Someone reviewed v on Mar 19, 2023

Pros:

Cons:

Bottom Line:

estaf1001 reviewed v7.6 on Jan 2, 2023

Pros: Everything would be fine if not for the program freezes for a minute when you switch the program from viewer mode to browser mode.
Playback is easy.
1. open the file from windows explorer with the program.
2. Double click on the image in the program - the program switches to browser mode.
3. Proffit. It starts to think on nothing. Thinks for a minute and nothing can be done in it at this point. You can delete its profile with all its settings and database given and open it as if from scratch - no chance.
The problem started with the 7.x version.

Cons: Cons. I don't know what "cons" is.

Bottom Line: There used to be a good program. Now there's no place to even ask what's wrong and what's become wrong with it.
There is no forum on the off-site.

Someone reviewed v on Jul 5, 2022

Pros: 555

Cons: 555

Bottom Line: 555

ColinK2 reviewed v7.5 on Mar 9, 2022

Pros: I have Faststone Image Viewer and other purchased Faststone software.

I like and use them all.

Cons: No replies after multiple emails to support@faststone.org or faststone@gmail.com

Disappointed that developer is unwilling to support paying customers

Bottom Line: No replies after multiple emails to support@faststone.org or faststone@gmail.com

Disappointed that developer is unwilling to support paying customers

Picasso reviewed v6.2 on Feb 20, 2017

Still the best of its kind!

Music4Ever reviewed v5.9 on Sep 15, 2016

Great program, cant fault it. Worth anyone with photos installing it.

Picasso reviewed v5.7 on Jun 8, 2016

This is one of the first programs I install after installing Windows.
It's a marvellous program!

FatBastard reviewed v5.4 on Aug 10, 2015

This is one of the best programs I've ever used!!

-1 reviewed v5.2 on Oct 5, 2014

Hilbert, I think rating FSIV down for such a relatively silly feature is not sensible. But what's worse is that FSIV does have this feature. Hold Ctrl, use the mouse to select the desired rectangular area, then click inside that area. FSIV crops the image to the selection and zooms into it. I'm not sure if this feature was added after your review, but I think it has been there all along.

FatBastard reviewed v5.0 on Mar 3, 2014

I totally agree with uberfly.

uberfly reviewed v5.0 on Mar 3, 2014

Insanely great, especially for free. Glad it's still being improved.

Hilbert reviewed v4.9 on Nov 14, 2013

I rather like FastStone Image Viewer, it progressively gets better every time I come to review it. It has many useful features such as histograms, an excellent tree / file view with images, thumbnails or details mode and such which are quite on par with XnView.

Furthermore, it has basic image editing which is fine for quick touch-ups. It even has a scaled-down version of my very favorite Photoshop adjustment tool: Shadow/Highlight but unfortunately which doesn't stretch to having tonal width, radius and midtone contrast adjustments a la PS.

However, unfortunately, I don't use FastStone Image Viewer for one very simple reason, that being the clumsy awkward way it scales images to view, essentially you cannot select a portion of an image to view as an enlargement.

The 'Rolls Royce' viewer in that regard was always Hamrick's now-defunct VuePrint Pro*. With the mouse, you'd just map out/make a square of the section of the image you want enlarged then release the mouse key and voilà that area would fill the screen--a most invaluable feature for highly detailed/hi-res images.

The next in line for the throne is IrfanView, its difference from VuePrint is that after you map out the square you have to click on the square for it to enlarge/fill the screen--essentially it's an extra step, albeit a small one.

Why FastStone doesn't have this feature is truly perplexing. Instead, when one clicks on the image it simply fills the screen but without providing some way of zooming into a section of special interest. Frankly, it's most annoying.

When one sees an obviously good program but with such a glaring defect as FastStone Image Viewer has, the first question that comes to mind is how does the author/programmer use the program. Does he use it in a heavy-duty extensive way or does he just tinker with it. One can't help that FastStone's programmer just tinkers.

Pity really, this limitation kills FastStone Image Viewer for many, (and it's a key reason why IrfanView is so very popular).

___

* Since I started writing this I thought I'd check to see if VuePrint was still available and it is, what's more Hamrick (of VueScan fame) has made it free (although he not updating it):

http://www.hamrick.com/upg.html.

Note: this isn't a replacement for FastStone or IrfanView, it is however about the fastest viewer out there, complete with the best viewer feature available.

serendipityguy reviewed v4.9 on Nov 13, 2013

This is a wonderful windows app with great continued development that should be included with every windows computer. Comes with loads and loads of features that will not disappoint. Wish that would be developed for Mac. I have emailed the developer and he has not replied. It there a Mac application that can do these types tasks? I love the skin changer, very nice

guru_v reviewed v4.8 on Apr 6, 2013

This continues to be the best freeware picture viewer available. IrfanView is very capable, but the interface of FastStone is much better, easier to navigate with a mouse only, and more intuitive.

With each update, more small annoyances of what I wished the program would do are removed, as the author[s] seems to have my thoughts in mind with the changes.

I have used several paid applications [for viewing alone], and none worked any better.

Zoroaster reviewed v4.7 on Jan 29, 2013

L is for the way it works for me,
O is for the only one I see ...
I love this Image Viewer, as a bachelor I think marriage, now !
Works really nicely, light on resources, has the needed functionalities without being bloated. Fast, reliable.
Great !

Karol Mily reviewed v4.7 on Jan 29, 2013

Full satisfaction.

Nice.

FatBastard reviewed v4.6 on Dec 19, 2012

This is one of the best programs I've ever used in my life!
I hope it gets updated soon.

PatrynXX reviewed v4.6 on May 19, 2012

Probably the easiest hands down reliable image view and editor that I've ever used. Yes it has a single con. It only handles english filenames. Which is a major pain if some files have non english character. Overall, I have Paint Shop Pro 11, major memory hog. Even on a 64bit machine with 8gb of Corsair ram. FastStone? why is this free again? Oh I bet it's because nobody answers the email.. hey if it's free and it works the way most should. I really don't care. not many are going to deal with Russian letters anyway. And if you have google earth installed, the metadata here is excellent. (or just notifies others to make sure their GPS is off before taken the photo. I don't care :P, but some celebs do and oops) windows should require it instead of their gallery which is just useless.

uberfly reviewed v4.6 on Nov 30, 2011

TGB72, it has a very good batch tool that can do all this stuff. Again, try the program before you review it.

aloishammer reviewed v4.6 on Jun 29, 2011

Major vulnerability in the included Zip-handling library, which the developers are ignoring. They ignore all email, in fact. Perhaps they're imaginary.

skymanner reviewed v4.5 on May 17, 2011

Can't understand why some people of a free program that consistently improves making it one of the best viewers. The foundation and concept of this program is solid and it works superbly. Is it the best? I dont know. But for me, it exceeds expectations. This is a product that WORKS!

TGB72 reviewed v4.5 on Apr 16, 2011

Does this program allow you to open several files at once in tabs? NO
Can you apply filters or adjust the image contrast/brightness to several pictures at once? NO
Can you see recursively the content of a folder and subfolders at once? NO
Can you preview video, audio and documents with this program? NO

so like I said it's a nice fancy viewer but basic compared with Xnview.

uberfly reviewed v4.5 on Apr 12, 2011

TGB72 - you should try out the program thoroughly before you write your "review".

TGB72 reviewed v4.4 on Apr 4, 2011

Nice Viewer but lacks of the ability to open multiple images like Xnview, neither can apply filters or adjust images in batch mode. Xnview in the other hand can do that and much more. Too basic for my taste.

FatBastard reviewed v4.4 on Mar 28, 2011

Still the best Image Viewer out there.

viler_80 reviewed v4.3 on Feb 9, 2011

WTF? Why your program doesn't open image files that in their names have letters not from classic latin alphabet (scandinavian alphabets, for instance).Renaming can't help : entire folder becomes a "dead zone".Not only files - even folder itself with such letters in it's name after attempt to open files inside becomes a "dead zone"(all files inside - no matter what name they have,never to work with Faststone). With deepest respect that I always had to your product it is really strange to see such a behaviour while other more primitive programs(microsoft office,etc.) have no aforementioned problems.What the hell is wrong with these letters - your program is too stupid to deal with something more than just puny "A-Z" ?

bobad reviewed v4.3 on Jan 18, 2011

The best just got a little better. The new editing features work well, and didn't bloat up the program. If you have hundreds of family photos, nothing is even close to this for quick viewing and light editing. I wish someone that rated FSIV below 5 stars would review it and explain why, because I can't think of a single fault. Well, maybe the skins should include a "Native Windows Theme", but that's only a tiny fraction of a star.

FatBastard reviewed v4.3 on Jan 18, 2011

I have yet to try a better image viewer.

thartist reviewed v4.3 on Jan 17, 2011

Best by far, unlike XnView which is more powerful but a mess.

ZenoLabs reviewed v4.3 on Jan 17, 2011

Simply the best image viewer!

WinfriedG reviewed v4.2 on Jan 15, 2011

Version 4.3 is much more better now:
• Added Clone Stamp and Healing Brush
• Added "Auto-Adjust Colors" to Colors menu
• Added "Adjust Lighting" to lighten or darken shadows and highlights
• Added "Adjust Levels"
• Added "Adjust Curves"
• Added USM (Unsharp Mask) option to Sharpen/Blur
• Added Sketch and Oil Painting effects
• Added outward-pointing tails to text objects in Draw Board
• Now images in Slide Show Builder, Multi-page File Builder, Image Strip Builder and Email list can be drag-and-dropped to rearrange the order
• Supported EPS format by displaying the preview image
• Updated the RAW format library. Sony SR2 raw format is supported
• Improved memory management to handle larger images
• Other minor bug fixes and improvements

elkal000 reviewed v4.2 on Dec 14, 2010

Near to perfection. Replaced good old ACDSee for me.

FatBastard reviewed v4.2 on Jul 7, 2010

Look no further. You'll never find a better Image Viewer. And it's free !!

us3r reviewed v4.2 on Apr 29, 2010

Version 4.2 (April 29, 2010)

* Now it is possible to batch convert images into PDF files
* Enhanced the magnifier
* Optimized the loading speed of Windowed View
* Fixed some bugs introduced in version 4.1
* Other minor improvements

bobad reviewed v4.1 on Apr 21, 2010

This is the best free photo viewer/light editor in existence. I rate it 6 stars out of 5. If someone rates it a 2, he simply hasn't tried it. Dude, you need to try the program.

uberfly reviewed v4.1 on Apr 21, 2010

Just fantastic and free!!! Donate a few $$ if you find it useful so it stays that way.

The_Blinded reviewed v4.1 on Apr 20, 2010

FastStone Image Viewer is one of the best programs to watch and take pictures in order. You have a lot of tools for editing (also in batch) an image. Really great!

ZenoLabs reviewed v4.1 Beta 2 on Feb 10, 2010

No doubt. The best image viewer available.

DrTeeth reviewed v4.1 Beta 2 on Feb 10, 2010

Giving it a 2* as the developer does not respond to beta reports. FFS, what is the point of having betas in the first place?

radiomaffia reviewed v4.1 Beta on Jan 4, 2010

Use it many years after I was bored of of ACDSee 3.1 and newer version became bloatware. FastStone Image Viewer Multi Language 4.1 is just a good peace of software and you don't have to look any futher if you ask me.Great for beiing FREEWARE

PAEzz reviewed v4.0 on Nov 24, 2009

I love this app.
The best fullscreen mode around, lots of tools/information/options all available just by moving the mouse to an edge of the screen (love the directory viewer).
Add to that the screen capture, slideshow builder, contact sheet maker and lots of other great tools, it really is the ultimate image viewer.

FatBastard reviewed v4.0 on Nov 23, 2009

This is the best picture viewer EVAH (in my opinion) and it's free !!!

B__B reviewed v3.9 on Sep 19, 2009

Cannot live without that little great utility.
The program is well organized, resembles ACDSee before it became bloated, it is quite fast, and is very stable.
I do no longer waste time and trash the hd with Picasa and such heavyweight applications when I can look and manage my pics' folders with FastStone.

NoOneImportant reviewed v3.9 on Sep 15, 2009

I used to use a shareware viewer. Faststone does everything I need for free and the latest version is even keyboard compatible with it. However the shareware felt faster because it prefetched the next photo and cached the thumb nails.

Caution: lossless jpeg rotation changes one dimension of the resolution of the photo into a multiple of 8 on my PC.

dhry reviewed v3.9 on Jun 30, 2009

FS uses 24Mb on startup, XNView uses 15. XN starts up a split second faster. FS definitely has some good ideas though. such as the menus that you can see when moving the mouse to different edges of the screen in full-screen view mode. I'll up my rating to a 4, but it'll never get 5 until they quit forcing the program to use skins mode. This will give the interface an all-round speed improvement and improve memory usage too. Interestingly enough, FS also have a separate "image resizer program" which supports "batch" mode - this functionality is already built into XNView. Until they improve certain aspects of this program - for example the ability to choose your windows positioning (XN gives you 8 relative layouts to choose from) as well as the terrible speed of viewing pictures with the Lanczos3 smoothing enabled (there seems to be NO read-ahead cache and pics take ages to load, whereas XN, even with high-quality resizing, loads them in an instant whilst both caching ahead and keeping the current image in the cache), I'd suggest simply getting XN - there's literally no point in using FS at this time. They're both free and you just get more with XN.

us3r reviewed v3.9 on Jun 9, 2009

Simple, well-thought, powerful, fast, free.

ZenoLabs reviewed v3.9 on Jun 8, 2009

Still the best, men!

dhry reviewed v3.8 on Apr 28, 2009

STILL forces you to use skins. Not a bad program but it's nowhere close to XNView. Almost not even in the same ballpark. Oh, and you can't relocate the preview window so that it's located under the thumbnails panel - forcing you to either make your treeview too wide or be stuck with a preview panel that's more or less the same size as your thumbnails themselves. Software authors need to hire a GUI designer and user experience modeler on their team.

idodialog reviewed v3.8 Beta on Mar 21, 2009

Outstanding program - very intuitive, heaps of really useful keyboard shortcuts, brilliant editing capabilities and heaps of other well implemented powers.

Top of the wishlist is a clone stamp or healing capability.

If there is a fault its the locked down skinning limitations - but when it comes to actually using FastStone I think it is way ahead of I-view (and still really light), much more complete than Xnview, and simply better than Picasa. Where it lags behind Picasa is it's slightly more old fashioned feel - but I think it's actually more usable.

I still have Picasa on board and it's a very good program, but when it comes to viewing, fixing and optimising lots of images - FastStone is the way to go.

This is a very rich program - I'm still discovering goodies after several years of frequent use. Highly recommended.

bobad reviewed v3.8 Beta on Mar 21, 2009

Still the best! It doesn't "force" you to use skins unless you use the lame file browser. I use WIndows Explorer to browse for pictures, so I never have to see the skins. Try it!

radiomaffia reviewed v3.8 Beta on Mar 20, 2009

Finally Multi Language for this new beta version 3.8 and you can install it over v3.2 Multi Language, except for faster loading allmost everything stayes the same and your configuration keeps intact. Perfect as allways and once again another 5 stars

sites.web.pt reviewed v3.8 Beta on Mar 20, 2009

3.8 Beta Changelog: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerBeta.htm

JeRrYFaR reviewed v3.8 Beta on Mar 20, 2009

I'm running it now, however I wish I knew what was new. The official site doesn't have anything on the new beta. Based off past experience though, it's still the best freeware photo viewer/editor on the planet. Possibly the best all-around. I use this program daily.

bobad reviewed v3.7 on Jan 22, 2009

This is the best image viewer by far. I use it from Windows Explorer (making the FastStone browser redundant) by clicking on any picture file. The default full screen options are perfect. Just tap the space bar or roll the mouse wheel to advance to the next picture. Press ESC once, and you're out. It also has very nice pop out menus on all 4 sides of the screen. Cropping and redeye fixes are the easiest I have ever seen. It has a cool magnifier at the mouse cursor for up to 3X. I also like the settings, where it's easy to choose all file formats and over ride the useless Windows viewer. Batch re-sizing is quick and intuitive, and it has many other useful features and tools that are also easy to use. Thanks FastStone!

cowgaR reviewed v3.7 on Jan 21, 2009

can anyone compare it to a google picasa?
I've been using a long time MaxView from FastStone until it wasn't free anymore, and it was the best/fastest image viewer.

