IrfanView
Encyclopedia
IrfanView is a freeware/shareware image viewer
for Microsoft Windows
that can view, edit, and convert image files and play video/audio files. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. The software was first released in 1996. IrfanView is free for non-commercial use; commercial use requires paid registration.
The program is named for its creator, Irfan Škiljan from Jajce
, Bosnia and Herzegovina
, living in Vienna
. IrfanView works under Windows 95
through Windows 7, and can also be run in Linux
under Wine
and in Mac OS X
using WineBottler.
compatible device.
It supports viewing and saving of numerous file types including image formats such as BMP
, GIF, JPEG
, JP2 & JPM
(JPEG2000), PNG (includes the optimizer PNGOUT
), TIFF
, camera RAW, ECW
(Enhanced Compressed Wavelet), EMF
(Enhanced Windows Metafile), FSH (EA Sports format), ICO (Windows icon), LDF (LuraDocument format), LWF (LuraWave format), PCX
(Zsoft Paintbrush), PBM
(Portable bitmap), PDF
(Portable Document Format), PGM (Portable graymap), PPM (Portable Pixelmap), TGA
(Truevision Targa), and viewing of media files such as Flash, Ogg
Vorbis
, MPEG, MP3
, MIDI
, and text file
s.
While viewing images, there are several fit-to-screen scaling options and an automatic slideshow function. The viewer can open in sequence all the image-files and video clips (of most formats, including AVCHD) contained in a folder. Slideshows can contain still images and video clips; useful with current digital cameras.
IrfanView can create screensavers and slide shows from collections of images with optional accompanying MP3
audio. These can be saved as stand-alone executables which run on Windows computers without IrfanView installed.
For slideshow creation, screensaver creation and batch image translations, preset image processing steps can be applied to selected sets of images.
IrfanView can create icons by converting common graphic files into .ico
format. It supports Adobe-compatible 8BF image processing filters, including many freely downloadable ones, primarily for application to whole images.
The program has TWAIN
support for retrieving images from scanners, and extended support for taking screenshot
s.
Image editing includes crop, resize, and rotate. Images can be adjusted by modifying their brightness, contrast, tint, and gamma level manually or automatically, and by converting them between file formats. Many of these changes can be applied to multiple images in one operation using batch processing
. Resize can be applied towards the display of animated GIF images to make them larger in either windowed or full-screen modes. Lossless functions can be applied to JPG images in order to optimize the files without change to the displayed image.
IrfanView can direct the active image to open in an external graphics editor (Adobe Photoshop
, for example) if it is installed.
In English
by default, the program is internationalized
in over twenty language
s.
file previews, allowing picture organization and management, at sizes from 50 × 50 to 600 × 600 pixels. The user can select a number of thumbnails to perform Copy/Move/Delete operations on them, or send them to IrfanView's Batch Processing module or an external program such as Adobe Photoshop
.
browser toolbar was included in order to support the developer. At that time, installing the toolbar was selected by default, which was criticized as spyware
. In version 3.97, installation was unselected by default, and in 3.98, this was replaced by Google Desktop Search. A no-toolbar version containing the program and its default plugins is available in a .ZIP
archive rather than a .exe installer package.
7, Irfanview 3.91 produced "consistently better images than the Adobe Photoshop JPEG encoder at the same data rate", and its JPEG2000 compression quality "closely followed" the best codec, JasPer
." According to IrfanView's official website, since 2003, IrfanView has been downloaded over 1 million times per month.
. In a 2006 interview, 32-year-old Bosnian-born Škiljan 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.
and mascot
is a "road
cat
"
(there is a tire track across the smallest icon) but that he "likes cats", and the icon is "a joke." The IrfanView website pictures him holding a cat
.
Image viewer
An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
that can view, edit, and convert image files and play video/audio files. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. The software was first released in 1996. IrfanView is free for non-commercial use; commercial use requires paid registration.
The program is named for its creator, Irfan Škiljan from Jajce
Jajce
Jajce is a city and municipality located in the central part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is part of the Central Bosnia Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity...
, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
, living in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. IrfanView works under Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
through Windows 7, and can also be run in Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
under Wine
Wine (software)
Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...
and in Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
using WineBottler.
Features
The program is compact: the basic installation of version 4.30 occupies 1.6 MB, and a full install with all plugins occupies about 10 MB. The program can be downloaded directly to a U3U3
U3 was a joint venture between SanDisk and M-Systems , producing a proprietary method of launching Windows applications from special USB flash drives. Flash drives adhering to the U3 specification are termed "U3 smart drives"....
compatible device.
It supports viewing and saving of numerous file types including image formats such as BMP
Windows bitmap
The BMP File Format, also known as Bitmap Image File or Device Independent Bitmap file format or simply a Bitmap, is a Raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images, independently of the display device , especially on Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems.The BMP...
, GIF, JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
, JP2 & JPM
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
(JPEG2000), PNG (includes the optimizer PNGOUT
PNGOUT
PNGOUT is a freeware command line optimizer for PNG images written by Ken Silverman. The compression is lossless, meaning that the resulting image will have exactly the same appearance as the source image...
), TIFF
Tagged Image File Format
TIFF is a file format for storing images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and both amateur and professional photographers in general. As of 2009, it is under the control of Adobe Systems...
, camera RAW, ECW
ECW (file format)
ECW is a proprietary wavelet compression image format optimized for aerial and satellite imagery. It was developed by Earth Resource Mapping, and is now owned by ERDAS, which is owned by Intergraph...
(Enhanced Compressed Wavelet), EMF
Windows Metafile
Windows Metafile is a graphics file format on Microsoft Windows systems, originally designed in the 1990s. Windows Metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and may contain both vector graphics and bitmap components....
