Fullscreen Photo Viewer for Windows

You have a high-resolution wide-screen LCD monitor, good video card (or cards), and HD sources, yet you're using Windows to display images? Or maybe you've had to flip through huge batches of image files and wished there was an easier way. There is, in the form of Fullscreen Photo Viewer. This simple, free tool is optimized for displaying high-resolution images in full-screen mode. With keyboard, mouse, and command line options, it lets you move quickly through batches of images with minimal effort.

Fullscreen Photo Viewer opened with a black screen with basic instructions displayed DOS-style in the upper-left corner. This program uses the Function keys to toggle features on and off, including file information, program control buttons, and a red-cyan 3D overlay. In addition to keyboard commands and forward and back arrows on the interface, we could also right-click the screen to access a menu of basic commands. The Help file also lists command line options. We browsed to a folder of images we use as a wallpaper slideshow and selected one, which loads the entire directory. The image opened against a black full-screen view, with semitransparent navigation arrows and an X to close the program in the right margin. We clicked through the images, which loaded quickly with no lag. We chose our wallpaper images because of familiarity; any real differences would show up quickly, or at least, that's the theory. But whatever else can be said, Fullscreen Photo Viewer displayed our familiar (and familial!) images in maximum quality. Pressing F2 displayed each file's data in the top edge. The 3D feature is experimental but cool: press F9, and the program renders a 3D version (you'll need 3D glasses, of course). A recent (and very welcome) upgrade added the ability to minimize the program to the toolbar, though the command is too elaborate; there needs to be a button or hot key to activate this extremely important feature.

Graphics pros, developers, and other power users will appreciate Fullscreen Photo Viewer's command line capability and keyboard-based controls. But anyone can appreciate its ability to display high-quality images quickly and accurately.