The bigger package allways got some problems, not a nice interface, complicated, stupid skins, wasn't written with user accounts (was using win2003 at that time) in mind and many more annoying bugs...

question is, did it evolve? worth paying money for?

I still don't like the interface (picture) therefor 4 ;)

radiomaffia reviewed v3.7 on Jan 21, 2009

Far out the best Image Viewer there is..everything from FastStone is good and only 2 are now shareware! The programmer(s) are really trying to make the image viewer with fast loading and good job has been done. Version 3.2 is stiil present on the website FastStone cause that has Multi-Language installer and most language are supported.
Tip : when loading a full screen, use mouse-over (left,right, under,above the screen) to find all needed tools&Exif-info for the Image, + and - on the nummeriqueboard are there for zooming, escape closes the Fullscreen..

I'm waiting still untill version 3.6 or 3.7 are Multi-Language and do I see it is not supporting Vista..that's is a bit strange..still 5 STARS

DudeBoyz reviewed v3.7 on Jan 21, 2009

Still a very good app and it's free, with even better support for RAW. Nice.

Changelog:

Version 3.7 (January 20, 2009)

Added Preview to the "Batch Convert" tool. Now it is possible to preview the conversion by clicking the "Conversion Preview" button

Added a checkbox to allow converted files to be saved in their original folders in the "Batch Convert" tool

Enhanced the "Cover" style of Set as Wallpaper. Now it is possible to zoom and drag an image to set any particular part of it as wallpaper

Now it is possible to adjust EXIF Timestamp by both hours and minutes using the "Change Timestamp" tool under "Tools" menu

Added an option to the Settings to determine which (move or copy) action to take when files are dragged to the folder tree

Enhanced the Magnifier to view large images faster

Updated the RAW format library. Panasonic RW2 files are supported

Fixed some bugs

kindbud1 reviewed v3.7 on Jan 21, 2009

Hate the mandatory skins, but this is a solid piece of software.

DudeBoyz reviewed v3.6 on Sep 16, 2008

Still a very good app.

I wish the pace of development was increased and that it worked on that wacky skin restriction thing it has, but all things considered it is a nice alternative.

IrfanView is still my favorite, especially because of its high quality Resample results, but this is definitely worth a look.

rhy7s reviewed v3.6 on Sep 16, 2008

Fast and well thought out with useful configuration options beyond the defaults. The skinning system is pretty annoying, the Windows Classic theme fits in well enough for me but I imagine people who use themes would prefer it to do away with its own theming system.

Ain Soph Aur reviewed v3.6 on Sep 16, 2008

the skins are really bad, but the rest is awesome :)

JeRrYFaR reviewed v3.6 on Sep 16, 2008

They just keep improving it. Still haven't removed the option for 'skins', but it doesn't bother me that much.

preinterpost reviewed v3.6 on Sep 16, 2008

3.6!? Grrrr!! Just installed 3.5 across the board yesterday. :)

thra reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Sep 3, 2008

For me it'd be worthy of five stars if it

- had Unicode support,
- would do away with the skins and offer a normal windows interface.

coolticker reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 29, 2008

Simply the best, each time better and better !

anomoly reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 28, 2008

just don't like the fact you can't turn off skin customization to have a "standard" viewing of the window interface.

As a portable image viewer, which it is, it will necessarily need it's own gui. Given ten choices I can't complain considering I am only interested in what the gui contains & not the gui itself. PERFECT for my 14.9gb of wallpaper

yokozuna reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 28, 2008

Definitely must have for a photographer and recommended by many users from DPReview.com. Why? Very intuitive, displays all RAW files out of the box and allows for easy image manipulation.

ZenoLabs reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

Here's the changelog, Dong K. Kong:
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerBeta.htm

Great image viewer, just don't like the fact you can't turn off skin customization to have a "standard" viewing of the window interface.

Dong K. Kong reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

If there's nowhere to find what is new, there are few reasons too actually give it a score, ain't it ?

drorharari reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

FastStone Capture is a great program. It takes a very little resources but it does almost all you might possibly need in terms of capturing and it does it with ease and elegance.

In this version, FastStone added the ability to capture "screencasts" which are videos (with audio) of what goes on a screen. The coolest thing in this is the amazingly small video files generated by the program (without compromising on video recording quality).

Recommended!

(p.s., I am a proud registered user of this program - well desrved).

radiomaffia reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

Everything FastStone produces is good software, this one as well. It's a pitty FastStone PlAYER 3.2 for videofiles have not been updated since 2004. Except for FastStone Capture everything stayed freeware :-). If you liked ACDSee Classic 3.1 back in the early days of ACDSee you will like this piece of software as well!! 5 STARS

Captain Hook reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

Very nice and good program.

However, I wish that it could show all my movies taken from my digital cameras since they are all in .mov format.
Also all my pictures taken from my mobilephones are in .3GP format.

Hopefully this will be in the pipeline for further development of this fine viewer/player.

kindbud1 reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

Functionality: 5
Completely ignoring countless requests to ditch the custom skinning engine: 0

I'll generously average this out to a 3.

jing66@gmail.com reviewed v3.6 Beta 2 on Aug 27, 2008

"It plays video files (avi, wmv, mpg) in slide shows."
It is nice that I can sit back and watch both images and videos in a slide show by simply pressing S key.

mharvey reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jul 15, 2008

spamdigger: If you hit I while an image is selected in the browser it will pop up the "Image Properties" dialog which will incude the EXIF data.

DrTeeth reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

Perfection.

spamdigger reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

Anyone know how to view EXIF data *without* having to go to full view and moving mouse to the right hand side? TIA.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

This is a welcome surprise! Skins or not, this program is my all-time-favorite for picture viewing and some editing. I've tried them all, including the Wildbit Viewer and come back to this one everytime. Glad to see they're continuing development, as it's been a LONG time since there have been any updates.

us3r reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

Bugs which occured while displaying some BMP files has been fixed :).

EDIT:
"Anyone know how to view EXIF data *without* having to go to full view and moving mouse to the right hand side? TIA"

Ctrl + I

aloishammer reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

Another me, too: most of the skins waste a lot of real estate on lower-res displays, a lot are ugly, and there needs to be, at minimum, an option to simply use the default Windows GUI toolkit.

And since submitting a bug report to FastStone hasn't produced any response at all, I'll mention it here: I *desperately* need an option to switch off metadata retrieval and automatic thumbnail generation for occasions when I'm viewing a large folder over a wireless link. This kills FSViewer.exe, the host CPU, and the wireless link until metadata generation and retrieval are complete, or FSViewer's killed off.

FSViewer generates useless thumbnails even if the view's switched to list/detail, and refuses to switch view types in any case if it's busy generating those thumbnails. Better threading in the GUI, please.

Zoroaster reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

I agree with the bother of the imposed skins, really annoying, that's why a 4/5. Otherwise, remains my default image viewer

Vimes reviewed v3.6 Beta on Jun 25, 2008

Excellent application and very useful at doing what it is meant to do. Top marks from me :)

dhry reviewed v3.5 on Mar 28, 2008

"Mystery meat" navigation? Had to chuckle. Anyway - there's a big dealbreaker with this program and that's the fact that, as a previous reviewer pointed out, you can't disable it's built-in skin. Some of us don't WANT a skin. Learn from foobar2000's simple yet powerful design, make skins an option and speed the damn program up.

DudeBoyz reviewed v3.5 on Jan 22, 2008

A very good freeware alternative, but I do think the interface issues are holding it back in terms of user appeal.

pedigree reviewed v3.5 on Jan 17, 2008

- No unicode filename support
- Still uses its own stupid skin/theme engine which I cant disable, regardless that it has a faux XP skin. If I want XP theme, let me disable your skin engine and use the systems default theme
- No multiple instances
- Files accessed via UNC paths take FOREVER to load. Map a drive instead if you want network file access

serendipityguy reviewed v3.5 on Jan 16, 2008

A must have for every computer.
what I love about this software are the quick and easy keyboard commands, how it give complete image management of png, jpg, gif and more, the ability to open a window from within the application, the slide show, the ability rename multiple images, simple drop & drag from one directory or drive to the next, there are so many more features inside FastStone Image Viewer, so much more most indeed.

• Double click on a thumbnail image or single click on this icon to switch to a Full Screen view of the image

• In Full Screen, move your mouse pointer to the bottom border of the screen where a control bar (see next figure) will pop up to provide fast access to major program functions. (Note: Moving your mouse pointer onto this control bar will enable the mouse wheel to be used for zooming in/out on the image)

• In Full Screen, move your mouse pointer to the right border of the screen where an image properties window with EXIF metadata will pop up

• In Full Screen, move your mouse pointer to the top border of the screen where a thumbnail browser window will pop up to provide fast access to other images in the same folder and other program commands

• In Full Screen, move your mouse pointer to the left border of the screen where a panel will pop up to provide fast access to file and image editing functions

• In Full Screen, move your mouse pointer to the right-bottom corner of the screen where the Windows Taskbar will pop up to provide fast switching to any other programs being run (Windows XP only)

• When the mouse cursor becomes a magnifier shape , it means the displayed image has been formatted to fit within the current available window or screen area. Now you can press and hold the left mouse button and the image will be viewed in a magnifier. With the left mouse button being held down, moving the mouse around will move the magnifier across the image. The Magnifier zoom ratio and Magnifier size (See Magnifier tab in the Settings) determine the magnification level of the image within the magnifier and the size of the magnifier area

• When the mouse cursor becomes a hand shape , it means the displayed image is larger than the current available window or screen area. Now you can press and hold the left mouse button and move the mouse around to pan/scroll the image within the current window or screen area

• When Normal (Pan) mode is selected, pressing and holding the Ctrl key will change the mouse cursor to a cross shape . Now you can use the mouse to SELECT and ZOOM (select a rectangular area of the image by using the left mouse button to click and drag, then release the button to zoom in on that area of the image)

• When Rectangle, Circle or Freehand select mode (, or respectively) is selected, pressing and holding the Ctrl key will change the mouse cursor to a cross shape . Now you can use the mouse to define a selection area. By clicking your right mouse button with the mouse cursor within the selection area, a pop up menu will appear that allows you to zoom, copy, cut, crop or delete the selected area or to even save the selection into a file

• Scrolling your mouse wheel will display the next or previous image

• Holding the Ctrl key, the mouse cursor will become a cross shape - scroll your mouse wheel to zoom in or zoom out on the image

• Holding the Shift key, the mouse cursor will become a circle shape - click the left mouse button to zoom in or the right mouse button to zoom out on the image

• Press Spacebar, Right arrow or PgDn key to go to the next image

• Press Backspace, Left arrow or PgUp key to go to the previous image

• When the displayed image is larger than the current available window or screen area, press Arrow (Up, Down, Left, Right) keys to pan/scroll the image within the current window or screen area

• Press Home key to go to the first image

• Press End key to go to the last image

• Press 1,2,3,... or 0 key to zoom the image to 100%, 200%, 300%,...1000%

• Press A or / key to display the image in actual size

• Press B or * key to display the image in best fit within the current window or screen area

• Press + key to zoom in on the image

• Press - key to zoom out on the image

• Press C key to start the copy to folder function on the current image file

• Press M key to start the move to folder function on the current image file

• Press D key to pop up the Draw Board window to add text, lines, rectangles, ellipses, highlighted areas and watermark(s) to the image

• Press E key to edit the image with the first External Program (user defined)

• Press I key to display a window with the image properties

• Press S key to pop up the Slideshow Options window to configure a slideshow

• Press T key to pop up the JPEG Comment window to edit the image description/comment (for JPEG images only)

• Press L or < key to perform a rotate left

• Press R or > key to perform a rotate right

• Press H key to perform a flip horizontally

• Press V key to perform a flip vertically

• Press W key to open Windows Explorer at the current directory

• Press X key to pop up the Crop Board window to perform cropping on the image

• Press Ctrl+R key combination to pop up the Resize/Resample window to resize the image

• Press Ctrl+H key combination to pop up the Histogram window for the image

• Press Ctrl+Z key combination to undo the last change made to the image (multi-level undo)

• Press Ctrl+Y key combination to redo the last change made to the image (multi-level redo)

• Press Enter or F key to switch between Full Screen/Browser View or Full Screen/Windowed View

• Press mouse wheel button to switch between Full Screen and Browser View

• Press Esc key to exit from Full Screen or to exit the program when in Browser or Windowed View

• To sort images by Filename, Type, Dimension, Size or Date in Browser View, change Browser Style to Report View and left click on the appropriate column header

virtual_ad reviewed v3.4 on Jan 10, 2008

Excellent. I use it all the time. It's fast, looks great and gets the job done :)

webmasta1 reviewed v3.4 on Dec 30, 2007

Two Good points: Free and Excellent Visual Interface.

Pro Usability: Zero! (good for the average mom & pop picture viewing)

Why?
1/ As a pro user I need to have controls at my fingertips(mousetips actually): Fullscreen view is mystery meat navigation (I find having to move the mouse to the window edges to show the various palettes is a real PITA since theres no option for me to make them sticky or docked, they keep disappearing when mouse is moved, very annoying)

2/ Exif info is a very important part of my workflow: sadly in windowed view, the need to close the exif palette before being able to view another image is intolerable... not forgetting when the palette is opened again its centred resulting in having to move it off screen again, this palette should be able to be docked to one side so it remains in view always and updates with every new image.)

2/ Cannot run multiple instances of the windowed view: this is a neccessity for me.

3/ Cannot customize the menu bar (no icon to quick zoom to fit image or view 100%)

4/ Psd files take forever to load.

5/ Does not show the psd embedded color profile.

6/ Fullscreen hides my taskbar

Theres a few other little niggling issues but overall its no use to me now in its present state.// sorry guys, good try though.

hbk4ever reviewed v3.4 on Nov 8, 2007

The absolute best image viewer in the business bar none.

rocugbg reviewed v3.4 on Nov 7, 2007

Thanks for the Vista skin, but please, make the skins optional, most people don't like to skin their apps. Other than that it's a great piece of software.

yokozuna reviewed v3.4 on Nov 7, 2007

I hate Vista but I have to say that the Vista skin is definitely the best. What I need from FSIV is a rebuilt and improved RAW converter module (this in ACDSee Pro 2 is very impressive!). FSIV is damn good and I cannot even imagine working with photos without this program.

The program deserves 10 out of 5!

Terry6v reviewed v3.3 on Oct 24, 2007

Still love it. always liked ACDsee. FastStone's interface is close to it. but this isn't bloated like ACDSee and it's free. need a few more features and it would be perfect

grkn reviewed v3.3 on Oct 24, 2007

The best for me, better than both xnview and picasa for dual monitor users (they lack proper dual monitor support).

Faster than picasa and xnview, better features than infranview. It could look sleeker, but it's the program i've ended up with after 10 years in the photo business.

serendipityguy reviewed v3.3 on Oct 24, 2007

Oh how this Application has continued to impress me.

the utilities that it has, and the ease of it use, gets it for me. How it is so easy to manage library's of digital images and organize them. How it integrates with the Windows Operating system.

the continued updates, and the future direction of this application is why it deserves a five star, Oh and by the way did I mention that it is FREE!

EarlyMorningHours reviewed v3.3 on Oct 24, 2007

While I agree completely with KRome's assessment of this utility, I would at least give it a three. It does work. It's just not something I would use over other free utilities out there.

nerrad reviewed v3.3 on Oct 24, 2007

For organizing pictures, Faststone is the best.
For just viewing a quick pic, there is nothing better. This app serves every purpose.

KRome reviewed v3.3 on Oct 24, 2007

for organizing pictures, picassa is better and for just viewing a quick pic, irfanview is better. this app serves no purpose.

masso4321 reviewed v3.3 Beta 3 on Aug 9, 2007

Personally i hate the skins too, duke1995.But i delete the skin folder or i set the Window Classic skin and i have a coomn, traditional interface.

duke1995 reviewed v3.3 Beta 2 on Jun 26, 2007

I thinks there's a lot to love about this program, but not the interface. It looks different from the other programs, the handling of the windows works differently, and personally I don't really like any of the skins.