(Enhanced Windows Metafile), FSH (EA Sports format), ICO (Windows icon), LDF (LuraDocument format), LWF (LuraWave format), PCX
PCX
PCX is an image file format developed by the now-defunct ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush and became one of the first widely accepted DOS imaging standards, although it has since been succeeded by more sophisticated image formats, such as GIF,...
(Zsoft Paintbrush), PBM
Netpbm
Netpbm is an open source package of graphics programs and a programming library, used mainly in the Unix world. It is a highly portable package, working under many Unix platforms, Windows, Mac OS X, VMS, Amiga OS and others and is included in all major open source Unix-like operating system...
(Portable bitmap), PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
(Portable Document Format), PGM (Portable graymap), PPM (Portable Pixelmap), TGA
Truevision TGA
Truevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
(Truevision Targa), and viewing of media files such as Flash, Ogg
Ogg
Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...
Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
, MPEG, MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface
MIDI is an industry-standard protocol, first defined in 1982 by Gordon Hall, that enables electronic musical instruments , computers and other electronic equipment to communicate and synchronize with each other...
, and text file
Text file
A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...
s.
While viewing images, there are several fit-to-screen scaling options and an automatic slideshow function. The viewer can open in sequence all the image-files and video clips (of most formats, including AVCHD) contained in a folder. Slideshows can contain still images and video clips; useful with current digital cameras.
IrfanView can create screensavers and slide shows from collections of images with optional accompanying MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
audio. These can be saved as stand-alone executables which run on Windows computers without IrfanView installed.
For slideshow creation, screensaver creation and batch image translations, preset image processing steps can be applied to selected sets of images.
IrfanView can create icons by converting common graphic files into .ico
ICO (icon image file format)
The ICO file format is an image file format for computer icons in Microsoft Windows. ICO files contain one or more small images at multiple sizes and color depths, such that they may be scaled appropriately...
format. It supports Adobe-compatible 8BF image processing filters, including many freely downloadable ones, primarily for application to whole images.
The program has TWAIN
TWAIN
TWAIN is a standard software protocol and applications programming interface that regulates communication between software applications and imaging devices such as scanners and digital cameras....
support for retrieving images from scanners, and extended support for taking screenshot
Screenshot
A screenshot , screen capture , screen dump, screengrab , or print screen is an image taken by a computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device...
s.
Image editing includes crop, resize, and rotate. Images can be adjusted by modifying their brightness, contrast, tint, and gamma level manually or automatically, and by converting them between file formats. Many of these changes can be applied to multiple images in one operation using batch processing
Batch processing
Batch processing is execution of a series of programs on a computer without manual intervention.Batch jobs are set up so they can be run to completion without manual intervention, so all input data is preselected through scripts or command-line parameters...
. Resize can be applied towards the display of animated GIF images to make them larger in either windowed or full-screen modes. Lossless functions can be applied to JPG images in order to optimize the files without change to the displayed image.
IrfanView can direct the active image to open in an external graphics editor (Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
, for example) if it is installed.
In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
by default, the program is internationalized
Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...
in over twenty language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s.
Plugins
IrfanView uses plugins to handle a variety of image formats and to add optional functionality such as filter processing or other program features. With the variety of format plugins, the program has been recommended for viewing obscure image formats, or corrupted files, which commercial photo editing software cannot read.Thumbnails
This function displays thumbnailThumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...
file previews, allowing picture organization and management, at sizes from 50 × 50 to 600 × 600 pixels. The user can select a number of thumbnails to perform Copy/Move/Delete operations on them, or send them to IrfanView's Batch Processing module or an external program such as Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
.
Search Engine Toolbar
As of Version 3.92, installation of the eBayEBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
browser toolbar was included in order to support the developer. At that time, installing the toolbar was selected by default, which was criticized as spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
. In version 3.97, installation was unselected by default, and in 3.98, this was replaced by Google Desktop Search. A no-toolbar version containing the program and its default plugins is available in a .ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
archive rather than a .exe installer package.
Reception
Irfanview has been positively reviewed as "a longtime favorite" and "really good" for easily and rapidly viewing and manipulating images, with its editing and drawing tools. Other writers have focused on its ability to open a wide variety of image formats. In a series of image quality tests conducted in 2004, compared with commercial image compressors and Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
7, Irfanview 3.91 produced "consistently better images than the Adobe Photoshop JPEG encoder at the same data rate", and its JPEG2000 compression quality "closely followed" the best codec, JasPer
JasPer
JasPer is a project to create a reference implementation of the codec specified in the JPEG-2000 Part-1 standard, . The project was started in 1997 by Image Power Inc. and the University of British Columbia...
." According to IrfanView's official website, since 2003, IrfanView has been downloaded over 1 million times per month.
Author
Irfan Škiljan graduated from the Vienna University of TechnologyVienna University of Technology
Vienna University of Technology is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Founded in 1815 as the "Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute" , it currently has about 26,200 students , 8 faculties and about 4,000 staff members...
. In a 2006 interview, 32-year-old Bosnian-born Škiljan 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.
Logo/mascot
According to Skiljan, the IrfanView logoLogo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...
and mascot
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
is a "road
Roadkill
Roadkill is an animal or animals that have been struck and killed by motor vehicles. In the United States of America, removal and disposal of animals struck by motor vehicles is usually the responsibility of the state's state trooper association or department of transportation.-History:During the...
cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
"
(there is a tire track across the smallest icon) but that he "likes cats", and the icon is "a joke." The IrfanView website pictures him holding a cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
.