There's healthy competition in the image viewer arena and FastStone Image Viewer offers plenty of great features in a fairly easy-to-use (if not very attractive) package. You can change the skin of FastStone Image Viewer if you prefer a different style (MacX, Windows XP, Windows Classic etc). Or you can right click on the screen to get some basic navigation and editing options. When you are viewing your images in full-screen mode you can still access the different tools by hovering your mouse over the four corners of the screen, which is a useful trick and helps make the program more user-friendly. But the drop-down menus are well organized and logical, which makes it much easier to access the options you need. It's not immediately obvious what all the buttons at the top of the screen do and it over complicates the layout. Over-complicated layoutįastStone Image Viewer's interface looks a bit outdated and it's much too busy.

FastStone Image Viewer also supports touch interface input. Other features include batch converting into PDF, JPG, PNG and TIFF files and the option to take screen captures and add text, lines, and shapes in the Draw Board menu. There are also the standard tools for resizing, cropping, brightness/darkness adjustment, sharpness/blur, grayscale and red-eye removal, as well as more advanced tools for adjusting levels, curves, and lighting.

Or, if you happen to be working with 3D, FastStone Image Viewer also offers a very effective bump map option that will serve you well for texturing. You can perform quick edits to really bring out the best in your pics, such as adding a stylish frame that acts as a mask to reduce the sharp edges or adding borders, watermarks, and sketch and oil painting effects. However, FastStone Image Viewer goes beyond simply displaying images. Other options include the ability to compare up to four images side by side so you can decide which ones you want to keep, as well as tag your images (with location) and view EXIF information (camera settings and scene data).

Faststone image viewer 7.4