#Faststone image viewer for mac free download free#
#Faststone image viewer for mac free download windows#

#Faststone image viewer for mac free download free#

They're both free and you just get more with XN.

#Faststone image viewer for mac free download windows#

Until they improve certain aspects of this program - for example the ability to choose your windows positioning (XN gives you 8 relative layouts to choose from) as well as the terrible speed of viewing pictures with the Lanczos3 smoothing enabled (there seems to be NO read-ahead cache and pics take ages to load, whereas XN, even with high-quality resizing, loads them in an instant whilst both caching ahead and keeping the current image in the cache), I'd suggest simply getting XN - there's literally no point in using FS at this time. Interestingly enough, FS also have a separate 'image resizer program' which supports 'batch' mode - this functionality is already built into XNView. This will give the interface an all-round speed improvement and improve memory usage too. I'll up my rating to a 4, but it'll never get 5 until they quit forcing the program to use skins mode. such as the menus that you can see when moving the mouse to different edges of the screen in full-screen view mode. FS definitely has some good ideas though. Note: this isn't a replacement for FastStone or IrfanView, it is however about the fastest viewer out there, complete with the best viewer feature available.ДЇS uses 24Mb on startup, XNView uses 15. * Since I started writing this I thought I'd check to see if VuePrint was still available and it is, what's more Hamrick (of VueScan fame) has made it free (although he not updating it): Pity really, this limitation kills FastStone Image Viewer for many, (and it's a key reason why IrfanView is so very popular). One can't help that FastStone's programmer just tinkers.

Does he use it in a heavy-duty extensive way or does he just tinker with it. When one sees an obviously good program but with such a glaring defect as FastStone Image Viewer has, the first question that comes to mind is how does the author/programmer use the program. Instead, when one clicks on the image it simply fills the screen but without providing some way of zooming into a section of special interest. Why FastStone doesn't have this feature is truly perplexing. The next in line for the throne is IrfanView, its difference from VuePrint is that after you map out the square you have to click on the square for it to enlarge/fill the screen-essentially it's an extra step, albeit a small one.

With the mouse, you'd just map out/make a square of the section of the image you want enlarged then release the mouse key and voilГ that area would fill the screen-a most invaluable feature for highly detailed/hi-res images. The 'Rolls Royce' viewer in that regard was always Hamrick's now-defunct VuePrint Pro*.

However, unfortunately, I don't use FastStone Image Viewer for one very simple reason, that being the clumsy awkward way it scales images to view, essentially you cannot select a portion of an image to view as an enlargement. It even has a scaled-down version of my very favorite Photoshop adjustment tool: Shadow/Highlight but unfortunately which doesn't stretch to having tonal width, radius and midtone contrast adjustments a la PS. It has many useful features such as histograms, an excellent tree / file view with images, thumbnails or details mode and such which are quite on par with XnView.ДЇurthermore, it has basic image editing which is fine for quick touch-ups. I rather like FastStone Image Viewer, it progressively gets better every time I come to review it.