CNET Editors' review
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.
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 Photo Editors downloads
- PhotoScape
117,831 downloads
- IrfanView
97,967 downloads
- FastStone Image Viewer
29,698 downloads
- Adobe Photoshop Extended
21,741 downloads
- Photo Pos Pro
15,036 downloads
-
All versions:
4.6 starsout of 1,565 votes
-
Current version:
4.5 starsout of 75 votes
-
My rating:
Write review
-
"A very good program."
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
Many features are far superior to Photoshop and iPhoto.
Simple and easy to use.
Excellent organising and renumbering tools.Cons
Can't think of any.
Summary
A very good program.
-
"Excellent...."
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
Easy to use. Intuitive interface.
Cons
Would Prefer larger preview screen size
Summary
Have been looking for a decent photo libraries manager with some reasonably good editing features to replace Firehand Ember. This is the by far the best I've checked out and I've checked quite a few ranging from freeware to costly paid ones. I have not had a great deal of experience with it yet, but so far it looks terrific. I'll post more as I get to more opportunity to use it.
-
"Good photo editor that can scan multiple pages to PDF."
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
* Good photo editor. (Better than MS Paint.)
* Works with scanners to batch scan multiple pages and save to PDF, TIF, JPEG, etc.
* Can add text, lines, arrows, paint fill, effects, etc.
* Small & fast.
* Intuitive user interface. No manual needed.
* Free with no adware.
* Can also do various types of screen capture (better than MS Snipping Tool).
* Can even open & edit RAW files.Cons
* It's not a full-featured like Adobe Photoshop, and isn't great for creating postcards, etc. but it's good enough for most of us non-professionals.
Summary
My old HP MFP's scanner software (made for Windows XP) wouldn't work with my new Windows 7 PC, so I was looking for a software-scanner solution that could easily scan multiple pages and save them directly to a single PDF document (without having to go through multiple steps). FastStone lets me easily do this. Other software (like Windows Fax & Scan, or IrfanView) require a multi-step process of saving the images as JPG or TIF, and then saving them as a single PDF document.
I also found that FastStone is a better, more full-featured photo-editing & screen-capture tool than Windows' built "Paint" and "Snipping Tool".
FastStone isn't a replacement for a full-featured photo-editing and document-creation program like PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro, but it's FREE and it's probably good enough for most people's needs, and for example, it's a LOT faster than programs like my PhotoImpact Pro 13 (which crawls at a snail's pace on my quad-core 8GB RAM PC).
It can even open and edit RAW photos.
I'd highly recommend it. -
"This one is my choice"
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
All functions I need; good quality output; user friendly convenient interface.
Cons
Didn't find any so far. May be later...:)
Summary
This one is the best out of several photo editors I tried so far. It does everything I need, and does it well. Produces good quality output. Works fine on my Win 7 system.
-
"Great Viewer for Photos"
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
Easy to use
Intuitive
Great slideviewer
Simple effects without PhotoshopCons
No MAC version
Summary
I brought parallels so I could use this program on my MAC. Its great.
-
"FastStone Image Viewer Is The Best"
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
There is so many great things about this program that you should just read all the great features it has on your own, all i can say is, AWESOME
Cons
none at this time
Summary
FastStone Image Viewer Is The Best
-
"Best image viewer & editor solution."
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
A complete set of features
Ease of useCons
None......
-
"best image software ever"
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
works well with raw and jpeg, easy to use and tag photos.
Cons
none at all
Summary
I have been using this software for over 5yrs. and when I change pc's I contacted customer support for the key to activate on new computer. They responded within 24hrs. and re activated my software. For 2 of the 5 yrs. I did not register, but the software has helped me so I paid for a registration. Get this product and register it. It's worth it and they the developers deserve it.
-
"fast, works great with multi-page TIF files"
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
Simple to install. I was in a hurry to open a multi-page TIF file. Found FastStone Image Viewer on CNET. Within 5 min I had downloaded, installed, and figured out how to open my file.
Cons
There were no cons for me.
-
"Al meer dan 10 jaar plezier"
Version: FastStone Image Viewer 4.6
Pros
Gebruiks vriendelijke opties
Veel keusCons
PDF WAT MINDER
Summary
Zeer content
Add Your Review
Submit your reply
E-mail this review
Report offensive content
Previous Versions:
