Despite the simple premise, not all gallery apps are the same. Some of them work fantastically with great design and quickness. Others suffer from poor design and slowness. Photo Viewer is the most basic requirement of any operation system, in order to browser and view photos and images stored on your devices. You need to have an app or program that allows you to open photos and images of any extensions. For viewing and reliving the past beautiful memory, the inbuilt Windows Photo Viewer has been our favorite for this purpose since the time we first held a mouse. However, Windows Photo Viewer is missing in Windows 10.
In the guide below, we will cover top 5 photo viewer apps for Windows 10. They may become good alternatives to the Windows Photo Viewer app. Some of the programs listed below are not only image viewers, but also pictures managers. Moreover, all of them from the list can be used for editing pictures.
1. Microsoft Photos
People who are not used to Windows 10 may find that Windows Photo Viewer is replaced by a new photo viewer and editor. Microsoft Photos allows users to preview the pictures in their computer and connected removable disks. The app has simple user interface. You can also use the slideshow feature to automatically play the pictures.
You can even use some special effects with Microsoft Photos, such as adding 3D butterflies or lasers, whichever suits your tastes better. Microsoft Photos also specializes in being a more stylish photo viewer than many of the other selections, which is something that many people appreciate. Microsoft Photos is a free photo viewer for Windows 10, which is the best part.
Image Glass is one of the best light-weight image viewers you can find. Best of all, it is incredibly versatile as it supports over 70 of the most popular formats and it is entirely free and open source. It allows you to use one of the many customized themes. It offers a very simplistic user-interface with drag-and. GIMP – Best free open-source photo editing software GIMP is an acronym of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It has packed with advanced image editing tools and has a Photoshop-like interface. With GIMP, you can do every type of editing including color correction, retouching, fix distortion, and so on. ImageGlass is a lightweight, versatile image viewing application that is designed to take the place of Photo Viewer in Windows 10, 8, 7 and Vista, especially those installations that may have trouble displaying PNG and GIF files in Photo Viewer.
PhotoQt is a simple, yet powerful and good looking image viewer, written in Qt, published as open-source, and completely free. Photo comes with a variety of features. Most features you would expect from a image viewer should be there. All features of PhotoQt are very easy to use.
This program might seem relatively simplistic in the eyes of people who work with some of the most high-end photos editing software, but at the same time, Microsoft Photos is a program that gets the job done quickly and efficiently. And sometimes, that’s all you really need.
Bonus tips: In case you mistakenly deleted important images with a photo viewer for Windows 10, don’t hesitate to use Jihosoft Photo Recovery Software to get them back as soon as possible.
2. Apowersoft Photo Viewer
Apowersoft Photo Viewer is no doubt one of the best photo viewers for Windows 10. With straightforward navigation, this app is actually much more than a Windows picture viewer. You can simply drag your photo to a program Window to open it. This image viewer also provides some basic editing options –add effects and text, resize an image, rotate it, delete unwanted parts, and many more. After you are done editing your pictures, you can upload them to a cloud or share to your social accounts. With this photo editor, you can easily take a screenshot in a Windows PC. There is also a thumbnail gallery at the bottom part of the program window which is very helpful when you work with multiple photos. You can also sort your pictures by adding them to the favorites folder. If you want to view a large image, use the full screen mode.
The photo viewer is available for multiple platforms. The program interface is rather simple. The app provides acquiring images from scanner, printing selected images and sending them by email. This image viewer is available free of charge for personal use.
3. 123 Photo Viewer
When we talk about free photo viewers for Windows 10, 123 Photo Viewer should not be left behind. If you are not heavy users, then you will be going to love it. The program is for the basic users, who want to experience something extraordinary. The photo viewer can open almost any popular image formats, including but not limited to JPEG, DDS, PSD, WEBP, TGA, etc.
Single click magnifying is one of the best features of this free photo viewer. The software has fast magnification time. It supports batch operation for fulfilling various purposes. Moreover, the software offers convenience for switching between previous and next images. Definitely, it is an interesting lightweight photo viewer that does more than default version of Microsoft, with a very efficient thumbnail solution, fast magnificent experience and includes format conversion, renaming and size change features. Only available for Windows 10 version, this program allows users to view and manage their photos at the same time. It is bound with an image editor so users can do some quick fixes to their images like red eye removal, cropping etc. However, you may need extra solutions to open and view RAW images taken by Nikon/Canon DSLR cameras.