But when it comes to functionality, I think this is a really good program :-)

FmlyRnn reviewed v3.3 Beta 2 on Jun 15, 2007

I am very satisfied with everything this "Image Viewer" has to offer! I should have had this when I was a Photographer. Meanwhile, I have been suggesting this Program to everyone. Keep up the good work!!!
Thank you, FmlyRnn

cricri_pingouin reviewed v3.3 Beta 2 on Jun 15, 2007

XnView is still better for the reasons I already mentionned: although FastStone uses less memory than it used to, it still uses more than XnView, and scans slower.
Something else I already mentionned: can we PLEASE have a "normal" interface, with skins as an option? I didn't bother customising my system with a theme for developers to deny me this choice and impose whatever look they wrongly think I will like better.

yokozuna reviewed v3.3 Beta 2 on Jun 12, 2007

bobad, same here.

FSIV is a powerful yet simple to use viewer and lightweight editor. Everything in FSIV is very intuitive, I know people who do not know English but work without any problem with the program. Right functions in right places.

What I like most is the new way of treating RAW files - in the past everything was rendered in realtime what could be resources consuming. The new version utilizes embedded miniatures. Of course, you can choose the old way.

What I can add? Well, FSIV works under Linux (with WINE), as well as a portable version, which means that the image viewer is very universal.

bobad reviewed v3.3 Beta 2 on Jun 11, 2007

Simply the best! This is the only viewer that I can use with default settings. I have to tweak the others quite a bit before the image viewing behaviors are as I like them.

Although FSIV is only a "light-duty" editor, it has some very handy, useful, and effective editing features. The redeye removal and crop board are the best and easiest to use I have seen yet. The batch size and resolution changer are also great, and very easy to use.

I do not like the skinning. At least there should be a way to turn it off. 1 point off for that, but it still rates a "5".

rocugbg reviewed v3.3 Beta 2 on Jun 11, 2007

Great product, best free image viewer.

bufftbone reviewed v3.3 Beta on May 25, 2007

Dude where's my car?

uberfly reviewed v3.2 on Apr 28, 2007

Faststone is a full-featured viewer/editor. I really get a lot of use out of the crop board, but am always surprised by features I find I didn't know were there.

Aquarelle - check out Picajet. The best cataloger and very affordable.

Aquarelle reviewed v3.2 on Apr 25, 2007

I have been using this software for years. Yet, there is one important tool which is lacking in it: a database search tool!

I have thousands of digital pictures, and I am looking for some kind of software to categorize and classify them, so I can then search through my huge collections. (Yes, I know other products do that, but I'm not ready to pay 100s$ for them!)

I wrote the company many times (never got any answers :-( ) I think that today it's almost mandatory toadd a keyword search option into their software.

If they do, I would be willing to buy (donate) it, but I'm still not impress with their lack of responsiveness to my "simple" query!

If it was not for this lacking feature, I would give it a 5, but it deserves only a 4....

davidtb reviewed v3.2 on Apr 24, 2007

Flies under the radar of administrative privledge, and does what it's supposed to do very nicely.

anomoly reviewed v3.2 on Apr 23, 2007

Seems the slow lock-up bugs were fixed-wheww!
Much faster, plus I disabled the thumb db option b4 this update. I prefer #8 skin and delete all the rest once files are copied to my usb.
THE BEST!

Dsfargeg reviewed v3.1 on Apr 17, 2007

It's truly an innovative program with lots of useful features.

yokozuna reviewed v3.1 on Apr 17, 2007

I think that it should be mentioned that one of the innovations of FSIV 3.1 is the multilingual version of the program: http://www.faststone.org/DN/FSViewerSetup_ML31.exe Currently the program is available in Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish. This move resembles Opera - there are English only builds and international builds that cover more languages (incl. English).

darthbeads reviewed v3.1 on Apr 16, 2007

All I want in the whole world is for them to allow for default OS skin support. It's a great-working app that looks (IMHO) terrible.

colok reviewed v3.1 Beta 3 on Apr 13, 2007

Le meilleur logiciel pour vos images et photos numériques. Il est de plus en plus populaire et il le mérite !

a+
Colok

http://www.colok-traductions.com

Cris3 reviewed v3.1 Beta 3 on Apr 12, 2007

If you haven't tried it, well, you are just missing out.

anomoly reviewed v3.1 Beta 3 on Apr 12, 2007

Being an image browser it HAS to create thumbnails if only temporarily. I allow it to have it's db in the hopes this will make it a little faster. I have one folder which contains 25,863 images. Maybe I should dedicate a single pc with dual cpus to this folder-NOT-maybe I should get a better pc-yeah. The fact it is portable is awesome as well. Bloat it isn't. I find it just complete

comeoffit reviewed v3.1 Beta 3 on Apr 12, 2007

@babis: Someone experiences stability issues, and then is supposed to come back here and rave about the program? I've seen thousands of reviews, and never seen a dumber assertion.

I've had lots of freezing and crashing with this thing as well. I hope I'm not being too "dumb" in rating it as I see fit as a result. Perhaps to be "smart" I should toe the line and rate it highly, because it works well for babis.

Nah.

the artist reviewed v3.1 Beta 2 on Apr 3, 2007

This guys have lost their course. They just seem to be developing this with no idea of where they are heading.
At this point maybe .raw support is their focus but it's hard to tell. Every release seems to port nothing important, except for the aforementioned. They're just piling stuff and stuff, and changed from 2.9 to 3.0 with no development reason.

However the proggie is still good, if slow, because of the ... i don't yet dare to say bloat. THIS SHOULD BE MODULARIZED, let you choose what to install. I say this because i like this proggie, i'm not switching to any ugly alternative just yet.

@darkxiiindp and everyone else: the SMOOTHNESS is given by the kind of filter that does the job. Look for that in the options.

yokozuna reviewed v3.1 Beta on Apr 3, 2007

FastStone Image Viewer 3.1 beta 2 is already available: http://www.faststone.org...SViewerSetup_ML31B2.exe

New Features:
- Created a multi-language version (currently Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian and Polish)
- Improved the Raw library!!!
- Improved navigation (page up/down) of multi-tiff files
- Fixed minor bugs in writing PDF files

darkxiiindp reviewed v3.1 Beta on Mar 25, 2007

Good for a free ware product. But I prefer ACDSee photo manager because it display image more smooth.

challenger reviewed v3.1 Beta on Mar 24, 2007

Very best program ! very Good french translation !

ZenoLabs reviewed v3.1 Beta on Mar 24, 2007

A "must have".

serendipityguy reviewed v3.1 Beta on Mar 23, 2007

The Best and Keeps getting Better...Loads of goodies here, but I don't need the Contact Print sheet, the Image Editor, but I do need the functionality of its over the edge Viewer that Loads perfectly ever time with the great keyboard short cuts, and the ability to navigate the images on the keyboard and to manage files with keyboard short cuts make this a must have for any collector.

coolticker reviewed v3.1 Beta on Mar 23, 2007

Reading within zip archives ??? well it is a strange feature's request why put images into archives instead of folders? JPG already uses compression, you will keep not much space so it may be not for this reason.

gundamboyzack reviewed v3.1 Beta on Mar 23, 2007

Interesting program, definitely an alternative to paying for ACDSee, but I did not see any sort of capability for reading within archives (zip, rar, etc) which makes it a deal breaker for me. Other than that, great program

swordpro reviewed v3.0 on Mar 17, 2007

Well thought out and very functional viewer/editor, its ideal for quick n dirty jobs that don't require
a Photoshop finish.

babis reviewed v3.0 on Mar 13, 2007

I have seen tens of reviews of this program and never seen more dumb rating.

Thanks to the developers for making this free.

bugmenot reviewed v3.0 on Mar 1, 2007

Seemed OK until I selected a folder of mine while using the browser view, and it froze like a deer in the headlights. Piece of crap as far as I'm concerned.

Genital.Joe reviewed v3.0 on Feb 18, 2007

Outstanding software, and freeware to boot. I highly recommend to anyone using ACDSee, or similiar.

Cionno reviewed v3.0 on Feb 17, 2007

faststone suit includes great apps getting even better!
acdsee byebye :)

ps if any bug tell via support email ;)

pscowan reviewed v3.0 on Feb 17, 2007

Great App, unlike ACDSee this is free and has basically more functionality :P
Recomended A+++

Syed Mohsin reviewed v3.0 on Feb 17, 2007

Nice Program But i had problems seeing .ico files with it and gave the error "Your virtual memory is too low when i opened any ico file.
I now use acdsee 9.0 which is excelent.

anomoly reviewed v3.0 on Feb 16, 2007

settings viewer -bottom right corner
"Single File Deleted to"
"recycle-bin no confirmation"
works the same with multiple files too

VelvetElvis reviewed v3.0 Beta 3 on Feb 10, 2007

Excellent viewer with a nice interface, but one irritating fault. When viewing a large amount of pictures, and selecting the ones to keep, there seems to be no way to disable the confirmation dialog every time you hit delete.

yokozuna reviewed v3.0 Beta 3 on Feb 10, 2007

Changelog:

- Compatible with Windows Vista
- Improved performance in network environment
- Improved Multi-Page TIFF viewing
- Fixed a bug in handling 32bit bmp files
- Added slideshow option Include Following Folders. Now it is possible to play slideshow across multi-folders
- Multi-Page Tiff files can be modified and saved
- Batch crop images (lossless for jpeg files) in the built-in Batch Converter
- Use EXIF date/time (if available) in batch rename
- Support PDF format in Save As dialog
- Support Multi-Page TIFF and GIF printing
- Multi-Page Builder, which can combine multiple images into a single file (PDF or TIFF format)

boaz reviewed v3.0 Beta 3 on Feb 9, 2007

Very nice viewer but where is the changelog?

twosheds reviewed v3.0 Beta 3 on Feb 9, 2007

Slick, but it only gets a 4 to Irfanview's 5.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v3.0 Beta 2 on Feb 4, 2007

It just keeps getting better and better.. I agree w/ the GUI comment though as the standard Windows skin it uses isn't identical to Windows, but it's good enough..

ghammer reviewed v3.0 Beta 2 on Feb 4, 2007

This is one tool that works well and has features others do not. Examples are saving jpg in original quality, ability to preserve EXIF info, crop losslessly, etc.

Plus, there is a portable version for those who have a U3 (or plain USB) keychain.

Been using this since its first versions and have not had a problem yet.

Notreallyhere reviewed v3.0 Beta 2 on Feb 3, 2007

I also agree that this program is very good. I don't use it though, because I prefer the Windows GUI.

Carlospr reviewed v3.0 Beta 2 on Feb 3, 2007

I second norky request.

The Windows default GUI is a must for such great freeware.

norky reviewed v3.0 Beta 2 on Feb 3, 2007

Incredible, but please please please please use the default windows gui and not the skins.

anomoly reviewed v3.0 Beta 2 on Feb 3, 2007

I would HAPPILY pay to use this in a commercial setting, and I suppose that is really all they can ask for. The BEST, and I never even used some of the features, nor heard of them before. I love stuff that is portable.
As far as skins are concerned, I believe because it is a standalone ap, it does not need, nor require any. It is a picture viewer (lightbulb), and thank your stars it does not work like nor resemble xnview or irfanview.

DudeBoyz reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 28, 2007

I would really like to know about that whole "Version 2.7 split into the standard and PRO versions and charge for the PRO version" thing. Are they going to keep the app 100% free for personal use with all the features included?

I have emailed them three times and still have no response. I hope they will take the time.

That said, this really is one of the better efforts out there. It feels as if it adheres to Windows navigation standards better than IrfanView, is far less buggy and annoying than XnView, and is still easy to use without feeling overly simplified.

The Wallpaper Anywhere feature is inspired. It is one of the best features of its kind and it is amazing that it's in a free program. I used to spend HOURS creating collages in Paint Shop Pro, with layers, and applying frames, etc. and this thing makes it so much more functional and intuitive, it's hard to believe.

Prints out contact sheets, has a very nice image compare feature, and has a navigation / tree system that makes finding your files a snap.

It is an app that people should put on their list to download and try out if they have any interest in PC photo handling. I greatly appreciate their efforts and hope they continue.

tannenwheel reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 28, 2007

faststone image viewer does not use skins! it has a nonstandart interface for the sake of features.

a skin is something that is drawn above a standart gui, so it is an eycandy adittion for no reason, say bloat.

standart interfaces are not good for every purpose, so even xnview uses a different toolkit, so to say. because of features. but it's toolkit just looks more like standart. uses standart colors. xnview hides it's oddities behind a standart skin (no, look!), just like faststone image viewer or opera would, when you use the "windows classic" skin.

at least fastones gui aint as buggy as xnviews. the only shortcomming i see, is that it does not support Alt and Apps keys. but just look at internet download manager.... it can be worse

hell, there are plenty of applications that look like standart, thousand text editors, personal information managers, that are not standart, that fake standart, that would display eg white fonts in menus as specified in the customized OS settings on white menu backgrounds (as MS Office but faked and not customizable, that is: not inherited from the OS customization standart) ... visual basic toolkits or whatever, delphy crap, buggy and butugly ...

at least fsviewer gets it right. looks good and works. alternative toolkits' purpose is not eyecandy. nonstandart toolkits are standart. even microsoft invented one, called NET. and memory use depends on the size of your database and the images anyway, so thats not an argument. faststones GUI's responsiveness is an argument.

if u say faststone forces a skin on you it is like saying faststone forces an image viewer on you. does it?

(i borrowed the word toolkit from linux ... dont know how to better name it )

bubbs reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 28, 2007

I have to agree with the comments against the skins.

It's a feature when a program *supports* skins. The moment you *force* skins upon the user - it is no longer a feature.

Please either drop the feature altogether, or give the user the option to drop it once the novelty has worn off.

Just imagine if every programmer wanted their unique look and feel for each application. What a headache!

Joco reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 27, 2007

Excellent graphical utility which, ironically, has a crappy graphical user interface.

kindbud1 reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 27, 2007

agree 100% with Namero.

there needs to be an option to turn off the skins.

Namero reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 27, 2007

-fast,feature rich,"simple" to use , FREE :)

works great

the only poor at this programm is the "skin feature"

!! please give us an turn off option !!!

gcbetaman reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 27, 2007

Outstanding. For picture cropping, sizing, printing, you name it, this application is the best. Fast and easy to learn and use.

danilloOc reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 27, 2007

I really like the program and it's features but the only thing that stop me to use it is the build in skins, I don't like 'em and I REALLY wish they give the user a NON SKINNED option too (since I'm a WindowBlinds user). Other than this, this is a excellent program.

vincent326 reviewed v3.0 Beta 1 on Jan 27, 2007

It is a great job ,much better than Acdsee i think .
It is much smaller and faster but the function is enough for a person who'd like to manage and edit the pictures . unlike Acdsee, its functions are all useful and interesting,especially the wallpaper part, great! Now i can always show my wallpaper to my friends cause I made them on my own by Faststone:)

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.9 on Jan 23, 2007

Not bad at all.

I would very much like them to add some adjustment options to their Red-Eye removal feature. It's a good start, but the lack of adjustments makes it very hard to rely on it all of the time.

I also wish they would offer a NO SKIN option or something similar so that it can adopt whatever XP or WindowBlinds skin is in effect. It stands out like a sore thumb.

I would like more lossless features added, like lossless RedEye removal, etc.

It also needs an in-depth, searchable help file, imo.

I'm also confused about what happend with the 2.7 split into Pro and Standard versions. They released it, it talked about it, and now it looks like they dropped the idea with no explanation.

I'm not complaining - just curious.

Point Zero reviewed v2.9 on Jan 19, 2007

It would be nearly perfect if it made use of the 3th & 4th mouse button for previous - next images.

prooky reviewed v2.9 on Jan 18, 2007

I quite liked it before, but the "download from memory card" feature made it even better for me.
My mobile phone doesn't have software for image downloading, and while I could do it manually with explorer I can't sort to folders according to EXIF shooting date that way.
And Canon software that came with my Canon camera for the very same task tries to be smart and connect to a camera when it finds a folder called DCIM (and of course doesn't find it and fails to even open this folder ...), so before this new feature in FastStone it was:
1)Copy to temporary folder
2)sort by date from there using Canon soft

So long story cut short - I quite like this new feature :)
Now if they could eliminate this loooong waiting period while it (as far as I can tell) reads EXIF info before even starting to copy. (Reading it on the fly would speed it up soooooo much)

Dirhael reviewed v2.9 Beta 2 on Dec 5, 2006

This really is one of the best free image browsers available, with a lot of useful features. The only reason for me not to give it a perfect 5 would be the UI. I still don't understand why some developers absolutely have to force skinned interfaces on us, without any option to switch it off. Give me the option to use my selected XP theme, and it'll earn that perfect 5 without question.

