Best Photo Viewer?

[R1Joel]

I don't like the standard photo viewer program that comes with Windows 10, it makes all the photos look blurry and out of focus even though they look fine in Lightroom and look good if I set them as a desktop background. What is a good alternative? Doesn't have to be anything fancy just want something that shows photos well.
Thankyou

[John King]

FastStone Viewer. Free. Colour managed. Editor. Useful for whole lots of stuff, but a good, fast file viewer for RAW, JPEG, TIFF among others.

[ameerat42]

Haffta second this^ and ^^this above it. It's my standard viewer. I use it as default viewer for all image files. It displays
raw image embedded jpegs from almost everything (incl my Σs!).

Straightforward operation. It also does basic editing: tones, colors, rotations, etc.

Only thing is it doesn't "see" hidden files and folders.

Get it here: http://www.faststone.org/
-And DON'T bovver about the other programs from the stable. They are "trials" and cut down at that.

[KevPride]

+1 on FastStone, I download to Photoshop Elements (because I bought it once), but use FastStone as the main search & lookup tool, then do all changes in PSE.

Sent from my SM-P550 using Tapatalk

[farmmax]

Another Faststone user here. It is light on computer resources, fast and easy. Very good at batch renaming, resizing, adding watermarks, and a whole lot of other things. I do my editing mainly in Photoshop, but I notice more and more features have been added into Faststone. All I have to do is choose which photo in Faststone and press the "E" key, and it opens in Photoshop. Otherwise I can drag and drop photos from there into Photoshop.

[enseth]

Here's another for Faststone.

[Gazza]

Thanks for the thread, Joel -
After reading the replies here, I've now downloaded and started using 'Faststone'...so far, so good

[ameerat42]

Easy to use, harder to say: Farce tone

[R1Joel]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Downloaded and using. Much, much better.

[ameerat42]

When viewing a fill screen image, move mouse to top of screen for thumbnails and window control.
Single held mouse click gives actual size view.... etc... etc...

[R1Joel]

Perfect. Much better program.

[enseth]

You won't regret it Joel & Gazza. I prefer to clone with Faststone as opposed to PS. It just seems to do it well. The other thing I use it for almost 100% of the time is the "final polish" of images. I generally do the following:

Go to "Adjust Lighting" set Shadows 23, Highlights -9, Contrast 4.
Then if I haven't previously sharpen the image I then go to Sharpen/Blur and sharpen in USM mode. If its a full frame JPG I usual set it on about 28 but this very much depends on the image. Be careful not to over sharpen as it's a good way to spoil a photo.

Now you know all my secrets. Anyway, have play. This is just my general polishing recipe. You may make up a better one.

[John King]

It's a good idea to download the help file and do the on-line tutorials to get an idea of what's hidden where.

[Filter]

I have jumped on board for a play. The version I have is 5.5, in there is the option to screen capture. I can't get it to work. When I search for tips (capture) it seems to direct me to another program called FastStone Capture. Any tips...

[martycon]

Tried it and love it! Best thing since sliced bread! I will donate $10 to the cause, to make up for a couple of mean buggers who ignored the request.

[ameerat42]

Yes. FastStone Capture is a trial that you eventually have to pay for.
Tip: forget it. Ultimately, who needs a fancy way to do a Shift-PrtSc?
(See post somewhere above.)

[aussirose]

Threadmark. Think I might give this a go.

[ameerat42]

Threadmark. Think I might give this a go.

you won't be

I used to have (OK, open up your ancient history books to 3000BC) ACDSee 5. Good program but it wouldn't run well
on later machines. FS is functionally equivalent and FREE!

[Filter]

Yes. FastStone Capture is a trial that you eventually have to pay for.
Tip: forget it. Ultimately, who needs a fancy way to do a Shift-PrtSc?
(See post somewhere above.)

Thanks AM, I use a great screen capture (Screen Hunter Pro). FastStone has the option in the tool bar & I liked the free form capture. When capture is selected it goes off the photo and to the desktop??

[John King]

Alt+PrintScrn captures the current window to the clipboard (can be inserted in most programs/places by pressing Ctrl+V).

Shift+PrintScrn or Ctrl+PrintScrn captures the full screen to the clipboard (can be inserted in most programs/places by pressing Ctrl+V).

- - - Updated - - -

Some further hints, Windows Notepad cannot accept non-ASCII characters (e.g. graphics). It is a true text editor.

OTOH, Windows Wordpad (stripped down version of WinWord v.2) can accept graphics such as screen dumps, images of most kinds, etc.

We find the latter extremely useful for my wife's Fine Arts degree course when constructing a page. I also find it useful for constructing 'How To' files, being able to intermingle text, screen/window dumps and graphics as required.