4. Movavi Photo Manager
Movavi Photo Manager is a convenient image viewer which can offer many more functions other than viewing photos. Movavi Photo Manager will help you manage your entire photo collection, including images in RAW, JPEG, PNG, and many other formats. Movavi Photo Manager will be an essential tool for anyone who values their time as much as their photo collection. Your images will be sorted automatically by date and GPS coordinates. You can add tags to your image files so you can easily navigate around your photo library.
The program automatically selects visually similar images. You can edit them together, add them to an album, or choose the best and delete the rest. Moreover, it provides you with an option to view photos in many popular image formats using Movavi’s fast and reliable picture organizer. Reviews the automatically created photo albums sorted by country. Filter images in these albums by city. The photo viewer is available for both Windows and Mac OS to make sure that navigating thousands of pictures is easy.
5. Google Photos
Google Photos is one of the best online services for people who love taking lots of pictures and videos. It combines cloud-based storage with its AI-based organization of images and clips. After taking thousands of vacation photos with your smartphone, you can choose to sync or upload the memories to Google Photos, then start the further work of organizing the pictures in a computer with a browser. This is a great app that most people use anyway, but its secondary functionality means that having another gallery app is essentially redundant. If you use Google Photos, you might as well use it as your gallery app too. You can download the mobile app from Google Play for free if it is not in-built in your phone.
The only downside is that the images and videos will be compressed in Google’s high-quality settings. You get themes, fingerprints authentication, and you can even hide albums you don’t want. Google Photos is a standout new option in a gallery apps scene that doesn’t see a lot of new apps anymore. The design of the app is solid and it’s not difficult to use. Best of all is, it plays GIFs.
Final Thought
Some of the best photo viewer apps are listed here for Windows 10, each of which has its own selling point. With these programs, you can do a bunch of things to manage and enrich your images. These apps have the ability to win you after you try them once. You can choose any photo viewer from the list as all are free to use. Though these gallery apps can help you keep and organize your images perfectly, they cannot prevent you from photo loss on your device. Don’t forget to try the photo recovery software mentioned in this article.
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- January 02, 2020
- 30 min to read
With smartphones increasing in popularity, nowadays everyone (even a professional photographer) needs a tool that will help them to manage and organize their photos. After all, you do not want the risk of running out of storage space be the reason that do not capture every special moment? And with thousands of photos on your hard drive, you will for sure need a tool to help you track down a specific photo or remove those annoying duplicate photos.
Plus, let’s face it, hard drives do fail (and usually the day before you planned to make backups). Therefore, it is a very good idea to invest in a photo management software solution that lets you upload your pics to the cloud.
Though, the right photo management tool will offer you so much more than simply an organized storage space for your shots. Some tools will even let you add metadata about things like the camera model that was used, the dimensions, aperture value etc. The majority of these software solutions will also offer you a couple of standard editing tools such as color filters and cropping.
So, which features should you look for in a photo management tool? Here are 18 of the best photo management software solutions, in no particular order, that are currently available on the market. These will give you a good idea of what the current standard is.
1. Adobe Bridge
If you use the popular Adobe Creative Cloud software package, you will most likely already be very familiar with Adobe Bridge CC. It is a photo and digital asset management software solution that is compatible with both Windows as well as Mac OS.
Best Open Source Photo Viewer
With this free tool, you can access all the resources and files that you require for your specific project. It boasts several useful features that include on-demand metadata generation, batch photo editing, organizing general and individual files, watermarks, centralized color settings and much more.
To help you organize your different photo folders, you can use its metadata tools, tagging or rating features. Plus, you can also rename and organize a bunch of images at the same time.
It is also very simple to import pics or videos from your card reader, smartphone, tablet or digital camera, thanks to its picture upload feature. All things considered, it is one of the best solutions for professionals and can help them to streamline their workflow significantly. Though, it might be a bridge too far if you are looking for a tool that will help you to sort only your own (personal) photos.
2. Luminar 4
Luminar 4 boasts really great photo management features! The beauty of Luminar 4 is that it makes it easy to navigate your library with the help of shortcuts. For example, if you select “All Photos”, you can sort your photos either by their date of capture or the date on which the files were created. Another popular and easy-to-use shortcut is marking it as a Favourite. This way you can even add a star rating to all of your top photos.
You can also use folders to organize your photos. What makes this feature so convenient is that Luminar’s folders actually connect directly to your hard drive’s folders. This means that you can organize the folders of your hard drive via Luminar and the other way round. What’s more, you can then also group your photos together in Luminar by using albums without changing the location of the images on your actual hard drive! All in all, this is one of the best photo editing software solutions available on the market.
3. XnView
With the help of XnView, you can look at more than 400 photo formats and save as many as 50 different file formats. It is available free of charge for educational or non-commercial use and is compatible with Linux, Mac OS and Windows operating systems.