BogdanSHA reviewed v2.9 Beta 1 on Dec 2, 2006

5 for working good on Vista. (tried IrfanView & XnView)
However memory usage was big ~ 1ooMB

alanpalmer reviewed v2.9 Beta 1 on Nov 7, 2006

I hadn't realised either that they'd done away with their venture into shareware. Hooray! I don't think the addition of "Download from Memoty Card" is particularly useful; my camera came with software for that and, if I wanted, I could do it quite easily without any special software in Explorer.

Because they've recanted on making the program shareware I'll give a five again.

Mick Leong reviewed v2.9 Beta 1 on Nov 6, 2006

I like the s/w. But it still cannot display 2.4Mb GIF B&W image file. It takes too long and sometimes I exit the app it appears to have exited. It still is running in the background and chewing up my memory and cpu. When i hit Ctrl+alt+del there it was, faststone still running in the background. I think this is a memory leak i reported some versions back. Other than that it is a great s/w and the author does a good job upgrading it often.

utomo reviewed v2.8 on Oct 27, 2006

Need to add the panasonic camera RAW, which will become popular since panasonic digital cameras now become popular.

and add more editing features

antigin reviewed v2.8 on Oct 27, 2006

DudeBoyz, try 2.8, check an offsite. Compare is back, Pro Version it's a history for at least at this moment.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.8 on Oct 27, 2006

I don't mind them making money, but I think the feature stripping for the free version is just lame. I would prefer they continue with the fully featured free version for home and simply require registration and purchase for any commercial use.

Update: That changes things. They have indeed removed references to the PRO version in the new 2.8 release.

So, score goes up because I can do a 4 image compare, custom sort and create contact images, which were previously only PRO features. I actually use those features.

The other 2 Pro features that I don't actually use, Wallpaper Anywhere and Dual Monitor stuff, are also available to free users.

Believe me, if I had a Dual Monitor, I'd be all over using that too.

Very good to see them at least reconsider for a little while. I hope it lasts.

Thanks for letting me know - I had downloaded and started using 2.8, but had not noticed that the PRO menu was gone while I was doing testing to see how well the update worked.

yokozuna reviewed v2.8 on Oct 27, 2006

I like it very much. Moreover, it seems that if you donated anything when it was totally free you are entitled for the Pro version for free. It works - at least in my case. I just used the registration code I received after donating to FastStone, and the program accepted it. It appears in the "About" dialog as "Single lifetime license"

The program comes in two flavours, Pro and Personal (freeware). The Personal version is a bit stripped, but it is fair. I cannot imagine a low income amateur editing photos with two monitors. If you have enough money for two monitors, you will find some bucks for the Pro version.

PS. I do not blame anyone that he wants to make profit from his hard work. I am glad that some of these people give us some good applications for free.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.7 on Oct 26, 2006

Big fan before, but this shift to commercial sucks. It is lame that they have decided to splinter the feature set so you only get certain features if you pay for it. So much for a "free" product. :(

kufor reviewed v2.7 on Oct 25, 2006

great software ;)
mirror to latest version:
http://ftp.freenet.de/pu...wer/FSViewerSetup27.exe

anomoly reviewed v2.7 on Oct 19, 2006

Seems to me that it IS still free although ('pro' features are an option)if a company wants to use it for business then they can pay for the few extra features the 'pro' version offers.
Fanboys & dorks are those who bash others out of a superiority complex.
Probably the site is down so they can add a palpay section or whatever. works fine EXCELLENT
anf if wanting a slightly older version trhat includes dual moniter support (or this version)
http://www.filehippo.com..._faststone_image_viewer/

uberfly reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

It's funny how possesive people get over software, especially free software. If the author wants to make a pay version, good for him. I would do the same to compensate for all the dev and support time. The freeware version is/will be a great app as well. Get over it. Geeze. A bunch of heart-broken fanboys.

Also, the Faststone website is probably down for a while in hopes that a few of the frothing dorks that have been email bombing him might turn their attention elsewhere - maybe find girlfriends. I know, slim chance but worth a try.

kbsoftware reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

zridling: When FastStone Image viewer was freeware I compared it against other freeware image viewing programs, and in comparison it was a great program, at least a rating of 4. But now that it's shareware I have to compare it against other paid viewer programs and FastStone doesn't measure up too well, at least not in my eyes.
ACDSee being my personal favorite pay image viewer program.

I wonder why their website is now down.

As for freeware viewers I'm stuck between IrfanView or XnView.
Both great viewers, guess I'll use both for now :)

zridling reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

Wait a minute. For the years it was free, it was the greatest app ever written. Now that you have to pay, it's crap? That's what you call biased voting in favor of freeware regardless of the quality of the program. It's just as good today as it was yesterday. I give the dev a break because he's earned the right to make a living off this software.

To kbsoftware above, that's a fair point — there are still more than several great choices in this software category, ACDSee 9 and XnView among them.

stopbuggingme reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

It was such a great tool until the last beta. And now they went shareware and ruined it, I'm really disappointed. They have no official forum, but at least I sended them already an email on that issue. Not supporting standard features like Photoshop plugins (8BF) and then demanding such a ridiculous price, after _removing_ features ... Sad, sad, sad!

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

While I understand they need to make money, I don't feel this was a fair trade for those of us that have been regular users of all the betas. They actually took features of the previous betas and CUT them to make a different version?!

It will be interesting to see where this program goes now. They won't get a 5 from me again until I see something change.

alanpalmer reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

I haven't ever used any of the extra features in the pro version, and can't see any need for them personally. I was also rather offput by the way the cost of the pro version is not mentioned anywhere apart from on the 'order' page of their website and the two-tier pricing structure. ($24.95 with free upgrades for a year; $34.95 for 'life'.) The choice of keeping with the free version was a no-brainer. Although I gave this a 5 for other releases their move to shareware cuts it to a 4.

antigin reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

Damn, an author cut COMPARE feature from standart version. And now welcome to Bootleg Free Version. Thanks for good viewer, but Limited Image Viewer - wrong way. Bye-bye FSIV.

ghammer reviewed v2.7 on Oct 18, 2006

As a free viewer, it rates a bit higher.
As a commercial app (as of 2.7 final) it is going to need to do a bit more.

Registration is required. Once the program is registered, it will be converted from Standard edition to Pro edition.

Grongle reviewed v2.7 Beta 5 on Oct 17, 2006

FastStone comes on strong against Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, and I think it's going to be the very pretty favourite (no kidding, it IS good-looking) of that great big group of people who stay close to the way things looked when they first had a friend set up their computers. In theory, FastStone competes against Xn View and IrfanView, but I don't think it does. Those guys are off on their own, and even their names suggest a different kind of user. FastStone is all about sleek, and it is intended to be a visual pleasure to use—seems like a reasonable enough goal for a visuals viewer. I actually rated it a little less than 5 originally, but in re-thinking I decided that it deserves 5 out of 5 for attaining what it obviously sets out to attain. The other reviewers are right. But FastStone is no bimbo, despite its pretty charms; methinks it is purposely not engaging direct competition with XnView et al. Probably FastStone intends to just stay where it has placed itself for awhile, gathering no moss while it continues work in progress. The high-numbered Beta 5 speaks for itself—this program seeks to improve.

cricri_pingouin reviewed v2.7 Beta 5 on Oct 12, 2006

After being impressed by the screen capture utility, I gave this viewer a shot again.
Well, it's not bad, BUT if you allow me to compare with XnView: it supports less formats, it can use a MASSIVE amount of memory (it used 240MB where XnView used 24MB), and it's also slower at scanning.
Also I don't mind skins, but why not allow to use the standard WinXP interface, and maybe reduce the footprint that way?
Anyway, it's not awful, but there are better alternatives at this point. I'll keep an eye on it though.

bufftbone reviewed v2.7 Beta 5 on Sep 15, 2006

Unfortunately, it can be a memory hog. It runs slow when trying to view large files or files in a a directory with a lot of pictures in it. Besides that, it's not to shabby of a program. Does quite a bit, very versitile. Well worth the price :)

extremely well reviewed v2.7 Beta 5 on Sep 15, 2006

Another problem is when scrolling the horizonal "thumnail bar" that pops up in full screen mode. Often you'd move your mouse a bit below the bar (on top of big-image you last viewed) and as soon as you release the clicker, the bar disappears. The intention was to select some previous image! So it should not let you scroll UNLESS YOUR MOUSE STAYS ON TOP OF THE BAR. I'm sure I'm not the only one who experienced this.

norky reviewed v2.7 Beta 5 on Sep 15, 2006

great app, but i wish they would stick to a standard windows ui

asellus reviewed v2.7 Beta 4 on Aug 29, 2006

Unfortunately, still can't view images stored in folder with Japanese/Chinese characters.

CapZap reviewed v2.7 Beta 4 on Aug 29, 2006

This one does get better with every update.

I try every image viewer/organizer/editor and have used AC DeeSee Pro for a while. Just tonight I substituted FastStone as my default. It does everything I want it to do, has one of the easiest red-eye tools and links to PhotoShop for the detail edits.

I love finding a freebie that is better than the expensive proggies. Kudos to the author.

extremely well reviewed v2.7 Beta 4 on Aug 29, 2006

I love this program. The only two things that annoy me are the inability to easily minimize when viewing a pic fullscreen and inability to change size of same window (so can put it next to another window/program).

rhkbeta reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 21, 2006

The twain scanner function workes fine for me (as it did in all the latest versions).

The improved contact sheet function and the re-introduced screen capture function are perfect. I just dropped 2 programs I used in the past for that use.

FastStone is getting better and better!

Vimes reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 21, 2006

An excellent and valued utility that seems to just get better.

My preference though is with Picasa as I do like to use the red eye, photo fix correction tools within the same application. Picasa allows you to do that and automatically backs up your originals. I prefer the way that Picasa displays my large collection of photos - the folders are listed in groups of the year they were taken.

It is a matter of choice, of course, which utility you use but either of the ones that I mentioned are superb at the job they do.

bobad reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

Excellent image viewer. I think it's the best, regardless of Freeware or Shareware. It has all the features you need and more. Team it with Paint.Net or PhotoFiltre, and it will take care of ~98% of your picture viewing and editing needs. I have 2 wishes. One is the capture program should have a config option for automatically creating, naming, and saving screen captures to a chosen folder. I wish the program size wasn't quite so large. Easy for me to say! If any Freeware program deserves an audition and a donation, this is it! Try it!

boaz reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

I really like this image browser, and the features. However, the twain function never worked with my two scanners.

I contacted the author a long time ago, concerning this problem, and he said that he uses someone else's code for the twain part of the program. He said that he had little control over that. So, I can't use the program to grab images from my scanners. I didn't try the twain function with my digital cameras, not sure if that works or not. My scanners work with other programs, like Irfanview, Xnview, and even Photoshop.

yokozuna reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

zee7, I fully agree with you. I have similar impressions when I work with Linux. What I need for Linux is FastStone Image Viewer (sorry but F-Spot does not even compare to FastStone...) and a decent OCR program.
I think that the program would be very popular is able to be run natively in Linux environment, even if not open source.

CyberDoc999 reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

Some may like it, but I do not!
it is too slow!

ghammer reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

Best viewer around reegardless of cost.
And now, the capture tools have been added, what more could you want from a viewer?

bufftbone reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

I agree with everyone that says it's the best freeware viewer around.

One thing that I see that needs a bit of improvement is the way it handles memory. It sometimes takes long to open the program. It takes even longer with larger folders full of images. Memory optimization is needed. Other then that, I'd say that I have NO problem paying what I'm paying for it now. hehe.

zee7 reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 20, 2006

I simply can not live without this program. How do I know? For the past month, I've been working on OS X and there is not one single application even a fraction as good as FastStone image Viewer. I.Am.Dying Over Here! It's torturous trying to manage photos on a Mac without FastStone. Please, please port FastStone Image Viewer to Universal Binary. And add keyword tagging. Please! It's sorely needed, believe me. I guess for now I'll just have to settle for using it only in Windows.

pflowers reviewed v2.7 Beta 3 on Aug 19, 2006

Best viewer freeware or otherwise. I have tried them all this is the best.

arg0 reviewed v2.7 Beta 2 on Aug 17, 2006

Best freeware viewer!

ghammer reviewed v2.7 Beta 2 on Aug 14, 2006

One of the best for viewing images.
Handles minor/routine changes to images, like lossless rotation, batch resizing, etc.

I do miss the ability to perform various captures from within the viewer. No reason to have to start a seperate app if you have the ability in your viewer like the 2.6 series.

wyzxwyzx reviewed v2.7 Beta 1 on Aug 6, 2006

only "capture full screen"

Aquarelle reviewed v2.7 Beta 1 on Jul 26, 2006

This software deserves a "5-stars", BUT it lacks one feature essential to that type of application: DATABASE SEARCH.

If the author would (could) implement such feature, then I am certain Faststone would be one of the best viewer among the many which exists today.

IMHO, it shouldn't be to hard to implement. Just a "simple" way to search keywords among thousand of pictures....

Well, maybe for the next version ;-)

Aqua

Paul Lush reviewed v2.7 Beta 1 on Jul 25, 2006

Would give 5 but the batch convert doesnt generate complaint JPG files when set to 100% quality.

boaz reviewed v2.7 Beta 1 on Jul 25, 2006

Not bad, for a free graphics viewer\utility.

BILLJR61 reviewed v2.7 Beta 1 on Jul 25, 2006

FASTSTONE has three programs that I use (1) Viewer (2) Photo Resizer (3) Capture don't look for all three in one program.

serendipityguy reviewed v2.7 Beta 1 on Jul 24, 2006

Will the capture tool work on movies?

zee7 reviewed v2.6 on Jul 22, 2006

Mnadi, those features haven't been removed. Screen Capture is available under the File menu [File-->Screen Capture] and the conversion options are available under the Tools menu [Tools-->Batch Convert or Tools-->Batch Rename] or by pressing F3 or F4.

FastStone Screen Capture (the standalone version) has been available for years; just like FastStone Image Viewer.

asellus reviewed v2.6 on Jul 21, 2006

@mnadi

I dunno about capturing cos I don't use that feature, but conversion can still be done in this version (2.6).

4 stars because it still cannot navigate properly in folders with UNICODE characters.

mnadi reviewed v2.6 on Jul 21, 2006

I've been using this fantastic program for around 2 years now and always gave it a 5/5.

But I was very disappointed to find out that the new release lacks capturing and file conversion capabilities that are no more integrated! and instead they became two separate freeware that you have to download separately. I don't see the point since all are freeware anyways, why loose the integration and convenience?

Please consider integrating those useful again in the next releases.

For that I'll give it a 3/5 this time.

NeyJunior reviewed v2.6 on Jul 21, 2006

I think there were more Capture options, but now they're gone, right?

bobad reviewed v2.6 on Jul 20, 2006

Great program. It has all the features one could possibly need for a picture viewer. The only thing I could possibly wish for is themes support and for the program to be a bit more compact.

zee7 reviewed v2.6 Beta 5 on Jul 17, 2006

New Features in This Version:

- Add Wallpaper Anywhere (under Tools menu) that allows you to put photos anywhere on your windows Desktop.
- Can open all selected files in external program at a time (Press E key)
- Dual Monitor support (See "Dual Monitor" in the Settings).
Now it is possible to:

* Drag & Drop the main window to any of the monitors
* Display thumbnail browser and Full Screen preview across two monitors simultaneously
* Display slideshow in the secondary monito
___

FastStone Image Viewer keeps getting better and better. These latest dual monitor improvements prove, once again, that The FastStone Team take the suggestions of their users seriously. They're monitoring the photography forums and actively soliciting user input on a continuous basis. Every version is better than the last. It's hard to believe that this is beta software -- not to mention free.

When digital imaging specialists like me choose to use FastStone Image Viewer instead of klunky, inefficient bloatware like Adobe Bridge, you KNOW they're doing something right.

I am proud to support and donate money to the makers of this quality software.

