Editors' Review
+Though it's lightweight and completely free, FastStone Image Viewer has the power and features to be the primary image editor for most users and the go-to "daily driver" for pros. It packs an impressive array of tools, brushes, filters, effects, and extras in a classic (and customizable) layout. It can resize, rotate, and crop images; fix red-eye and other image flaws; add borders, watermarks, and special effects; convert batches; and do far more, and better, than it should be able to for free.
Pros
Full-screen plus: Rolling the cursor to the edges of the cool full-screen view brings up a program menu, thumbnails, file attributes, and the Navigator toolbar.
Wallpaper and more: The Set Wallpaper Anywhere on Desktop tool let us customize wallpaper size and position, add decorative borders, change backgrounds, and more. The Tools menu also offers Compare Images, Batch Convert, Batch Rename, Change Timestamp, and JPEG Lossless Rotate.
Creative extras: The Create menu holds Slide Show Builder, Contact Sheet Builder, and Image Strip tools, as well as Multi-Page File Builder and Splitter.
Tutorials: New users can download extensive tutorials from the Help menu.
Cons
Wallpaper thumbnails: In addition to border templates, the Set Wallpaper tool should be able to display thumbnails from the selected folder, so you don't have to go back and forth to try different images.
Bottom Line
FastStone Image Viewer isn't a true alternative to big-box tools like Photoshop, but even professionals might find it quicker to launch, faster to use, and better suited for everyday use.
Publisher's Description
+
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 5.3: 1) Optimized the program to support larger images; 2)Fixed a bug that might cause the program to crash when pressing W key to open the containing folder.
