I’m looking for an image viewer on windows that also has some simple editing tools. I’ve been using nomacs for quite a while, which is exactly that, but editing images with this software can get pretty finicky, so I’m looking for an alternative.
Features I’m looking for:
- Browse between images in a folder
- Rotate images 90° and mirror images
- Crop images freely or using preset aspect ratios (1:1, 5:4, 16:9, …)
- Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. (optional)
What do I dislike about nomacs? It has all of the features I’m looking for. However when cropping, the crop area doesn’t align with the edge of the image, which means the crop area can go outside of the image and white pixels will be added when you crop the image this way. You can’t easily align the crop area to the center of the image either, so it’s all guess work and repeat if you messed up. Furthermore, the brightness slider and similar sliders aren’t what they should be. They change the image in unexpected ways and can’t be reset properly.
So in short, using nomacs to edit is a hassle and I’m looking for similar software that does the job properly. Thank you!
XnView should meet those requirements, as far as I can see.
Is Gwenview available for Windows? I quite like it on Linux.
Am I committing faux pas recommending here something that’s freeware but not open source? If not then Irfan View is great, see if you’ll like it.
yeah that’s fine as long as they don’t steal my data :)
IrfanView (there’s no space) is absolutely phenomenal!
DarkTable sort of works for that, though if I recall correctly the browsing is based on a “library folder” rather than freely browsing. It is very heavily focused around editing photographs.
My recommendation is to combine a decent image editor (eg. GIMP) with a good file manager with image preview.
The default image viewer in windows can do all of this
Paint can do all that and you should already have it installed if you’re on Windows.
Paint cannot be used as an image browser though…
Must’ve glossed over that. My bad. I don’t know if the default Windows photo viewer itself does any of the editing stuff anymore. It used to back on Windows 7 and for a time you could still install it on Windows 10. It was like Google Photos is on mobile, basically.
I don’t know if the default Windows photo viewer itself does any of the editing stuff anymore.
It does, and it’s also available on Windows 10. Pretty sure I also have it on my Windows 11 laptop. I use it fairly regularly when all I’m doing is simple stuff like rotating or cropping, because it’s quicker than opening Photoshop.
Nor can you properly use it to crop. It doesn’t have preset aspect ratios and you can’t drag the crop area around.
It does tho? That’s all I use it for.
In Windows, the built-in Photos program(?) does most of what you want. Literally go to the folder where the images are, right click, choose “Open with” and then “Photos”. It’ll open the image in a very, very simple image viewer, where you can move back and forth between images in the same folder, and it has options for rotating, cropping, editing brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. The only thing missing is a mirror image option.
I use Photos pretty regularly, if all I need to do is crop or rotate an image, because its integration into Windows means it’s significantly faster than opening a proper image editor. It’s also really good for reviewing a whole batch of photos, as again its integration into Windows means you can delete an unwanted image within Photos and it’ll remove it from the folder as well.
It’s not open source, so maybe not quite what you’re looking for, but it’s definitely completely free and already part of Windows.