ZenoLabs reviewed v2.6 Beta 5 on Jul 17, 2006

Excellent! No multilanguage, anyway.

robin_v reviewed v2.6 Beta 5 on Jul 17, 2006

This is still the best image viewer there is and it's still fast despite modifications. Since the main modifications between this version and the previous one it was easy to see that everything works fine. I'm also delighted with the fact that FastStone now shows all of the EXIF information because, as an amateur photographer it's nice to quickly see why a particular snapshot turned out better than another.
I rate it 6 ;)

pwned32 reviewed v2.6 Beta 5 on Jul 17, 2006

hi:

thanks you are make this program,
i think that is the best in windows browser!

thanks

-- what the hell is that supposed to mean?

alanpalmer reviewed v2.6 Beta 5 on Jul 17, 2006

A perfect example of good software. The fact that it is free only adds to its excellence. I've come across much less fully-featured viewers that cost quite a lot. An example of how good this software is is that almost every change is a new or improved feature, not a bugfix. That says a lot about their coding abilities.

pixelkay reviewed v2.6 Beta 4 on Jul 16, 2006

hi:

thanks you are make this program,
i think that is the best in windows browser!

thanks

grimpr reviewed v2.6 Beta 4 on Jun 25, 2006

The BEST! image viewer for windows,puts all those other bloated commercial programs to shame! a good balance between features and speed. overall excellent!

yokozuna reviewed v2.6 Beta 4 on Jun 7, 2006

The program is great. I do not know if many people know about the localized versions of the program: http://www.faststone.org/Languages.htm

robin_v reviewed v2.6 Beta 3 on May 21, 2006

Just when I think this program couldn't get any better - it gets better.

uberfly reviewed v2.6 Beta 3 on May 18, 2006

I love how feature rich this prog is, and being that it's free, they deserve at the very least huge Thank You! Donate to them a few $$ if you like and use this or similar programs regularly. It's a nice model for application dev - they don't beat you over the head with trial-timed functionality or nags. Just ask that you donate if you find it useful. (and no, I don't work for them) :)

PsychoUK reviewed v2.6 Beta 3 on May 18, 2006

Love this program and have used it from day 1
Only reason for giving it 4 was because the new feature of opening multiple images with an external program such as paintshop pro, does actually open multiple instances of the program, I was expecting all the images to open in 1 program. Please tell me if i am wrong, if not then I hope this gets sorted in the next version, Best free program going in my book, keep up the great work FastStone ;-)

vfxi reviewed v2.6 Beta 3 on May 18, 2006

This, quite simply, is the best image viewer that I have seen in a long time. Excellent program. I would refer this program to Anyone from entry level to seasoned professional.

captainahab reviewed v2.6 Beta 3 on May 17, 2006

An excellent image viewer.
Thank you FastStone for making this and other great freeware programs.

sniggle reviewed v2.6 Beta 3 on May 17, 2006

Amazing program.. I only have one problem with it. It does not preload images "next to" the current image you're viewing to speed up image loading. It's such a simple technique and would vastly improve the app, even if it uses more memory. Just make it an option.

zee7 reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 16, 2006

Dual monitor support finally! Yes!

FastStone has earned my undying support. It is rare to see a company so committed to product excellence and in tune with its users. I wish the FastStone developers owned Adobe and Microsoft; they could certainly teach them a thing or two.

This is a first rate image viewer at any cost. The fact that it's free makes it a no-brainer download.

@Mick Leong: My average file size is about 6 MB and I haven't experienced any hanging or freezing when opening with FastStone. The folder I'm working in right now is 617 MB of .jpgs, .tiffs and .psds (it's one of my smaller folders) and I'm scrolling through it and opening up images without any problems. Methinks the issue might be on your end.

Mick Leong reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 15, 2006

Good Program. However the latest 1.6x versions seems to have a very serious bug (memory leak?). After opening a GIF or JPG file > 1.5Mb (eg high res digital camera or A4 Scanned pic) The program cannot open another image file. I am also unable to start the imaging program from the menu. The program somehow does not want to work at all. Previous versions just minimize to taskbar and refuses to maximize again. All this happens when you open just 1 large 1.5Mb image file. The only recourse is to reboot.

I still give it a 4 'cos it good. Just this annoying bug.

downeast reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 12, 2006

The greatest full-screen viewer I've found.

If you haven't tried it, check out the
active edges of this viewer.

It just keeps getting better. I use it
instead of Adobe Albums or Bridge ...
now I can edit multiple pictures in
Photoshop with a single click of the E.

the artist reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 12, 2006

. . . yes it's nice featured, but it is a bit bulky and not as fast as it should.

anyway, gets a five cause i won't switch to any other for now... i like its comfortable feel.

hurzx reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 12, 2006

No doubt a very good image viewer.

But I still prefer XnView, much lighter and faster.

And above all one new soft that I've been using for sometime and which is very impressive : cPicture. Unbelievably small ( 953k), no install, faster than light and complete. Try it. It's a shock.

Dwiebelhaus reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 11, 2006

Great! better than irfanveiw.

yokozuna reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 11, 2006

horsecharles, the changelog is as follows:

- Drag & Drop the main window to any of the monitors
- Display thumbnail browser and Full Screen preview across two monitors simultaneously
- Display slideshow in the secondary monitor

Stach reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 11, 2006

It's the best viewer out there, and it's FREE. I will finally give it 5 stars as dual monitor support was finally added! :)

horsecharles reviewed v2.6 Beta 2 on May 11, 2006

Bobad, i wasn't putting down the app.....btw does anyone know what changed in the past 48 hours?

bobad reviewed v2.6 Beta 1 on May 9, 2006

In spite of what horsecharles says, I think this is the best picture viewer out there... free or not!

stopbuggingme reviewed v2.6 Beta 1 on May 9, 2006

I love it! And I have tried all of the viewers out there!
The thing that I need is a new way of reading ico files: it should read the biggest "frame" inside ico file and the preview should show all "frames"!

coolticker reviewed v2.5 on Apr 24, 2006

Simply F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C :-) Not the fastest viewer but so well thought with many unusual but really cool features like side-by-side image comparator !

trick : turn off bottom-left the preview that eat too much memory/cpu each time you move focus over a thumbnail.

alanpalmer reviewed v2.5 on Apr 23, 2006

Excellent software, especially good because it's free. I only discovered this a couple of months ago when 2.4 came out. Now it's up to 2.5. I'm impressed!

horsecharles reviewed v2.5 on Apr 22, 2006

Too cold for me, complains Papa Bear Reviewer, gives me constipation...But for me it's too hot, whines Mama Bear Reviewer, and gives me the runs! Oy vey, what a bunch of ***** we have here! exclaims Horsey Goldilocks Brickhouse, as she turns to Little Bear Reviewer and simulaneously asks, I suppose you also have a problem with caca? Oh, no-- not mmmmmmmmm...Little Bear Reviewer's response is muffled out midword in the depths of Horsey Goldilocks Brickhouse's prodigious behind, as she has already snatched Little Bear Reviewer & commenced wiping....

Version 2.5 (Apr 21, 2006)
*Add "Overlay (Right on Left)" button in "Compare Images" window, which helps to identify any slight difference between two images (Screenshot)

*Add "Compare in Full Screen" button in "Compare Images" window (Screenshot)

*Improve Scanner Support in "Scan Board" (press Alt+S). Now you can specify the DPI value of the scanner before scanning (Screenshot)

*Filename sorting now uses "Natural Sort". For example, the order of filenames in:
This version:
File1.jpg, File2.jpg, ... File10.jpg, File11.jpg
Previous version:
File1.jpg, File10.jpg, File11.jpg, ... File2.jpg

*Thumbnail Order is remembered when switching folders

*Add option to turn on / off the Preview window in Browser View (Screenshot)

*Support Image Tagging (in the "Tag" menu) (Screenshot).
***Now it is possible to tag through a large number of photos in full screen by pressing "\" key.
***You can filter out the untagged files and focus on (copy/move/edit/slideshow etc) the tagged ones only.
***Options of Image Tagging can be found in "Thumbnail" tab of the Settings (press F12). It can be disabled when option "Allow Image Tagging" is unchecked.
***Tag images in "Compare Images" window (press P key) (Screenshot)

*Fix minor bugs

lil2short2see reviewed v2.5 on Apr 22, 2006

This is an extremely feature-packed software and a great substitute if you would like to save money buying an expensive software, such as ACDSee and Adobe Photoshop Elements. Have most of the tools we need, and very user friendly. Three thumbs up!

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.5 on Apr 22, 2006

More complex than I would like (compared to iPhoto, for example) but free and very feature packed. I'm impressed.

Eldar reviewed v2.5 on Apr 22, 2006

I like it so much and that's why I gave them a donation. Love working with it.
My copy is registered now. :-)

hap8192739 reviewed v2.5 on Apr 22, 2006

Great pr0n viewer :P LOL

robin_v reviewed v2.5 on Apr 22, 2006

This is an excellent viewer with lots of attractive features. I have found a small bug in version 2.4 which is this:- When using the "freehand" setting to "crop lossless to file", the cropped file is okay but the viewer then moves on to the next picture in the directory instead of remianing with the cropped image. Just a small bug but worth reporting. FastStone is still the best viewer there is.

yanike reviewed v2.5 Beta 4 on Apr 17, 2006

Best Image Viewer period :)

TC17 reviewed v2.5 Beta 4 on Apr 15, 2006

I like this program very much also.

utlee reviewed v2.5 Beta 4 on Apr 15, 2006

Very good free program ;)

zee7 reviewed v2.5 Beta 4 on Apr 15, 2006

The new compare features are AWESOME! Thanks, FastStone!

AlexBR1974 reviewed v2.5 Beta 4 on Apr 14, 2006

Ok, but does not compare to XnView.

tannenwheel reviewed v2.5 Beta 2 on Mar 29, 2006

this software is great but i said that before.

however it will go mad cpu wise when "process lasso" is running, so add it to it's exclusion list and don't blame FSViewer, as i did.

the artist reviewed v2.5 Beta 2 on Mar 28, 2006

NEEDS to be MODULARIZED, that's the only way it will avoid becoming BLOATED.

zee7 reviewed v2.5 Beta on Mar 27, 2006

Version 2.5 Beta 2 just came out on FastStone's website today (I guess the updated version will be here shortly) and it finally allows image tagging. Yeah! It's about time! Now we just need keyword support and FastStone will really be rocking.

AqLumen reviewed v2.4 on Mar 15, 2006

I too wish FSIV had more configuration options. But keep in mind that this is a *freeware* program and as such, I'm thankful that FS offers it. It's certainly better than the built in WinXP file viewer.

nerrad reviewed v2.4 on Mar 15, 2006

It just keeps getting better! Great job, FastStone!

darthbeads reviewed v2.4 on Mar 15, 2006

Why would FastStone be reading feedback here? That's not really the point of FileForum. If you have feedback for the devs, you should give it to them directly through their forum or directly though an email.

That said, I am disturbed by the increasing features in what was once a lean and mean image viewer. I agree that a modularized installation would be really nice. And I still hate having the default skinning engine.

teranova52 reviewed v2.4 Beta 3 on Mar 10, 2006

It looks that FastStone does not read any of our lines here.

Ok... it looks that the words .. back to ACDSee 3.1 classic.. will be again our only defence.

notcho reviewed v2.4 Beta 3 on Mar 9, 2006

Still wish all these new "features" could be modularized and be selectable during installation (like the skin engine.. what's wrong with wanting a simple and light graphics viewer?).. I tried the FastStone MaxView viewer program, but it's just not the same... missing the browsing mode is a big deal.. oh well, back to ACDSee classic..

yokozuna reviewed v2.4 Beta 3 on Mar 8, 2006

pyridox, I think it is not (only) the fault of FSIV, but the problem of Canon. I use Canon Pixma 4000 (European version) and LiDE 80. The quality of drivers is rather bad if I compare it with Epson, e.g. the printer often shows messages in Hungarian (I am not Hungarian, and I do not use Hungarian Windows). The scanner "beeps" during the startup of Windows and has some issues when I use VueScan. I am sure you noticed that Canon provides NO driver updates.

pyridox reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 6, 2006

This is a very nice viewer. However, it does'nt work with my scanner. Whenever I try to do an aquire, it hangs up the program. I keep trying this program after each release, but unfortunately it looks like it's just don't like my Canon scanner. So I'm still stuck with Xnview, which is not bad.

anomoly reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 6, 2006

what next? burn photo album discs. It is still my viewer, but any more bs bloat & I will use irfan or xnview & ce la ve faststone. C'mon, are we moving towards a full shell browser?. To be quite honest directory opus has better thumbnail viewing capabilities. I really only use this for resizing & the like, other than that-at the moment-ms paint would work fine as a viewer. I almost gave it a 3 but remembered it's standalone capability.

mbe2005 reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 6, 2006

Unforetunately I wasn't able two put to pictures beside each other on one page, but the program is nice.

spiked reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 5, 2006

Fast, feature-rich viewer and browser. UI is decent but I never quite got comfortable enough with it to switch completely from ACDSee. With all the option settings available in FastStone, I find it strange that you can't disable the "rollup" control on the title bar. It's not a big annoyance, but it seems to me that any non-standard element (for a typical Windows app) would logically have an option to disable. The real annoyance for me is that the 3-pane layout is not customizable. Sure, you can skin it, change the way each pane looks and works, etc. but you can't (for instance) swap the positions of the Preview pane and the File List pane. This has long been a basic feature in ACDSee, XnView, and many other programs using a 3-pane layout (not just image browser but email clients, RSS readers, etc). I still rate FastStone a solid 4 but I can't give it a 5 if I can't bring myself to use it regularly.

tannenwheel reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 5, 2006

coool videothumbs. in case they are stable i can hardly think of a reason to stay with xnview, now.

edit: unfortunately it crashes on that large directory with videos. (xnview crashes as well on some files). there will allways be videos that crash a parser but the main app should be able to handle these crashes without crashing itself.

edit2: i dunno, this version is terribly misbehaving cpu-wise. nearly unusuable. bet it will be fixed soon.

infoghost reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

Simply the best.

pea reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

teranova52: I use a pentium 4 2.80Ghz (not duel core). In full screen it changes picture at real time, no lag what so ever. i suggest you look at what's taking up your CPU (ctrl alt delete if you didn't know [expert]).

Excellent program, recommended.

nerrad reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

This is the best image viewer there is, period. It loads fast and doesn't have all the bloat like some others out there. I use it to browse directories full of 3072 x 2304 7.2 megapixel images. The images load instantly with no delay between each image. It's loaded with many features for such a modest program.

guevara reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

only one thing
to
say
EXELENT

teranova52 reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

If even totay, after all this years, the old ACDSee 3 remain faster, than this bloat.
There nothing more to say.

I own a digital camera 2.1MP , i use to scroll between images at 1600x1200 .
This bloat does not follow my mouse wheel ..
Its damn slow for use of experts.

Does it needs Dual core CPU to run properly?, or 1066FSB ?

If ever becomes really worthy, i will come here FIRST, and i will start screaming about how good it turned out.
Until then .. no extra comment

rotjong reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

I love this viewer. I also use ACDSee and Firehand Ember but this is so light-weight that I use it for all my quick viewing purposes. My only issue with this new beta is that it displays thumbnails of video files. I cannot see a way to disable this. Am I just blind? The video thumbnailing slows down the processing of the thumbnails and I don't want to see them. I guess I'll go back to the last release for now.

yokozuna reviewed v2.4 Beta 2 on Mar 4, 2006

teranova52, name at least five instructions of all 144 SSE2s which are useful in image browsing (not rendering! because Fast Stone is an image browser. FSIV is not an editor!). Just show them and discuss the impact on the quality or speed of image viewing. Thank you in advance!

PS Alternatively write about image viewers that uses the instructions in viewing. A paragraph will be more than enough.

wyzxwyzx reviewed v2.4 Beta (Updated) on Mar 4, 2006

beautiful!if it supports command-line that capture screen,i will give it 5 star.

teranova52 reviewed v2.4 Beta (Updated) on Mar 1, 2006

It’s slow and bloated.
Like the most modern ones.
The loading speed in full screen view, is slow.
The old ACDSee 3 is the faster ever made .

Bottom line we live at 2006 , were is the progress in the picture viewers.
What are we ? stupid ?
Were is the modern software that uses SSE 2 or other CPU instructions in hardware?

I would rate this software with 20 stars rating, if it was made at 1999, today is 2 stars only.

lookwhatifound reviewed v2.4 Beta (Updated) on Mar 1, 2006

can't believe a program like this could get low ratings. it does what its meant to do, and does better than most other commercial softwares. its fast, its free. what else do you want from it?

