Irfanview - Working with Images with ease

Dr. Anthony Vipin

As Teachers and Students presenting Powerpoints regularly, working with different Image types and sizes can be demanding and confusing. I have found this Freeware viewer called IRFANVIEW of great help and thought I should share some aspects of this tool with you.

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 after its creator, Irfan Skiljan from Bosnia and Herzegovina, living in Vienna. IrfanView works under Windows 95 through Windows 7. It supports numerous file types including: image formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG (includes the optimizer PNGOUT), TIFF, camera RAW, non-image media files such as Flash, Ogg Vorbis, MPEG, MP3, MIDI, and text files.

Irfan View
Version 4.27
Basic Install - 1.6 MB, Full Install with Plugins - 10 MB

Note - During installation, when prompted to select type of files to be associated, click IMAGES ONLY. (This is not required if you want to keep your actual association)

If you associated images to IrfanView you will see all images with a Irfanview cat Icon! According to Skiljan, the IrfanView logo and mascot is a "road cat" (there is a tire track across the smallest icon)

File Support -
A wide range of files can be opened. They can be converted into a wider range of Image types. Most commonly I work between BMP, PNG, TIFF and JPEG and I find using this much easier. The option to be used is Save As -

Resize -
This is the BEST option that allows us to conveniently resize Images to any size to enable embedding into presentations or to upload as thumbnails on websites. Hotkey to be used is Ctrl + R

Rotate -
Another simple effective function. Press L for Left and R for Right. Its that Simple!

Paint Tool - 
After a selection is made, Paint tool can be used to further add to the picture like color coding, labeling. Hotkey - F12

Crop Selection -
The detail and precision of this tool is amazing. By default when you open an image, you get a cross hair which enables you to conveniently select your area of interest to crop. Once selected, all the four corners and lines can be moved independently to further refine the selection. I have found this tool of great help to work parallely between Powerpoint and Irfanview.

Photo enhancement options -
In Image, there are a wide variety of Color filters, Convert to Grayscale, Negative, Red Eye reductions, Effects to add to the images or selections. The functions are endless.

Viewing ease -
Hitting ENTER automatically makes the Image full screen, and hitting Esc key while open closes the application. Minute attention to detail like this makes it more user friendly.

Irfanview is a small sized software that packs a Big Punch. As a freeware application, it has gained wide spread popularity around the Globe. I have mentioned only a FEW functions that I use regularly to edit images crisply and efficiently. You can use the help option to explore the other functions as well.

I would highly recommend you all to try it out and you'll see the difference! It is FREEWARE! :)

Homepage ( Download )
www.irfanview.com

FAQs
http://www.irfanview.net/faq.htm