JPEGView, Fast Windows Image Viewer

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 22, 2010
Updated • Mar 28, 2016
Software, Windows software
|
12

JPEGView is a free, portable image viewer for the Windows operating system that is blazing fast and very feature-rich at the same time.

Many good, and not so good, free and commercial image viewers are available for the Windows operating system.

Windows ships for instance with the Windows Photo Viewer or the Photos app, ok, but not brilliant image viewers that get the job done but as usual, there are better alternatives out there.

Free alternatives include FastStone Image Viewer, XnView or Irfanview, commercial ones the excellent FastPictureViewer Professional.

JPEGView is a free Open source alternative. It can, despite its name open several image formats including JPEG, PNG, TIFF or Gif. The photo viewer sports a minimal design that hides most features under the surface. The program displays a file browser on startup to pick a single image or folder for viewing.

JPEGView

jpegview

Most users may want to assign the supported image extensions to JPEG View so that a double-click on an image launches the image viewer directly. You can initiate the process with a right-click on the interface, and selecting Settings/Admin > Set as default viewer for a start. The rest depends on the version of Windows that you are running.

JPEG View displays the selected picture and a set of basic controls once an image has been loaded. The controls at the bottom disappear after some time, and offer standard functionality like rotating the image, loading the next or previous image, loading the first or last image of the folder, displaying EXIF information or switching to windowed or full screen mode.

Most features can be controlled with the keyboard directly as well, and it is usually faster once you have memorized the shortcuts. Good thing is that the program displays shortcuts automatically when you hover over buttons and other interface elements.

A right-click displays all available options, and boy, there are lots of them.

From batch renaming and copying images, to setting the modification date, displaying various image related information on screen, to enabling auto correction, local density correction, and viewing a slideshow of all images in a folder.

JPEGView supports slideshows, various sorting options that you can switch between, and even things like auto-correction.

The application loads the images fast. We tested the speed by loading four to five Megabyte images from a test folder and they displayed more or less instantly on our test system.

The only negative aspect is how the settings are changed. The program uses ini files for the settings, and the preferences are changed by editing the ini files manually. That is not the most user friendly way, and might keep inexperienced users away.

Advanced users on the other hand can tweak the image viewer to their liking, from changing the color saturation, sharpening or default color balance, to switching to a windowed startup mode, changing cpu cores usage and the quality of the down sampling filter.

Verdict

JPEG View is a very fast, and feature rich image viewer for the Windows operating system. The Open Source tool is completely portable, and available for download on the Sourceforge project website.

Summary
software image
Author Rating
1star1star1star1star1star
no rating based on 0 votes
Software Name
JPEGView
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Imaging
Landing Page
Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. Canadian said on April 8, 2020 at 6:08 am
    Reply

    I really like JPEGView, just discovered actually! I like that the GPS coordinates can be shown while browsing in the picture info panel (F2) and then I just click on the coordinates and it opens a map link in browser to show where the geotag is located. There are only a few free image viewers that have this as quickly accessible as JPEGView. HoneyView and nomacs viewers also have this function in one click from browsing a photo. IrfanView can open Google Earth with the location from the photo by keyboard shortcut Ctrl-O however to open a map link in IrfanView the process is more cumbersome, on keyboard i>e>m and then you have to close two windows to get back to photo browsing. There are some configuration quirks with JPEGView but once I got them sorted out, it’s been quick slick.

  2. kingin said on January 3, 2020 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    it is fast
    and horrible at using other color spaces than rgb
    also there is no option for respecting windows explorer sorting
    so depending on your needs it either great little program or waste of time

    1. kingin said on February 10, 2020 at 2:25 pm
      Reply

      so ’bout color spaces, well my bad..
      you have to enable it in INI settings: UseEmbeddedColorProfiles=true

      ” However this will be disabled by default because it forces to use GDI+ to read JPEG images. This has several disadvantages:
      – It is considerably slower
      – It cannot read some valid JPEGs (blame Microsoft for that)”

      mentioned slowdown isn’t really that bad, barely noticeable

  3. Ack said on June 2, 2014 at 3:27 am
    Reply

    Nice program, except I wish it has more supported formats. Nice open source option, wish there were more for windows.

  4. jessica said on September 8, 2010 at 10:31 am
    Reply

    I have a very nice program. I tried it at my friend’s lap. but I can’t try it at home as it is working on old versions of windows and I work with windows 7 the latest version. I tried ( Image Viewer ) program that is easy, fast and opens a lot of image formats. I found it on site: AUDIO-VIDEO.WS

  5. sofia said on August 12, 2010 at 12:25 pm
    Reply

    it is a good program but it it opens a little formats of pictures. i try ( image viewer ) program that is easy and powerful and opens all formats of pictures. i found it on site : ( Softwareclub.ws )

  6. smitg said on July 22, 2010 at 6:17 pm
    Reply

    does it support animated gifs?

    1. Martin said on July 22, 2010 at 11:53 pm
      Reply

      Smitg, no it does not support animated gifs, only displays the first frame.

  7. Crodol said on July 22, 2010 at 5:40 pm
    Reply

    IrfanView is absolutely the best in my opinion!

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.