Pantagruel reviewed v2.4 Beta (Updated) on Mar 1, 2006

Good, but nothing can compare with AcdSee. yes, I have tried irfanview, xnview etc, AcdSee is the best overall.

ranma.2 reviewed v2.4 Beta on Mar 1, 2006

Love this one
its getting
better and better
and free

guevara reviewed v2.4 Beta on Mar 1, 2006

EXELENT-not much more to say

stopbuggingme reviewed v2.4 Beta on Mar 1, 2006

It was getting to be the best free viewer. Then it started going downhill, bloating up with photo editing, "digital camera support" etc, when all it needed was speed improvement and a more polished, intuitive GUI.

Strangely, I've gone back to using ACDSee, which has quite redeemed itself with v8.0

Joco reviewed v2.4 Beta on Feb 28, 2006

I was a long time user of IrfanView. Now I use FSIV. I like very much its image conversion utility and its red eyes correction. One thing I don't like in FSIV is its ugly GUI, which is quite paradoxal. A good graphical program which itself is ugly.

hurzx reviewed v2.4 Beta on Feb 28, 2006

Wonderfull program. Faster than Stone !

Obren reviewed v2.4 Beta on Feb 28, 2006

Finally I can draw those fancy coloured rectangles, ellipses and triangles while watching pictures from my digital camera. Wow, I couldn't live without these features...

Now serious, instead of bloating once promissing application, author should concentrate on polishing, bugfixing and optimizing this program for speed. It is all it needs...

SCoooBY reviewed v2.4 Beta on Feb 28, 2006

Not as good as IrfanView...

Much better than XnView...

Almost as good as ViewViewView... View...

brotherS reviewed v2.4 Beta on Feb 28, 2006

Much better than XnView!

AlexBR1974 reviewed v2.4 Beta on Feb 28, 2006

Not as good as XnView.

alanpalmer reviewed v2.30 on Feb 11, 2006

A really excellent program. It would be worth a 5 even if it were not free.

uberfly reviewed v2.30 on Feb 11, 2006

Being free definitely pushes this up to a 5. Small things though do bug me about this app - like the mandatory skins and, for instance, the way F5 is mapped to a compair function rather than 'refresh' like all other programs of similar stripes.

horsecharles reviewed v2.30 on Feb 10, 2006

Auto-Updater please............ or heck, even a manual one at least.........

Stach reviewed v2.30 on Feb 10, 2006

GREAT program and I'd give it 5 stars IF it supported dual monitors. I'd love to be able to use this program to display images on my 2nd monitor (61" HDTV) in full screen, but unfortunately, it still doesn't support it, so I end up using another program.

Hopefully someday this will be added.

yanike reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 6, 2006

This program is awesome!!! Rating it a 1-4 you need to be slapped! lol I use this program every day to look through portfolios. I recommend it to everyone!

bobad reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 5, 2006

Excellent! Just when I think it's perfect, the author makes a few changes that make it even better. For the purists that don't like skinning, fancy built-in browser, editing, etc, the author has made a program just for you. It's called "FastStone MaxView", and it's really nice. Try it out!

The XNView fanboy could have been more honest and rated FSV at least a 4. Rating it a 1 makes him lose all credibility.

midfingr reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 4, 2006

I like this but, I'm afraid I'm stuck in the stoneage on this one. I use ACDSee 3.1. Why? It was a freebie when I bought something from BestBuy. But more importantly, I like the archive integration. That is in compressing bmp files or just to organize. If anyone knows of an alternative, that has this feature, please let me know.
Also. The latest ACDSee. I'm considering that too.

Anyway. Nice free Image Viewer in all other ascpects.

benZin reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 4, 2006

The best free viewer. But ACDSee Classic is faster.

guti reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 4, 2006

Obviously Faststone does not deserve one star. Right XnView is 5 stars.

pyridox reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 4, 2006

I like this program, but it doesn't play nice with my scanner! When I try to aquire from the scanner, it hangs the program. So, for now, I'm using Xnview which works. I'll give the author a 3 however.

wizard68sc3 reviewed v2.30 Beta 3 on Feb 4, 2006

hurzx must be related to the program XnView, because I have used both programs and theres no way that FastStone Image Viewer gets a 1. Out of all the other people that submitted a 4 or 5 doesnt a 1 seem kind of stoopid.

hurzx reviewed v2.30 Beta 2 on Feb 3, 2006

Try XnView instead. Just better.

robin_v reviewed v2.30 Beta 2 on Jan 16, 2006

This version did everything it promised. One cannot ask for more than that. Great program!

brotherS reviewed v2.30 Beta 2 on Jan 12, 2006

Thanks, great new features!

jackhummer reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 11, 2006

The best of the best.

bufftbone reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 4, 2006

Excellent program. The only problem I have with it (and it may be related to my rig and NOT the software) is that it takes a little while for it to load initialy. Once it's loaded, it runs great. Lots of options and settings to play around with to view your pictures. Unlike ACDSee, this program doesn't lock up and/or freeze up my computer. It's well worth it to at least check it out. Oh yeah, one more thing. the price isn't to shabby either. :)

anomoly reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 2, 2006

this prog literally frames all you need in an image viewer gui. would be nice if it accepted skins though, to give it a personal feel

nerrad reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 2, 2006

Excellent image viewer, the best I've ever used. It isn't bloated like some of the others out there. It views the most popular file types, and doesn't try to view them all (also like some of the others). All of the XP skins are actually very nice. Keep up the great work, FastStone!

danilloOc reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 2, 2006

Very nice beta addon.
There's 2 things that i would like to see in this program:

1 - Give to the user a way to Disable the build in skins (PLEASE!!!)

2 - Add the [Control] or [Shift] or [Alt] keys to the shortcuts cause if i'm in a folder with too many images and want to go to a image that begin with the letter "i", the selection go the this image when i press the key [i] in my keyboard and not bring up the "image Properties" dialog...

..other than this it's a excellent software.

bouchonx reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 2, 2006

This software is really one of the best.

The only way to be the ONE is

-to use the windows GUI...
The skins are ugly, so please use the standard mr fastone !

-to implement the ability to read all medias in the options (pdf, ogg, mp3, videos...) like xnview does.

-to have the possibility to sort the pictures like picasa

--to see all the pictures of all the folders like in picasa, but with the respect of folders structure (this is the only default of picasa).

yokozuna reviewed v2.30 Beta on Jan 2, 2006

I like the improvements in RAW rendering. The previous versions had tendencies to show white clouds with slightly pink shades. They are really white now. Actually the rendering is good enough that you can convert RAW pics to jpgs with FSIV if you are in a hurry (if not dedicated programs are still recommended).

Fluxx reviewed v2.29 on Dec 26, 2005

This i like...
Its really one of the best
image viewers out there.
It has many good features and very easy to use.
Its like a free better version of ACDSee.
The only thing a dont like is that it can be a little slow. But it keeps getting better and better.

Dekaritae reviewed v2.29 on Dec 24, 2005

Very functional as an image viewer, and it's welcome that the image decoding method is user selectable, but a lack of descript.ion comment file support might make this useless for some.

KayNine reviewed v2.29 on Nov 28, 2005

Getting better and better, and just when I think I know FSIV by heart, I discover new features. There's really nothing I'm missing.

Yes, it may not play video files - why should it?

Yes, it may be a bit slower compared to others - it still is fast enough, even others are much slower, especially upon startup.

'nuff said, except for: FSIV is free, but this guy REALLY deserves donations!!!

Re: skins: I contacted the author (quickly replied!), the used skinning engine unfortunately does not support native xp skinning. But I don't care, what really counts is the functionality!

robin_v reviewed v2.29 on Nov 27, 2005

Just because a program has the option to change skins doesn't neccesarily mean that one has to. The core function of this viewer is beautiful and I have ACDSee to compare with. As a viewer, Faststone has the edge on every function.

ArKay74 reviewed v2.29 on Nov 27, 2005

Still a tad too slow for a quick browse through my png photo collection (and I don't like index databases).

The skinning also is a turnoff for me since Windows got skin support with XP, there's really no need for every application to do its own skinning anymore. Might be fine for applications with small windows, but here it is really not needed. At least the user should be able to decide whether to use a skin or let the OS do the drawing otherwise it might be distracting. As is this application doesn't blend in with the other apps on my machine since I am not using one of the default XP skins it tries to mimic. And also there are people who even turn off the theme engine in XP.

CyberHobo reviewed v2.29 on Nov 26, 2005

As stated earlier, remove the useless skin support in addition to database file support.

danilloOc reviewed v2.29 on Nov 26, 2005

I agree it's a excellent program with good features,and i agree about remove the skins support, i don't use it cause this.

notcho reviewed v2.29 on Nov 26, 2005

I agree with bobad.. I would really like to see this program stay as a pure image viewer. (Please make an option to remove the skin)

OSuser reviewed v2.29 on Nov 26, 2005

Skins support? Works perfectly for me. It's functional and does what it stated. I can do without skin. But that's my pref.

bobad reviewed v2.29 on Nov 26, 2005

Simply the best, whether Freeware or Shareware. Just the right set of features, and works just fine on fairly old or modern equipment. I especially like the fact that it remembers the install folder, and the ability to create a portable version.

I wish the author would take the built-in skins out of the EXE file, and remove the music player. That way, it would be a clean, pure picture viewer.

Give it 10 points out of 5!

Bushwhacker reviewed v2.29 on Nov 25, 2005

Great software! Works just fine for me, and for my family. We have user profiles on XP with no problems....

nerrad reviewed v2.29 on Nov 25, 2005

The best image viewer out there, period.

Antrich reviewed v2.29 on Nov 25, 2005

This is a brilliant image viewer and on my system every feature works as it should. Perhaps some of the critics might need to update their systems.....

benZin reviewed v2.29 on Nov 25, 2005

Good! Excellent! Great viewer!

cowgaR reviewed v2.29 on Nov 25, 2005

Once they acquire the good coding practices, I will try them again.

As for now I would advice developers to start with tutorial: How to code application for NT systems, year 98, utilizing user profiles etc

It is year 2005 and such bad coding still exists..how sad.

pyridox reviewed v2.28 on Nov 25, 2005

Very nice image viewer, and optimizer, except it doesn't work well with my scanner, it hangs the system when I aquire an image.

robin_v reviewed v2.28 on Nov 24, 2005

I've put this version through it's paces and am very pleased with it. If there's anything I miss it would be the possibility of changing options whilst in full screen view. Not a major problem though and this program is a delight to use.

sinesolis reviewed v2.28 on Nov 16, 2005

do none of these free viewers allow the option to open the image in a seprate window, moreover a window fit to the image size while allowing the browser to stay open seperatly hile retaining its size? Seriously, this seems like a feature that should always be included and easily found in options. it is incredibly helpful when running dual monitors or for refering to an image or more whil navigating folder trees to find more images. As it stands I can't switch to any of the free ACDSEE alternatives unill there is some kind of feature set that aloows this most basic of operations.

SamiChang reviewed v2.28 on Nov 15, 2005

Pretty cool program. now I don't have to open Photoshop to check every PSD file :D

Gryzor reviewed v2.28 on Nov 15, 2005

A great image viewer full of nice features, but I see it getting larger and slowing down with minor fixes instead of focusing on major issues like better speed or better mass printing... Hope it doesn't go the ACDSee way!

zee7 reviewed v2.28 on Nov 14, 2005

It's not as zippy as it used to be, but in light of the improvements they've made and the awesome features that have been added, it is still, hands down, the best image viewer around. I also work with huge RAW, TIFF, and multi-layered .PSD files so my folders load slowly no matter which program I use. In a future release, I would love to see dual monitor support with the ability to open multiple instances of FastStone so that I can compare photos at full screen size using just FastStone.

Keep up the great work! FastStone rocks!

Sinesolis, do you really think that your one minor annoyance is enough to rate such an excellent free program one star? I think your rating is overly harsh and unfair. Anyway, FastStone does allow you to take advantage of dual monitors. Just right click on the image you want to open and choose "open Windows explorer here"; you can then open your second image using the Windows built in viewer or any another program you choose and simply drag it to your second monitor. Granted, it would be preferable to view them both in FastStone, but this is better than nothing.

nerrad reviewed v2.28 on Nov 14, 2005

The best image viewer out there, and I've tried about all of them.

brotherS reviewed v2.27 on Nov 6, 2005

@hurzx: maybe not as fast as XNView but WAY nicer to work with IMHO.

Great app!

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.27 on Nov 3, 2005

Agreed.. excellent software..

anomoly reviewed v2.27 on Nov 3, 2005

Speed? you want speed, buy a more powerful pc. The gui is way better than irfanview or xnview. Mpg's?. Since when do I need to use a picture viewer for video files. I don't want it to play my music nor do I want it to manipulate video files. It does more than I need but what I need it for it does very well, and never has ever caused a single problem.

Ulmo reviewed v2.27 on Nov 3, 2005

Very Good :
- More simple than XnView
- Better look than XnView
- But XnView is Faster (a lot !)

hurzx reviewed v2.27 on Nov 2, 2005

Nice soft. But it still lags behind Xnview in terms of speed for manipulating large directories.IMHO I also find Xnview more intuitive. And last but not leasdt Xnview allow for Mpeg manipulating. But again a good app anyway.

crowbar82 reviewed v2.27 on Nov 2, 2005

THE BEST!

10/10

dejavu reviewed v2.27 on Nov 2, 2005

Excellent!

zridling reviewed v2.27 on Nov 2, 2005

Won't touch ACDSee Pro 8 [January], but for freeware, it's a solid fourth behind XnView and IrfanView.

kanenas reviewed v2.27 on Nov 2, 2005

5 stars is not enough simply the best viewer prog

pyridox reviewed v2.27 on Nov 2, 2005

Excellent graphics viewer & manipulator. Been using it for a while now, and really like it.

Here is the changelog for v2.27:
--------------------------------------------
New Updates in version 2.27 (Nov 02,2005)

* Enhance digital camera RAW support;
* Add 5 RAW format support:
- DNG (Adobe Digital Negative)
- ORF (Olympus)
- RAF (Fuji)
- MRW (Minolta)
- PEF (Pentax)
* Add an option to "Copy to/Move to" window so that the destination folder can be created if it does not exist;
* Enhance EXIF table in Full Screen;
* Add an option in the Settings (Press F12) to show Hidden files and folders;
* Add an option in the Email-Images window that allows images to be sent as a self-extracting EXE file (another option is ZIP file);
* Parameters in color adjustment window (brightness, contrast etc. ) are remembered/saved for next use;
* Add hotkeys Alt+2, Alt+3 ... for the second, third ... external program;
* Now it is possible to use PgUp/PgDn/Space key to switch images in the magnifier;
* Now it is possible to install the program for all users in the same computer;
* Fix thumbnail orientation bug in CR2 and NEF formats;
* Add Color Management (embeded ICC) support. To enable it, go to "CMS" tab in the "Settings";
* Add Scroll Navigator in Full Screen (Move the mouse to the bottom edge in Full screen);
* Enhance Crop Board (Press X key) to make it possible to crop multiple images ("Crop to File") using the new "Previous" and "Next" buttons;
* Add "Create Portable Application" button to the Settings (Press F12). A portable version of this program can run independently from any folder you dump it in;
* Improve performance of "Lossless Crop to File" in Crop Board;
* Add "Outer Darkness" control in Crop Board;
* Enhance Scroll Navigator (Move the mouse to the bottom edge in Full screen);
* Fix some bugs and make minor enhancements.

kooshini reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 31, 2005

WOW - Guess what all my image file associations are set to open in now :)

^^
by the way this can be donw in the settings section of the program

KayNine reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 26, 2005

It simply _is_ the best image viewer out there. Point. It rocks and beats everything. It is fast, it is smooth, it looks great (though xp-themes support would be nice), I'm satisfied.

And yes, it is FREE, but it's definately one of those products I loved from the beginning and happily donated to. This guy _REALLY_ deserves this!!

Add:

Did I just read "Add 'Create Portable Application' button to the Settings (Press F12)"??? Please open the scale, I want to rate it 10 stars!!! Though the portable version on first run updates it's database in it's folder, I have to try how FSIV will act when run from a read-only folder (i.e. from CD/DVD).

OMG, I think I still haven't discovered a majority of FSIV's features, though I use it sooo often.

antigin reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

Flawless viewer! And very very HANDY! Bright example of what should be an image viewer. 10(!) from me, if I could.

photonboy reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

Yes, it doesn't get much better for the price. But, mark my words this program will eventually cost money.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

I'd *easily* rate this a 10 if you could go that high..