This multimedia viewer, photo converter and browser is powerful and boasts all the fundamental features, yet remains very simple to use and sleek. Some of its most popular features include lossless JPEG conversion, adjusting images automatically, a duplicate file finder, batch processing and a built-in picture editor. You can also use it to get info about all your images, making it one of the most popular tools for organizing your photos.
4. Nomacs
While Nomacs might be small, speed is for sure not something that you have to worry about as this free open-source image viewer is built for speed. After all, dynamite comes in small packages, right?
It is efficient and can be used with all of the most popular file formats which include PSD and RAW. Just like with XnView, you will get all the info about your pictures that you need.
One of its best features is that you can use it to synchronise different viewers who use the same local network or computer. It is also a great tool if you need to compare photos in order to identify differences. Some of its other useful features include a built-in graphics editor and automatic photo adjustment. It can be used with Mac OS, Linux and Windows platforms.
5. Google Photos
Google Photos is one of the best free photo management solutions that you can use for your videos and photos. Everything that you have come to expect, Google Photos can offer.
It is very simple to upload a photo. You can either use the button (that is somewhat difficult to spot) or the drag-and-drop feature which is much easier. As your videos and photos get uploaded and sorted to cloud storage automatically, it is a really convenient tool to add to your arsenal. It will sort out and display your panoramic photos and high dynamic range (HDR) ones in no time at all. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to sort out your albums and make suggestions regarding which images you should archive. What is more, you can also search for a specific photo or video at once, after it has been uploaded.
Some of its most popular features include creating metadata and drafts on request and photo batch processing. It also boasts a couple of basic photo editing tools that include color filters and cropping. Then, last but not least, all you have to do is select the pics that you want to share and either post it on social media, create a link or include it in one of your shared albums.
All things considered, Google Photos is the complete opposite of a tool like Adobe Bridge CC, making it the perfect tool if you are simply searching for a way to share those special moments with your friends and family members. And, thanks to the unlimited backup storage that is available if you choose not to upload it in full resolution, you do not have to make plans for when you run out of space. All things considered, with millions of users already who upload over a billion photos every single day, surely Google Photos is doing more than a couple of things right.
6. XnViewMP
If you like XnView, then you will really like XnViewMP which is an enhanced version of the first-mentioned. It is the ideal tool if you have to sort file formats that are not as common as it supports over 500 different image file formats. Unfortunately it does not arrange your photos for you automatically. However, it does offer a feature that you can use to edit the metadata and tags of your photos via a convenient batch mode. Thanks to this tool, you can issue those tags at the speed of light.
That being said, XnViewMP is more than just a basic photo management tool. You can also use it to create a graphic presentation, screenshot, slideshow or multipage animated file. Just like, XnView, XnViewMP is also compatible with Linux, Mac OS and Windows operating systems
7. Pictorial
If you are familiar with using Lightroom, you will find Picktorial quite similar. Though, Picktorial is more convenient as you do not have to create a directory or folder in Picktorial as you can work directly from your PC’s file system. What’s more, you can also modify its interface so that it suits all your specific tasks. Some of its other useful features and tools include color correction and image retouching. All things considered, it is a very practical photo editor that will help you to sort out your photos and even possibly edit them. Sadly, it is only compatible with Mac operating systems.
8. JetPhoto Studio
JetPhoto Studio is compatible with Windows and Mac OS and boasts almost all the tools you will need to sort out and edit your photos. This free photo management software solution boasts powerful photo batch processing, geo-tagging and tags. Although it does not offer cloud storage, you can use it to share your photos with others by making a Google Map gallery or using the JetPhoto Server or Flickr. And, if you use a browser that supports Flash, you can use JetPhoto Studio to create a Flash gallery in a flash.
9. Apowersoft Photo Viewer
If you are searching for a software solution that is really user-friendly, be sure to check out Apowersoft Photo Viewer. Its interface is very easy to use and understand! If you want to view one of your photos, all you have to do is click on it and it will be displayed instantly. Plus, with Apowersoft you can also view detailed info about your different images.
Compatible with Linux, Mac OS as well as Windows, it supports a wide range of file formats, which includes PDF. If you use Windows, you can even view your High Efficiency Image File Formats (HEIF or also called HEIC) directly.
Some of its other features include a built-in graphics editor, the ability to take screenshots and edit photos. That being said, its biggest perk is most likely the fact that it is very fast. Thanks to the use of advanced technology, you will be able to work at the speed of light. All in all, Apowersoft is truly a powerful software just as the name suggests!
