# What is the best software to view jpg files with?



## johnsemlak (Nov 28, 2002)

What is the best software to view jpg files with?

I used to view them no problem.  However, I can't remember if I've every used some special software to do so (a lot of the utilitiy programs are god-knows-where on my computer).  I view .tiff files with a Kodak viewer, but that won't read .jpg files.


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## JamesL85 (Nov 29, 2002)

I use Thumbs Plus from cerious software .


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## Fast Learner (Nov 29, 2002)

Internet Explorer works quite well. IE 6 allows you to zoom in and out.


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## Pale (Nov 30, 2002)

The best? Photoshop. heh.


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## Greyhawk_DM (Dec 2, 2002)

Paint Shop Pro...
a LOT cheaper than photoshop...lol


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## gregweller (Dec 2, 2002)

The best free viewer that I know of is Irfanview. It supports a ton of file formats in addition to jpg/jpeg, is a small download, installs in a snap, will let you do basic image manipulations and even supports Photoshop plugins. It's always one of the first programs to go on the disk when I buy a new computer. You can get it at:

http://www.irfanview.com

It's really one of the best pieces of free software I've ever used.


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## Usurper (Dec 2, 2002)

EDIT: ^ Greg beat me to it.  Foiled again.


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## DarkWhite (Dec 2, 2002)

I have used Irfanview, but found it a little clumsy to use.  Thumbs Plus is good.  ACDSee is great.  Most of these programs divide the application window into three panels to show 1) a directory tree of your hard-drive; 2) a thumbnail view of all images in a particular folder; and 3) a large view of the selected thumbnail image.  Double-click any thumbnail, and it displays fullsize, you can page-up/down to scroll through all images, and these programs can even display the contents of zip files without unzipping them, as if they were a sub-directory full of images.

Another neat program is Lview.  It is much smaller program, a few editing features (crop, rotate etc) and not much else.  But is great for older/slower machines, or if you just want something quick and easy.

Once you associate .jpg extensions/file-types with any of these programs, it should launch the program and display the image whenever you double-click the image in windows explorer, or you can instruct programs such as mIRC to automatically launch and open images sent to you with this application.

There are dozens of other image viewers.  Just do a search for any of these in the Graphics/Image viewing/editing section of popular freeware/shareware sites (eg, TuCows.com, c|net shareware.com, c|net downloads.com etc), to find one that suits you.  Many of these programs have been through various incarnations of freeware, shareware, and commercial release, so if you don't absolutely need the lastest version, search through the cover CDs of old computer/web related magazines for an older version.

Of course, you can always use good old Internet Explorer to view .jpg files if you have nothing else.  Just Ctrl-O (File>Open) and browse your local hard-drive for the image you want to view.


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## DarkWhite (Dec 2, 2002)

Also, image viewers that display thumbnail images of every file in a given directory usually require either a) lot of hard-drive space (eg ThumbsPlus); or b) lot of RAM (eg ACDSee); to process the thumbnail images of large directories.  In some cases, these settings might be configurable, but it's something else to keep in mind when choosing an image viewer to suit your needs.  If you're machine is low on both of these, then try a program that doesn't generate thumbnails, such as Lview.


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## Fast Learner (Dec 2, 2002)

Photoshop is a _terrible_ JPEG viewer. It's an _awesome_ JPEG manipulator, but if you just want to look at a JPEG, that's an awful lot of memory to eat and you have to put up with Adobe's terrible application startup time.


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