ZenoLabs reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

Great piece of software, frequently updated with tons of useful features. And it's F R E E! :)

zridling reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

More keyboard shortcuts, yeah!

CoMa reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

I like FSIV very much.

BetaNews has forgotten to add these last changes for Beta 3 (25-10-2005)

-+Improve performance of "Lossless Crop to File" in Crop Board
-+Add "Outer Darkness" control in Crop Board
-+Enhance Scroll Navigator (Move the mouse to the bottom edge in Full screen)
-+Fix some bugs and make minor enhancements.

benZin reviewed v2.27 Beta 3 on Oct 25, 2005

Ouh, exciting! I love!

robin_v reviewed v2.27 Beta 2 on Oct 21, 2005

The new features continue to delight me. It was really nice that the EXIF section was expanded. Is it my imagination or is this version much faster than the previous one? I certainly experience it faster anyway. It does take longer to build the database but that's basically a one off routine and it's plain sailing after that.

zee7 reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 19, 2005

Thanks for adding ICC support! FastStone continues to improve!

I'd love it even more if twain support was added too.

anomoly reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 18, 2005

Started out great & is still great. Just great. best thing about it is ease of use. Why what?-wgaf

brotherS reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 18, 2005

hurzx: I'll call it coincidence or paranoia (on your side) :)
FIV is great!

hurzx reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 18, 2005

Memory usage went to 187 MB. A little too much for me.

bobad reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 17, 2005

Excellent photo viewer. I don't like the built-in skins, but I rarely use the browser anyway. (Hey, what's Windows Explorer for anyway?) I wish the author would work on speeding up the program and refinements. It really has enough features for now, and is starting to get a little fat.

uberfly reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 17, 2005

Love it but really wish a 'none' option would be added to the available skins. I use styleXP and wish it would take on my native scheme. Other than that small thing, thank you for this nice FREE app!

yokozuna reviewed v2.27 Beta on Oct 17, 2005

Fantastic! The author added color management (embeded ICC) support (go to "CMS" tab in the "Settings")!!! I love it, as any other digital photography enthusiast!

BTW, the tutorial is here: http://www.faststone.org/FSTutorial.htm

vfxi reviewed v2.26 Beta 2 on Oct 11, 2005

Simply the best image viewer out there. Really beats ACDSEE 7

Joco reviewed v2.26 Beta 2 on Oct 10, 2005

Very good image viewer. I hope the author will use standard XP look & feel. The specific skin it is using now looks funny at first by becomes really awkard after a while.

psychohawk reviewed v2.26 Beta 2 on Oct 10, 2005

By far the best enthusiast based photo edit and org software to date.

PJE reviewed v2.26 Beta 2 on Oct 10, 2005

hurzx - I'm not gonna say that FIW is bad...

So why give it one 'star' to drive down it's rating?

The rating should be based on the software and not personal preferance for another package. XnView is only free for the basic version while Faststone is free for all non-comercial uses.

hurzx reviewed v2.26 Beta 2 on Oct 10, 2005

I'm not gonna say that FIW is bad. No, it's good. But I still prefer XnView which is even better! Give it a try and you'll understand what I mean... Autrement dit, c'est pas le meilleur.

colok reviewed v2.26 Beta on Oct 4, 2005

C'est le meilleur !!!

aztazt reviewed v2.26 Beta on Oct 3, 2005

OK, I give up too. This is better than IrfanView, which also means it's the best.
Don't know why I never tried it before

benZin reviewed v2.26 Beta on Oct 3, 2005

Simply EXCELLENT! Indispensable. ACDSee 7 is out, i hope acdsee 8 will be better. Anyway, FastSone is the NEW KING!

mackley reviewed v2.26 Beta on Oct 3, 2005

Well, it's a fast, powerfull, image viewer with a good interface, nice semi-professional editing. It's freeware (for no commercial use...)

I've throw away the bloated ACDSee 7 I got with a digital camera bundle... :-p

bufftbone reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 21, 2005

Well, I just tried it out on a recommendation from another user writing their review of another viewing program. I'd have to say that It's very good. Much better then the default picture viewer that comes with windows and it gives me the same type of options that Acdsee offers. Sadly, I can't use ACDsee because it likes to lockup/crash all the time for me for some reason. This is a great alternative. The price seems pretty fair too.

robmanic44 reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 20, 2005

OK, I give up. This is better than XnView, which means it's the best. This should get some financial support from it's users.

zee7 reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 15, 2005

Notcho, you can change the skins via the toolbar menu, but if you just want a minimally featured version, why not write the developer? They're very good about implementing users suggestions.

Another way to speed FastStone up is to hit the Thumbnail Optimizer (two icons away from the Delete icon on the toolbar) and then click Optimize. My thumbnail database was huuuuge because I just finished sorting through several dozen folders, but now that everything's sorted, I just hit 'optimize' and the speed is back. :)

Keeps getting better and better. Way to go, FastStone!

photonboy reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 14, 2005

Good program for the price.

Why do people keep saying ACDSee is "bloated" just because it's a larger file size. It offers more features than most programs, that's why it is larger.

"Bloated" is only important if that means the program runs unnecessarily slower or it is so large that you run out of space. ACDSee is stable and runs great and only takes less than 50MB of space. Many people have pictures exceeding 1GB so what is the issue. Hard drives are now up to 400GB.

ACDSee is the best program in my book and version 8 is even better.

KayNine reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 13, 2005

Wow, I'm impressed! I was using SlowView or Brennig's before, couldn't get used to XNView or Irfan. But THIS really is an alternative! The GUI is excellent, clean yet functional, the menus well done, the handling intuitive yet customizable. And it is fast, very fast IMHO, especially the preview thumbnails are generated very quick! What need I say more? I love it! Definately 5 stars!!!

Zygi reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 13, 2005

Killer app, a lot better then expensive and bloated ACDSee... Look no further, if you need good image viewer, i would only wish for normal windows gui. They have skin that look almost like windows :-/

Hillard reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 13, 2005

This absolutely blows past InfraView. I would pay for this software. Actually, can't believe this is freeware. Very clean and modern. Makes InfraView look like s*** and I really liked InfraView. A must have software. Thanks a Bunch!!

notcho reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 13, 2005

Excellent overall program, would be perfect if the bulky, somewhat eyesore-ish skin component is removed..

yokozuna reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 12, 2005

berserkchaos, I do not work with so large images, however, I work with RAF files produced by Fuji FinePix S9500. They are around 20 mb each. FSIV is SURPRISINGLY fast with them, the only faster viewer that can utilizes such files and is visibly faster (without the deterioration of quality) is cam2pc.
BTW, it is not only my opinion. I invite you to http://www.dpreview.com/forums A lot of people share the opinion. The thing is that many browsers cheat when they manipulate such large files, e.g. the algorithms work less and less precise (blurs & so called 'bokeh' - this Japanese word gains popularity in digital photography: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm Poor bokeh is not produced by lenses only but also by some programs!) when you increase the size of images.

zridling reviewed v2.25 Beta on Sep 12, 2005

Freeware killing off other freeware? Let me guess: the other freeware is not free enough, or not pretty enough. Which is it?

benZin reviewed v2.24 Beta 1 on Sep 9, 2005

EXCELLENT. XnView & IrfanView are dead!

berserkchaos reviewed v2.24 Beta 1 on Sep 9, 2005

it just need speed...
have you tried to open a 50MP file ?

rpavl reviewed v2.24 Beta 1 on Sep 7, 2005

Awesome.

brotherS reviewed v2.24 Beta 1 on Sep 7, 2005

hurzx: I want an image viewer if I install an image viewer... I use Winamp for audio only too.

Zygi reviewed v2.24 Beta 1 on Sep 7, 2005

I got Media Player Classic and SubEdit Player for viewing movies... foobar2000 for music and FastStone Image Viewer for images :P

hurzx reviewed v2.24 Beta 1 on Sep 7, 2005

I also use MPC... but as far as I know it's a player not a file manager!!!

Zygi reviewed v2.23 Beta 3 on Sep 5, 2005

They didn't mentioned, gif animations was fixed in this version, and broken in previous one... Anyway its great program, very similar to ACDSee but free :D

Ronny50 reviewed v2.23 Beta 3 on Sep 5, 2005

Amazing one! Now with new icons.

horsecharles reviewed v2.23 Beta 3 on Sep 4, 2005

Solid product, constantly upgraded(this is a great understatement), & free to boot-- what more could one ask for?
Life is good!

brotherS reviewed v2.23 Beta 3 on Sep 4, 2005

Just great, I use it for viewing mostly but like the editing features too. Thanks!

ArabianNight reviewed v2.23 Beta 3 on Sep 4, 2005

The Best!

Zygi reviewed v2.23 Beta on Sep 1, 2005

Great app, its as good if not better then ACDSee, but i can't find where and how to turn on gif animations...
all animated gifs are static in FastStone Image Viewer.....

yokozuna reviewed v2.23 Beta on Aug 31, 2005

Yeeeeeees, it supports Fuji RAW files :-) You cannot imagine how many people in the world waited for this feature! I think that all the owners of Fuji S5x00 will use FSIV!

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.23 Beta on Aug 31, 2005

I'm personally not a fan of XnView so for me it's not a contest.. this hands-down is the best image viewer I've used and upgrading each beta is effortless..

Definitely worht a look!

robmanic44 reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0822 on Aug 25, 2005

It's a tough choice between this and XnView. I have this on one desktop and XnView on the other. Use either one and you won't be disappointed.

robin_v reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0822 on Aug 25, 2005

This is a definite winner once all of the little bugs are cleaned up. I loved getting thumbnails (the first four) displayed on directories (folders.)
I did, however, find an annoying bug which was this - if one uses Windows Picture Viewer in the setting of the folder and uses that to rotate a picture, the resulting picture becomes unreadable and is replaced by a large red cross being both unreadable by Windows and FastStone.
Upon examining the registry I realised that this problem is caused by FastStone using it's own reference to images. If that doesn't coincide with the Windows setting, one gets very cross ;)
Generally this is quite a delightful program to use and most operations are available from the edges of the screen by just moving the cursor to the desired edge.
I also experienced another little bug with respect to this. I use my taskbar folded down. If I attempt to access the bottom menu in a folder which is not designated as exclusively for images, I only get the task bar.
All in all this program is extremely delightful to use and has a lot of useful functions.

zee7 reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0822 on Aug 23, 2005

Hands down one of the greatest freeware apps available. Even though I own Photoshop CS2, Faststone Image Viewer is my app of choice for keeping my massive photo library organized. If only Adobe Bridge was this elegant, fast, and trouble free...

Teranova52, maybe it's time for you to do a system checkup; I've installed Faststone on over one hundred computers and it's extremely fast and responsive --- even on very underpowered pcs.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0822 on Aug 23, 2005

I take pics at 2560x1920 and have had no problem viewing them.. ok.. they may take an extra hundredth of a second to load than ACDSee, but who gives a ****...

The program has excellent cropping features and rotate works fine.. I still don't understand the 'bloatware' part, but to each his own I guess..

Still have no complaints..

ghammer reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0822 on Aug 23, 2005

I also do not know what teranova52 did.
This is NOT bloated (which means what exactly?) at 2.6 Mb.
It is fast enough on my pics that are 1600 * 1200.
I like the lossless rotation feature. I like the way it stays out of my way when I am viewing yet has the menus available quickly.

In all, it has become my default viewer by being very good to excellent at all it does.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0819 on Aug 22, 2005

I'm not sure what teranova52 is doing, but apparently they're missing key elements of the program..

It's not lightning fast, but it does its job and does it very well.. I strongly recommend this software and if it keeps up this way, I always will..

teranova52 reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0819 on Aug 21, 2005

Not that FAST browser for images like 1600x1200 , the old ACDsee 3.0 is a killer in speed .

This proggy is bloated ,and even if i do try it and compare it ,from time to time , i do not see to gets any better ..
FREE ... Well, and Air, is for free, so what ?

I have a digital camera an Olympus C2100 2.1MP, so i have lots of images to play with, and this software its not good to handle them .
If I with a 2.1MP and i have speed problem with it , what it will happen with someone who owns a 5MP camera ?

I have a suggestion for the author , MAKE the full screen mode Lighter and fast , we do not need EXIF info and other bells at the Full Screen mode.

Its known that you can see the full quality of your images only if they are displayed on the exact resolution from your monitor .
I do own a Sony 19" 1600x1200 , and my digital camera uses as max the same resolution , so WHY in earth this proggy runs Slow , in the fast full screen preview (When rolling my mouses wheel) ??!!

I have a fast system ,no worrys about that..

rpavl reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0819 on Aug 21, 2005

Perfection, and free. Wasnt this what the internet was supposed to be about ....say back in 1990. Great app and thanks.

lls reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0819 on Aug 20, 2005

From the description above: "... watermarks...".
???
Could somebody please tell me where this option is hidden? I can't find it.

dirtyangel reviewed v2.22 Beta Build 0819 on Aug 19, 2005

The best image viewer out there.. no bulls***. Highly recommended.

compugeek32 reviewed v2.20 on Aug 13, 2005

Out of all I've seen, This is the best image viewer I have ever tried in my life...

anomoly reviewed v2.20 on Aug 11, 2005

It will do all that irfanview does (for my needs) & can also be used as a standalone prog on a usb drive. Never had 'acdc' installed-never will. The BEST software IS free.

reets reviewed v2.20 on Aug 10, 2005

Awesome program! Just replaced my ACDSee with this program, have been looking for a replacement for a long time but nothing really had features even close to it. This runs much faster and has all the features I am looking for :D

zridling reviewed v2.20 on Aug 10, 2005

No longer the lean app it once was. UI does suck for sure; the Help file is thin at best, and the program has noticeably slowed as it gets more bloated with each release. Being free is irrelevant. The good news is now I can scroll to the next/previous row using the arrow keys. Yea!

yokozuna reviewed v2.20 on Aug 10, 2005

ArtoD2, something for you: "Created different icons for different associated file formats" :-)

I miss only two things - FSIV should be ICC aware, and support RAF files (RAW files created by Fuji cameras) that are extremely popular in Europe. XnView does it. I hope that FSIV will do it soon.

Niksa reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 9, 2005

UI sucks. But program is OK. I would like to see standard UI

tipsyboy reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 7, 2005

Nice program. Can definitely rival ACDSee. On my machine,however, there's one big flaw: when browsing through directories, the browsing speed slows down the more dirs are searched. It slows down to an extent that is intolerable - it nearly stands still. This is NOT due to a faulty system, every other program on my machine doesn't show anything like this behaviour at all. You'll have to fix that one before I'm going to use your program again.

yokozuna reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 7, 2005

I think that the program is a class of its own. I already wrote about it.

I would like to admit two things:
1. something general - betas, alphas and previews can be unstable due to their nature. On the other hand they present the newest features of the product. It applies to all prerelease products. If you want stability use final releases only.
2.the authors of FSIV are very responsive. Some guys from dpreview.com wanted some features helpful in digital photography. After a month the program contained all the improvements suggested by them. I discovered some bugs, and they were cleaned immediately. So if you have any ideas how to improve the product write the authors of the program: support@faststone.org

serendipityguy reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 6, 2005

Does what the others do, but faster. Loads of Options and tools, the wallpapers fuction has more options like the Cover feature, the program loads fast. there are some great tools here, This is a definate ACD replacement. A Must download!

ArabianNight reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 6, 2005

wingo its because its a beta u goof.

wingo reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 6, 2005

for some reason, not known to me this version hangs while browsing through directories. should probably go back to using irfanview again.

crowbar82 reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 6, 2005

Agree with "ArtoD2"!

bobad reviewed v2.20 Beta on Aug 6, 2005

Excellent! The crop board is just perfect. Best cropping tool in the business. Only thing that could go wrong with FSIV is for the author to add unnecessary bloat. An image viewer does not need to play movies and sound, just view pictures! Removing built-in skins from the EXE should make it launch a bit faster, but there's not much else to ask for.

