra space to each tile
• New hotkey: CTRL + F4 = remove current file from slideshow list
• New command line option to replace color (like in dialog Replace Color) /replacecolor=(rOld,gOld,bOld,rNew,gNew,bNew,tolerance,transparency)
• New slideshow hotkeys (for timer slideshow): CTRL + SHIFT + "," (comma): Reduce timer by 0.5 sec CTRL + SHIFT + "." (point): Increase timer by 0.5 sec
• Support for more DNG subformats (LibRAW PlugIn, 64-bit only)
• Loading issues in CADImage PlugIn fixed (thanks to Trend Micro)
• Several PlugIns are changed/updated, please install the newest versions: Download from: https://www.irfanview.com/plugins.htm