|
|
|
|
IrfanView
|
| |
|
| |
IrfanView is a freeware image viewer for Microsoft Windows that can view, edit, and convert image files and play video/audio formats. It does not have extensive image creation and painting capabilities like Adobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor, Paint.NET or GIMP. Rather, IrfanView is designed to be a lightweight viewer/player which is noted for its speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats. The software was first made available in 1996.
The program is named for after its creator, Irfan Skiljan of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is .
Discussion
Ask a question about 'IrfanView' Start a new discussion about 'IrfanView' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
IrfanView is a freeware image viewer for Microsoft Windows that can view, edit, and convert image files and play video/audio formats. It does not have extensive image creation and painting capabilities like Adobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor, Paint.NET or GIMP. Rather, IrfanView is designed to be a lightweight viewer/player which is noted for its speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats. The software was first made available in 1996.
The program is named for after its creator, Irfan Skiljan of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is . IrfanView works under all modern versions of Microsoft Windows (i.e. Windows 95 to Vista; Microsoft tested version 3.98, which was on the official Vista software list). It supports numerous file formats including: image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG (includes the optimizer PNGOUT), TIFF, non-image media files such as Flash, (Ogg) Vorbis, MPEG, MP3, MIDI, and text files.
After version 3.92, the installer could choose to also install an eBay toolbar in order to support the developer. In version 3.92, adding the toolbar was selected at installation by default, and the program was criticized by some as containing spyware. The option was not selected in version 3.97, and was replaced with an option to install Google Desktop Search from 3.98. IrfanView is "provided as freeware, but only for private, non-commercial use", and requires paid registration for commercial use.
Logo/mascot
The IrfanView logo and mascot is a flattened roadkill cat. The 16px icon has tire tread marks across the caricature; the 32px icon is this "non tire tread" version; and the 48px icon has a gradient across the cat's body. The author of the software does stress, however, that he bears no ill will towards cats. In fact, the IrfanView website pictures him holding a cat.
Features
The program is compact: the latest version is less than 1200 kB in size, although several megabytes of plugins are available to support numerous other file formats and features.
In addition to extensive viewing capabilities and file conversion options, IrfanView can also create screensavers and slide shows from collections of images with optional accompanying mp3 audio. These screensavers and slide shows can be created as “stand-alone” executables that will run on computers which do not have IrfanView installed.
A feature closely related to the slideshow and screensaver features is that of batch image translation. With slideshows, batch image translations and screensaver creation you can apply predetermined image processing steps.
Irfanview can be downloaded directly to a U3 compatible device.
IrfanView can also be used to create icons by converting common graphic files into .ico format. It also supports Adobe-compatible 8bf image processing filters, including many freely downloadable ones, though its ability to apply them to portions of an image is limited compared to full-scale image editors.
The program has built-in TWAIN support for retrieving images from scanners; it also has extended support for taking screenshots.
It can crop, resize, and rotate images. Images can be adjusted by modifying the brightness, contrast, tint, gamma level, and so forth, and by converting them between formats. Many of these changes can be applied to multiple images in one operation using batch processing.
IrfanView can direct the active image to open in an external graphics editor (Adobe Photoshop, for example) if the user has one installed.
In English by default, the program is internationalized in over twenty languages.
Plugins
IrfanView has many plugins. Some include:
-
JPG_TRANSFORM, which allows some lossless transforms of JPEG images. For a free alternative, see jpegtran and the associate Jpegcrop.
IrfanView thumbnails
This function displays thumbnail file previews, allowing picture organizing and management. The program can be set to display the thumbnails at a wide range of sizes, from very small (50 × 50 pixels) to very large (600 × 600 pixels). The user can select single or multiple thumbnails, then perform the usual Copy/Move/Delete operations on them. Selected thumbnails can also be sent directly to IrfanView's Batch Processing module or opened with an external program such as Adobe Photoshop.
Limitations
RGB vs CMYK colour spaces
Though IrfanView handles many RGB image file types, it is not a color-managed viewer, so CMYK profiles are not used and as a result CMYK images will not display correctly.
Filenames
Also, IrfanView can't open files with names having special characters different than current language system settings, but it can if you change system settings targeting file name language (e.g. set system to Chinese to open files with Chinese names). From version 4.20 IrfanView comes with a workaround plugin to solve this issue.
Larawave image translation library
IrfanView does not support JPEG2000 in the same way it supports JPEG. If you want to translate an image into its JPEG2000 equivalent, you cannot unless you buy access to the Larawave library. Lack of open source support for many file formats can be a problem.
Zooming in Version 4.10
Zooming in version 4.10 was modified to be relative to previous zoom, meaning that if the set zoom interval would be influenced by the percentage of how zoomed in or out the picture is. An example would be if the zoom interval was set to 10 percent, and if the current zoom was 250 percent, then the next zoom step would be by 25 percent. This resulted in seemingly random zoom steps and because there is no way to disable this modified zooming, it was initially considered by most Irfanview users to be a bug. Another problem was that if a user set the zoom interval to 100 percent or greater, then zooming out became impossible, as every negative zoom set would go below 1 percent which Irfanview does not allow. Some users go as far as saying that this makes version 4.10 of Irfanview unusable. In version 4.20 this was solved with three different options for zooming.
Copyright infringement and impersonators
Irfanview is freeware, although it is still copyrighted software; there is no other legitimate version other than that offered at irfanview.com. Versions such as "IrfanView Platinum" or "IrfanView Pro" have appeared which may be copyright infringements that attempt to charge end users by using the name of a free product as well as potentially containing spyware or viruses.
About the author
Irfan Skiljan graduated from the Vienna Institute of Technology. In a 2006 interview, 32-year-old Skiljan said that he was able to more or less live off the software, generating income with the sale of licenses for commercial users and of special versions for different customers.
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
