IrfanView: Basic Photo Viewing and Editing Software

By Patty Hankins & Bill Lawrence

Are you thinking about trying to do some editing of your digital photos? Or do you have friends and family members who keep sending you photos, and you need some software to view them? If so – then you may want to consider getting a copy of IrfanView, a basic photo viewer and editor. IrfanView (www.irfanview.com) is free for non-commercial use, although the author gives you the option of making a donation for the program.

IrfanView is billed as a photo viewer rather than a photo editor, although it has sufficient photo editing capabilities for basic work. The basic editing features include

• Cropping

• Exposure modification including adjusting brightness, contrast and color balance

• Sharpening

• Red eye correction

These controls are enough to allow you to brighten up a photo that is too dark, and adjust the color balance if the image is mildly off.

As a file viewer, IrfanView is fairly powerful. It can open almost any graphic file, including raw files from Canon, Nikon, and other cameras. Stop by the IrfanView website to take a look at the list of formats it can read. If you are having problems view a graphic file, chances are IrfanView can view it. The program also has a basic thumbnail viewer for browsing directories, and can batch rename and batch change file types of graphic files. Finally, it lets you resize your photos using Lanczos interpolation, in case you need to upsize a photo for large prints.

While IrfanView is not a sophisticated editor, if you only do very basic editing, it may be enough, especially for the price. If you use this regularly as your editor, we suggest making a donation (the recommended donation is 10 Euros), to encourage the author to continue improving the program. Even if you have more sophisticated editing software, some of the functions, such as the batch renaming functions, and the ability to open numerous different types of graphic files, make IrfanView a good program to have on the desktop.

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