FastStone Image Viewer

[JimboUK]

FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, retouching and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, PSD, EPS, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF, ARW, SR2, RW2 and DNG). -CNET

 

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

 

Faststone is a free image browser, converter and basic image editor. There are a no ads, nag screens or spyware. The program is ideal for those who upload screenshots either to the imageshare or for mods, it's most useful for those with the free version of FRAPS, BMP images can be converted to JPG very quickly either as a single image or in a batch. I'll cover a few of things it is capable of here but to be honest there isn't really much need, one the programs strongest points is its simplicity.

 

Before you start open the programs options and associate it with whatever image types you want, I associated it with all the common ones as I use it as a image viewer too. On the top toolbar click Settings and then select Settings from the drop down. Click the associations tab and select those you want to associate.

 

http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/234717-1295521019.jpg

 

Basic Viewing and Toolbars

 

Once the associations are set double clicking an image on your hard drive will display the picture full screen using Faststone, to advance to the next image in that folder press the space bar, to go back hit backspace. You'll notice there are no toolbars in this viewing mode, they are there but they are hidden. Moving your mouse to the left edge of the screen will bring up the editing and saving options, moving the mouse to the right edge of the screen will bring up the file attributes and general info, there won't be much there for screenshots but it's useful for seeing what settings were used with a digital camera. Moving the mouse to the top edge will bring up thumbnail views of other images in that folder, moving to the bottom will bring up printing/email/ect options.

 

Converting Single Images

 

The free version of FRAPS only captures Bitmaps (.BMP), however converting them to .JPG is simple. Double click the Bitmap and it will open in full screen, move your mouse to the left hand edge of the screen and select "Save As". A box will open asking for a filename, give it one and select JPEG from the "Save as type" drop down box. There is also an options button, use this adjust the quality. The lower you set this the smaller the filesize will become at a cost to image quality. 90% is fine for most images, 95% if you must but 100% increases the size by quite a bit and costs Dark0ne more money in bandwidth.

 

Batch Converting Images

 

This is useful when FRAPS or Oblivion/FO3/FNV has left you with a folder full of Bitmaps. Open the program proper from the start menu, on the left hand pane highlight the folder containing the Bitmaps you wish to convert. On the top toolbar select "Tools" and then "Open Batch Convert/Rename Dialogue", a new window will open. In the left hand pane you will see the images in the folder you selected, highlight those you wish to convert and add them via the add button, you can also add all here. Under the right hand pane you will see output, choose JPEG format and then click settings to set the image quality ect. Browse to the folder you wish to save the new files in from the Output Folder section. Hit "Convert". New images will be created so the old Bitmaps will have to be deleted when you're finished.

 

Other Functions

 

These are all pretty self explanatory.

 

http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/234717-1295524825.jpg

 

I will highlight what the Drawboard can do, it's no Photoshop but for basic things like adding speech bubbles it's quite handy.

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/234717-1295525772.jpg

[fdimage]

great tool i can see, it can be used just as browser except better than it with other image features. converting edting loading and so on. i will definitely have a try.

as i know there are two types of image viewer windows and web to view images quickly and in batch.

[Thor.]

Nice suggestion :thumbsup: , but i have been using Irfanview for years, do i need a change, naahh!!.

 

http://www.irfanview.com/

[JimboUK]

Nice suggestion :thumbsup: , but i have been using Irfanview for years, do i need a change, naahh!!.

 

http://www.irfanview.com/

 

I used to use that but I found Faststone far better.

[DonnaKlinton]

HI there

Thanks for your sharing.I exactly need an image viewer.Because my previous image viewer can not work after my updating to windows 8.

So i want to know is this viewer can work with windows8?Thanks for any suggestion.

[JimboUK]

HI there

Thanks for your sharing.I exactly need an image viewer.Because my previous image viewer can not work after my updating to windows 8.

So i want to know is this viewer can work with windows8?Thanks for any suggestion.

 

Yes it does, I use it on my Windows 8 laptop.