10. StudioLine Photo Basic
If you use Windows and are searching for basic photo editing tools as well as a tool that can help you to manage your photos, you will like what StudioLine Photo Basic has to offer. With this free software solution, you can rotate, crop, correct red eyes and resize your photos. It also lets you add tags and descriptions to your photos. Then, after you are done editing and organizing your photos, be sure to use the online gallery to publish and share your images with your friends and family members. Or, even better yet, why not use it to create a slideshow of all your best memories?
11. FastStone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer is another great free photo management software solution for Windows users that supports all the big file formats. In addition to its wide selection of features that will help you to manage your photo memories, it also boasts several photo editing tools that you can use to tweak and manipulate your images. Some of its most popular features include EXIF data viewing, resizing, image viewing, red-eye removal, cropping and tagging.
Although it is very easy to use, it sadly does not offer cloud storage and you cannot use it to upload your “share-worthy” pics to social media sites. So, if you are happy just to store your photos on your laptop, FastStone Image Viewer is one of the best programmes for Windows.
12. digiKam Photo Manager
With digiKam Photo Manager, you can organize your photos by means of albums, tags or folders quickly. What’s more, you can also view and edit your metadata and it boasts a built-in graphics editor and RAW support too. All things considered, its intuitive interface makes this advanced app one of the most popular picks amongst Mac OS and Windows users.
Free Photo Management Software
13. MAGIX Photo Manager
Windows Image Viewer App
This is one of the magic tools for Windows users (and the MAGIX Photo Manager Deluxe version offers great value for your money too). With this free tool, you can sort out your images effortlessly and quickly, locate specific videos, see detailed info about your images, share your best pics and make the most effective use of your library.
Its clean interface is easy to understand and use and, what’s more, it also offers a couple of tools that you can use to correct your images. If you simply want to use it to sort out your photos, you can use it to arrange your photos according to tags, date or the actual name of the file.
14. Flickr
Flickr is one of the best-known tools for organizing and managing your pics. It offers impressive storage space and lets you set your own privacy settings which is very useful.
It is also very easy to upload and edit your photos. With its built-in photo editing tool, you do a couple of basic tasks like cropping, adjusting the color and applying a blur effect. It also has a batch feature that makes it easy to edit multiple photos.
And, if you are worried that your edited version will not look better than the original, you can simply save it as a copy instead. Then, when you are done playing around with different frames, filters and brushes, remember to use Flickr to share your creations on social media or use the link and embed it on your blog.
15. Phototheca
Phototheca is one of the top photo management software solutions that are compatible with Windows. With the help of this free tool, you can view, arrange and share your videos and images effortlessly. Just like most of the other tools mentioned already, it also shares detailed info about your individual pics. All you have to do is upload your digital images to its database and then you can arrange them according to date or event or even organize them by creating a specific album. If you can look past its dated interface, this tool is one to add to your list.
16. SmugMug
You have got to love the name of this program! This software solution has actually been on the market for over a decade already and can be used by both pros as well as amateurs.
Similar to Flickr (it actually obtained Flickr), it offers great privacy and security features. While it does offer editing tools, it only has the basics like color effects and cropping. Though, what it might lack in the editing department, it makes up for when it comes to layout. The default layout is easy to use and understand, but you can also select other color schemes or themes. It is also super simple to organize your photos manually thanks to its drag-and-drop feature.
All things considered, it is this intuitive experience and smart features like the upload progress bar that make it one of the top tools.
Best Photo Viewer App For Windows 10
17. PicaJet Digital Photo Management
With PicaJet, you can view your photos by date, rating or keyword and automatically sort out your photos at the speed of light. It also boasts a host of other features that include image sharing, automatic photo enhancement, a photo search engine, direct import and basic editing tools. And, if you want to get more creative than simple cropping or red-eye removal, you will love its slideshow feature.
Best Open Source Photo Viewer
18. 500px
One of the most attractive features of 500px is that it is suitable for professionals as well as amateurs. In fact, it has a very nice marketplace feature that pros can use to connect with their customers and generate some extra money. Even though you will not be able to upload a whole folder in one go, it is pretty straightforward to upload your photos one for one. Plus, you will also be able to include metadata, while it will add recommended tags automatically.
Open Source Photo Viewer Windows
That being said, there are some glaring areas that need improvement. For starters, the interface is not that modern and sleek as you have come to expect and also not that intuitive. Another feature that it lacks, which most of the other programs mentioned in this list offer, is a couple of photo editing tools. While 500x allows you to edit the metadata, users are unable to edit their actual pics.