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FastStone Image Viewer

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on November 07, 2008

For a free program, this multipurpose image tool strikes us as a good find. Although the main interface looks too cluttered with buttons at first glance, the three main windows are intuitive enough once get your bearings. FastStone Image Viewer for Windows boasts a nice default design, but you can customize it to your liking with several skins.

Clicking a thumbnail puts a larger view of the shot in the lower-left pane, and you zoom in simply by dragging the mouse around. Though its image-editing tools can't compete with those offered by a full-featured suite, there's still enough here to make a decent amount of tweaks to your shots. You can resize, crop, remove red-eye, and adjust color, brightness, and contrast. You'll also find a few simple effects and filters, including Lens, Waves, and Morphs. Other nifty features include multiple folder slide shows, batch cropping and Windows Vista support.

FastStone Image Viewer for Windows can batch-convert files into a number of popular image formats including GIF, BMP, PSD, and PNG, and the slide-show creator allows you to apply transitions, specify the interval between images, and add your own MP3s as a soundtrack. We can recommend this program to everyone but professional designers.

 
Back up and synchronize your important files automatically.

Publisher's Description

From FastStone Soft:

FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, e-mailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touch the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram... It supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA.

What's new in this version: Version 4.6 has improved the "Acquire Images from Scanner" tool.

More Popular Image Editing Software downloads

  1. PhotoScape

    163,534 downloads

  2. IrfanView

    107,406 downloads

  3. Adobe Photoshop Extended

    34,007 downloads

  4. FastStone Image Viewer

    30,063 downloads

  5. PhotoShine

    14,613 downloads

 
Convert PDF files to Word and Excel documents.
All User Reviews
  • All versions:

    4.6 stars

    out of 1,542 votes

    • 5 star: 1072
    • 4 star: 351
    • 3 star: 63
    • 2 star: 24
    • 1 star: 32
  • Current version:

    4.4 stars

    out of 52 votes

    • 5 star: 33
    • 4 star: 14
    • 3 star: 2
    • 2 star: 1
    • 1 star: 2
  • My rating:

    0 stars

    Write review

Results 1-10 of 52

  • 4.0 stars

    "Excellent Software."

    February 6, 2012  |   By vsxd1s2

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    I keep it close to Irfanview. Pretty good product.

    Cons

    None that I can think of.

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  • 4.0 stars

    "Good program for the price Free is always nice."

    February 6, 2012  |   By Moose747

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    A very good free program

    Cons

    Some limitations but nothing to cause the average user any problems.

    Summary

    I use several such programs for different jobs. This program has allowed me to do away with a couple others. It does a good job and I recomend it to friends.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Very useful program!"

    February 4, 2012  |   By roxsn

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    Easy to use, love the versatility of the screenshots, editing options, saving formats.

    Cons

    There is nothing about this program I don't like. Price is right...if you find it for free, send a donation. It's well worth it!

    Summary

    I've recommended this program to friends and coworkers. It's better than many expensive programs. Try it, you'll like it.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Have not been disappointed in six years use!"

    January 29, 2012  |   By hypernipper

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    Hassle-free installation
    User-friendly lay-out
    Does everything it claims to do
    Lots of editing options

    Cons

    None come to mind.

    Summary

    As a user of FastStone Image Viewer since 2006/07, I've never found it necessary or even tempting to switch to any other of the oodles of brands I've tried since. It's my mainstay; I use it to prep all my photos for animation software, Photoshop and other professional, pricey stuff I use. Each version upgrade gets better and it's free! Incredible

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Great photo viewing and organizing program"

    January 24, 2012  |   By cwbabcock2

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    I'm surprised at all the things that this program can do like resizing photos and renaming them in a batch.

    Cons

    Haven't found any

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  • 4.0 stars

    "Very good photo editing software"

    January 15, 2012  |   By JinJin_Can

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    jobs always done with limited strock

    Cons

    Donation requested pop-up annoying... with minimum donation $20+

    Summary

    Highly recommended to amateur level before they step-up to Adobe Elements.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Great, Easy to use, Free"

    January 13, 2012  |   By davidtb--2008

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    See Above, very low learning curve

    Cons

    nuthin really

    Summary

    this is a must have for fast paste jobs for presentations, If you integrate this in power point make the job a snap.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Great for most image-related tasks"

    January 11, 2012  |   By Chufflebean

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    Built-in file browser
    Lots of editing capabilities
    Preview Adobe images (PSD, AI, etc)
    Slideshow feature

    Cons

    Larger output file sizes
    Small preview pane

    Summary

    I love this program! Despite its name, it does a lot more than just "view" images--it also can crop, resize, color correct, and it even has some drawing features which I haven't explored extensively.

    Even for basic image browsing, it is a cut above the standard options that come with Windows because it can preview file formats that Windows can't--PSD, AI, PDF, etc.

    My two gripes about this program are minor: When saving images with similar settings, FastStone Image Viewer seems to output larger files than Photoshop, making it less than optimal for working with Web graphics.

    Also, by default, there is a small image preview pane that shows up below the folder tree and to the left of the folder contents pane. This preview pane is so small as to be almost useless. You can resize it, but you can't move it. And making it bigger also makes the folder tree take up more horizontal space than it needs. This feature would be more useful if it could be dragged below the folder contents, or used to show more than one image side-by-side.

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  • 2.0 stars

    "Some what unstable program"

    January 9, 2012  |   By danmichaud01

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    It's a free program?

    Cons

    After having a huge issue trying to download the program, it is difficult to maneuver through the features!When I sent a picture to print after I edited it using this program it froze up my laptop completely I had to remove the battery to restart my laptop!

    Summary

    I'm not sure if it's the program's fault or if it was some how corrupted in the download, that It keeps freezing up my laptop!

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  • 5.0 stars

    "THE BEST -AL STVARNO THE BEST !!!"

    January 8, 2012  |   By salesalex

    Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6

    Pros

    ODLICAN PROGRAM ZA ZEBAVANCIJU SA SLIKAMA ,POKUSAO SAM I PROFESIONALNA SRANJA AL SU SAMO SRANJA ZA KOJA TREBA VEROVATNO MESECI DA SE SKAPIRAJU JER SU SRANJA OD FOTO PROGRAMA ... ALI FASTSTONE JE THE BEST I SVE IH BIJE .

    Cons

    NEVEROVATNO JE DA JE DZABE?

    Summary

    SKINITE OVAJ PROGRAM -INSTALIRAJTE GA -I SKAPIRAJTE ZA 15 MINUTA -TOLKO JE DOVOLJNO .
    EASIEST PROFESIONAL FREE PHOTO PROGRAM IN THE WORLD -DOWNLOAD IT AND LEARN IT IN A 15 MINUTES .

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Results 1-10 of 52

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