Faststone Image Viewer 3.3 Beta
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Faststone Image Vieweris my default image viewer, although Windows Photo Gallery, Picasa and Photoshop are also installed on my computer. I use it rotate (lossless) my photos, crop to desired effect, then batch resize the photos.
What I like most about Faststone is its full screen mode. There are added features within the full screen mode to help you easily perform various functions. There are three fly-out menu panels on the top, left and right respectively.
Thumbnail Browser
The thumbnail browser will appear in full screen when you move your mouse to the top edge of the screen. The thumbnail are displayed in list form. You will be able to navigate within the folder through the list or if you want navigate to other folder, the tree view can be found on the bottom left corner of the panel. You have access to the icons on the toolbar too.
Functions Panel
When you move your mouse to the left edge of the screen, the functions panel appeared. Functions like file management (Save, Print, etc.), image manipulation (Rotate, Flip, Resize/Resample, Crop board), Adjustment (Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness) and simples Effects (Sepia, Drop Shadow, Red eye removal) can be found here. The Adjustments are very coarse and if you have photoshop, I would recommend to use it instead of these adjustment. The Sepia and Grayscale also give unsatisfactory results.
EXIF table
On the right will be the EXIF table. It allows quick access to EXIF information. you can edit comments metadata for your jpegs. On the website it say you can auto rotate based on EXIF data, but I have never got it to work. Nowadays, I will rotate the photos myself.
Crop Board
The crop board is highly functional. You can set your own dimensions to crop or there is a paper ratio dropdown list where you can choose from the common paper ratios and screen ratios. There is also a 9 x 9 grid for those who wants to crop according to the rules of thirds. The outer border transparency can be adjusted depending how much you want to see the cropped parts.
There are too many functions to list here and the above are some of my favorites. Go to the website, download it (freeware) and try it yourself. I think you will like it.
Now there is one thing about this software that I really don’t like. It uses its own skinning engine and its not integrated to Windows explorer engine. What that means is that I can have the beautiful Aero interface and when I open this image viewer, it will still retain its Windows 2000 skin. Urgh!
The sight is not good but I will still recommend it to anyone who wants a free, fast and functional image viewer.