ArtoD2 reviewed v2.19 Beta on Aug 5, 2005

Allmost perfect. All I would like to see is different icons for different media / image -types in explorer (not the same eye for all) and most importantly, explorer shell extension for "BROWSE WITH FASTSTONE"

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.19 Beta on Aug 3, 2005

Still not complaints..

robertguda reviewed v2.19 Beta on Aug 3, 2005

Excellent software ! does what it says and for that should you want other specific tasks I agree with yokozuna, get another specific tool. thanks for the nice links yokozuna.

yokozuna reviewed v2.19 Beta on Aug 3, 2005

hurzx, I definitely prefer an IMAGE viewer (do you get it? IMAGE VIEWER) which does what it promises and does it in a perfect way rather than something what does everything but so-so. I definitely prefer two tools, and I beg the author of FSIV NOT to include any movie viewing section. Better leave movies to some specialized tools like Crystal Player http://www.crystalplayer.com or Storm Codec (which includes a tweaked version of MPC, it can play literally every movie format): http://www.sbtop.com/UploadSoft/StormCodec5.07.exe The author of FSIV seems to share my point of view, he created a separate tool for viewing movies: http://faststone.org/FSPlayerDetail.htm

Ronny50 reviewed v2.19 Beta on Aug 3, 2005

khe, awesome, must have!
It's a pity, that only home using for free :(

mnadi reviewed v2.19 Beta on Aug 3, 2005

An excellent utility with many advanced features that were only available in commercial packages like AcDsee, it deals with RAW camera files, converts between most graphics formats, supports lossless rotation, batch file renames, window or area capture to file and clipboard, redeye removaal, and many more. (5 Stars from me)

hurzx reviewed v2.18 Beta on Aug 2, 2005

I tried Irfan, XnView and FS. I agree that FS skin is the best. Very nice and easy. But that's it. I need to review video as well. If I use FS I will need Irfan or Xnview any way. So what the point in having 2 image viewers ? With the other 2 I do everything, which is simpler no ?

jason_dal reviewed v2.18 Beta on Jul 31, 2005

I have used ACDSee for a long time, and then switched to Irfan View. None of them could compare to FastStone. It is the best image browsing and managing program ever! Just try it. I especially likes its full screen mode and that magnifying glass. It is so intuitive. Anyway, FS is the best.

benZin reviewed v2.18 Beta on Jul 28, 2005

simply EXECELLENT!

yokozuna reviewed v2.18 Beta on Jul 28, 2005

Nothing comes close. Moreover, the program is developed very quickly. I want to thank the author that it is not more and more bloated (like most programs) but more and more functional and convenient.

robertguda reviewed v2.18 Beta on Jul 28, 2005

absolutely awesome...and it keeps getting better...its right to the point, very handy organized and above all...it is truly free...amazing things still happen in computerland !!!

tipsyboy reviewed v2.18 Beta on Jul 27, 2005

ACDSee had to leave my machine, too. I hope it'll stick with the free warez.....
Great software!

ArabianNight reviewed v2.17 Beta (Updated) on Jul 26, 2005

Ive already reviwed it but i just wanna say i love the new Sepia effect added!

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.17 Beta (Updated) on Jul 26, 2005

Loving it as always.. If it keeps up it's current course, I'll never switch.. I would purchase this program with no issues.. provided it was out of beta :-)

brotherS reviewed v2.17 Beta (Updated) on Jul 26, 2005

Wow, it's great and just got even better!

Shatylle reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 26, 2005

Best Image Viewer I have found uninstalling my ACDSee 7 today.

zee7 reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 24, 2005

Hands down, this is one of the best free apps available. I've tried many, many image organizing programs ---Picasa, Irfanview, Ulead, Adobe Album, and even Adobe Bridge--- but FastStone Image Viewer trounces them all except in one minor area (keyword searching) and one major area (color management).

Why is FastStone so superior?

1. It's amazingly intuitive; just install, open, and away you go. Everything makes sense! It's so well-laid out and easy to use, you'll be up and running in seconds. No lie. The first time I used it, I went for more than three weeks before I ever needed to open the help file.

2. It's FAST. Just as the name promises, this program opens and runs at top speed.

3. Rock solid and very stable (even though it's still in beta). I've only had one crash in over 7 months of using FastStone; that's damn good for a beta. I own Adobe Creative Suite 2 which includes Adobe Bridge, but I use FastStone as my default image organizer because Bridge, for all of it's claimed features, is an annoyingly slow, resource hogging, extremely buggy program. I won't waste space detailing all of Bridge's many faults, but have a look at the Adobe User forums if you want to read for yourself:

http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html

4. Small footprint/Doesn't hog resources. I leave FastStone open while I'm tweaking 100MB images in Photoshop, running heavy duty actions and plugins, reading manuals in Foxit pdf reader, and listening to foobar-- no problems. It uses very little system resources even when I'm dragging and dropping between multiple folders and performing batch conversions (with all of the abovementioned programs open).

5. Able to read certain Camera RAW formats. I have Canon cameras. Lucky for me, FastStone reads Canon Camera RAW files. This is an extreme time saver in my workflow. I use FastStone to quickly browse through my RAW files and pick the best shots from groups of two to four hundred. I still prefer to do my post processing in Photoshop CS2, but FastStone has a quite decent toolset for performing basic to intermediate image edits for those times when you're in a hurry. Also reads JPEG2000 and .pdfs. Impressive.

6. The FastStone team is incredibly responsive to user input and suggestions. There've been times when I've started a list of suggestions to email them about only to find, a few weeks later, that the suggestions on my list have already been implemented! The improvements are crazy-- sometimes I can't keep up with the updates (seems like there's one every 3 to 6 weeks). Everytime I check the homepage, I'm excited to see what new features and improvements have been made to the latest build.

7. Beautiful skins. I'm one of those people who prefers small, fast, and efficient programs over those that look nice but are slow and bloated from GUI-itis. Nevertheless, if a program is small, fast, efficient AND pretty to look at, I'm not one to complain. FastStone is just such a program. The WinAqua theme is particularly nice.

8. You can make slideshows with tons of transition effects and even add music from your MP3 collection. This isn't my thing, I mainly use it for image organizing, but it's nice to have if I ever have the need.

9. The fullscreen mode with the autohide menus is peerless. No other program that I've used even comes close.

10. It free! What are you waiting for? Download it now and tell all your friends. FastStone Image Viewer is one of my all-time favorite programs. I hope everyone who loves it as much as I do gives the developer(s) a small donation so we can keep it free.

pyridox reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 23, 2005

Been using this for a while, and I really like it. I have previously used Irfanview for a very long time, but this has some more features and is also free.

guevara reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 20, 2005

getting better and better
EXELENT

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 20, 2005

At the rate it's going, it could be the best viewer/editor out there..

I personally love it and would recommend it to anyone..

I'd give it a 10 if that were possible!

brotherS reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 20, 2005

Some minor bugs, but overall it's a great program!

anomoly reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 20, 2005

Free AND is usb flash drive compatible by copying folder (except for the uninstaller file)to your drive

danilloOc reviewed v2.17 Beta on Jul 20, 2005

Tis is a great software, the only thing that keep me away is a option to disable the built skins.

The developer could add this optin cause many users (like) use Windowblinds StyleXP or VisualStyles to skin WindowsXP.

hariskar reviewed v2.16 Beta (Updated) on Jul 16, 2005

Simply the best viewer! And it is free...

kovenant reviewed v2.16 Beta (Updated) on Jul 13, 2005

FastStone Image Viewer willing to be the leader in image viewers - simply the best freeware (and not only)viewer around

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.16 Beta (Updated) on Jul 13, 2005

I can't say enough nice things about this product.. it just keeps getting better and better..

Cionno reviewed v2.16 Beta (Updated) on Jul 13, 2005

GOOD GOOD GOOD
Awesome program has everything and it is free !!

Only one note.. it lacks a keep aspect ratio option in print panel when using manual settings
but the programmer assured me it will be added

bobad reviewed v2.16 Beta on Jul 10, 2005

Right now, I think FSIV is the best "pure image viewer" out there, free or not. (I smell a big dollar buyout coming!) It has no silly multimedia baggage like other viewers. The GUI is sweet, and the pop-out menus are a nifty and useful feature. Setup is well done, and the configuration is richly featured yet simple. If you have a digital camera or lots of kids and vacation pictures, you've got to get this one! I hope the author doesn't make any major changes. Just work to make it faster and more compact. I smell a big dollar buyout coming, so get it while it's still the best and free.

benZin reviewed v2.16 Beta on Jul 10, 2005

EXCELLENT! mouarf

a6 reviewed v2.16 Beta on Jul 10, 2005

yes, great program. but it has still some bugs. after some time (3rd or 4th time opening the program) the thumbnails are no longer shown! and i saw it closing without any reason or without telling me any. but it's still a very good program and the best (free!) alternative to acdsee.

brotherS reviewed v2.16 Beta on Jul 9, 2005

yokozuna: Thanks for the hint!
This really is an awesome program!

yokozuna reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 9, 2005

I love this program. What is interesting but not widely known it pefectly works with USB flash memory drives. Just copy the catalog from your HDD (and you delete uninst.exe to save some space) to your flash drive and voila!

benZin reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 9, 2005

EXCELLENT! Simply the best images browser! ACDSee is Dead!
Remember, it's free mouarf!

zridling reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 8, 2005

There are so many features in this app now that I wish the author would abandon the single-key keyboard shortcuts. There are lots of options and features that don't have keys for them.

horsecharles reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 8, 2005

Warning:

System File Protection alerted that this last update overwrote ddhelp & ddraw w/ older versions--

though i suspect it only replaced them w/ identical versions that only had a different 'modified date', since i had just updated DirectX to the latest monthly SDK...
that Dx9 gave me a bia*** of a time when running SFC right afterwards: file dates were changed for a slew of its files, while size & version #'s remained identical....

All in all, great program...

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 8, 2005

Go to their website and they have posted 2.15 Final. :-)

darthbeads reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 8, 2005

I continue to be astonished with each release how great this program is, and how much better it continues to get.

brotherS reviewed v2.15 Beta 2 on Jul 8, 2005

A really great program, maybe needs a little speed-up, but I love the easy image editing! Great!

bellotte reviewed v2.15 Beta on Jul 7, 2005

One of the best, and free

ecjs reviewed v2.15 Beta on Jul 7, 2005

I like it.

mike_loldrup reviewed v2.15 Beta on Jul 6, 2005

Exelent !!!

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.15 Beta on Jul 6, 2005

While I agree with the reviewer (below) regarding speed, I feel this program makes up for it with all of its many features. It is not only a viewer, but has editing capabilities as well. I can't say enough things about this program. And best of all: It's FREE!

guti reviewed v2.15 Beta on Jul 6, 2005

Very useful, and fast, but XnView is even faster, and supports more image formats.

hmueller reviewed v2.12 on Jun 29, 2005

FastStone is pretty clean, fast, and good.

@benZin: Downrating other graphic programs than FastStone viewer without even looking closely at them isn't a good idea.

benZin reviewed v2.12 on Jun 26, 2005

The Best images browsers!! Easy to use, fast, powerfull and it's interface is beautifull, you can appliying skins if you wants... FastStone would deserve to be more known. Vive FastStone.

ArabianNight reviewed v2.12 on Jun 13, 2005

Really nice program.

emredondo reviewed v2.12 on Jun 13, 2005

Excellent!

ArKay74 reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 8, 2005

Did the PNG code get even slower or is it just me? Hmm.. Still no match for Irfanview.

yokozuna reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 7, 2005

One of the most intuitive programs I know. I have some friends who even do not speak English but they use FSIV and experience no major problems with the program! My gradation: good, better, FastStone Image Viewer ;-)

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 6, 2005

I am still very impressed with this program. Many of the new features are useful, but it's nice to see all of the bug fixes, though I have yet to have seen a bug... :-) Great program!

jobryan26 reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 6, 2005

I have about 6 or 7 different image browsers installed on my pc and I must say that I'm really coming around to loving this software. The approach of being able to use nearly if not all functions in full screen is what really attracts me to this program. It loads really quick which is another 5 star rating from me.

guevara reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 6, 2005

EXELENT- getting better and better

brotherS reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 6, 2005

Impressive! I waited for 3 years to replace my image viewer, the time for change has come!

darthbeads reviewed v2.12 Beta on Jun 6, 2005

Good lord I love this little piece of code!

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.11 Beta on May 31, 2005

I can't get it.. the site is dead (too much bandwidth). Have to wait until 12:00 AM PST to dload it.. :-/

I can comment on 2.1 though. I have not had a problem with it yet. I have seen it is occasionally slow loading a pic, but that might be due to too many things open in the background (XP).

zridling reviewed v2.11 Beta on May 31, 2005

Rendering speed has improved dramatically over the past two updates.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.1 Beta on May 27, 2005

Best image viewer I've ever used. I'll never go back. If they charge for this in the future (and don't add useless features like movie/mp3 support), then I'll be the first one in line to buy it!

I'd easily rate it a 10 if that was possible..

Eldar reviewed v2.1 Beta on May 27, 2005

Downloaded it yesterday and played with it.
Great app & nice features.
Keep up the good work. :-)

patel reviewed v2.1 Beta on May 26, 2005

Awesome.. Fast, customizable
Excellent Features

darthbeads reviewed v2.1 Beta on May 25, 2005

So awesome it hurts. I, too, desperately want native Windows environment support (unskinned), but I can live with it.

Frankly, this kicks the heck out of what ACDsee has become. Does more than any image "viewer" needs to do, without feeling like it is trying to replace PhotoShop.

uberfly reviewed v2.1 Beta on May 25, 2005

Super nice. Wish I could just use native windows forms instead of the skin-only windows tho. Amazing free viewer. Still, ACDsee, if you're willing to pay, is miles ahead.

capnqwest reviewed v2.0.8 Beta on May 12, 2005

Bye Bye ACDsee!

emredondo reviewed v2.0.8 Beta on May 12, 2005

Great job!

DarkHound reviewed v2.0.8 Beta on May 11, 2005

I love this program, it's replaced ACDSEE for me. My only wish is that it could be more lightweight..

I still rate it a 5. Wonderful viewer and you can't beat the price (FREE)!

dirtyangel reviewed v2.0.7 Beta on May 5, 2005

This is the best image viewer I've tried, and I've tried quite a few.. I just hope it sticks to being a n image viewer, and not a "everything and media" player.. Note to devs: Keep it a image viewer!

Mediamonk reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on May 1, 2005

Works fine ,fast ,but it has only 1 option that i miss, Refreshing when you ad a picture or download one.. you still have to click on the refresh button everytime. But it's a great program ,i'm only thinking.. wow another acdsee clone ? because it has thesame function and layout .. i hope that option will be in the next updates.

raghav reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

Wish it could be a more faster like Irfan viewer

some guy reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

great prgram give it a 5 would give it a 6 if it supported thumbnail conversion for webpage like Irfanview ...will still use my fav irfanview, for photo viewing.

zridling reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

Why is everyone compelled to trash ACDSee as a qualification to review FastStone Image Viewer? Except for a few bugs and that it renders larger files slowly, it's fine on its own. ACDSee 7.x is the exact opposite of ACDSee 6.x, and now it's super fast again. As long as the developer stays on top of FastStone Image Viewer, continuing its development, it, you'll come to love it for what it is, not just for what it's not.

rotjong reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

There are a few minor issues I have with the program but it gets the job done and it offers quite a few nice features. Best of all... it's free for non-commercial use! I just wish the skinning wasn't part of the program. Otherwise, it's great.

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

I've been using this product for a while and while it is slow (hence the 4 instead of 5), I feel it is going where ACDSee should have gone. I use picture viewers to view pictures.. not movies, mp3's and everything else on my machine..

I'm extremely impressed with what I'm seeing so far and can't wait to see what the creator does next.

yokozuna reviewed v2.0.6 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

It supports the RAW files of my Canon camera! Sweeeeeeeet!

tewa reviewed v2.0.5 Beta on Apr 22, 2005

Very good viewer. However, the ability to view compressed files (zip, rar, etc) is still missing.

M0f0 reviewed v2.0.5 Beta on Apr 22, 2005

I used ACDSee before it became bloatware. This is just what was needed, a simple picture-viewer, nothing more, nothing less.

Electrick Gypsy reviewed v2.0.5 Beta on Apr 21, 2005

Still using ACDSee v3.1 Build 921 here . . but I'm willing to give this prog a try and see what it's like. Screenshot looks like an updated ACDSee anyway.

ArKay74 reviewed v2.0.5 Beta on Apr 21, 2005

Good browser if you don't have to deal with big pictures. It is VERY, VERY slow compared to IrfanView on initial browsing of a folder containing >=6Megapixel PNG files (no thumbnail cache required in Irfanview). There is still room for improvement I hope. :) As of now it is not of much use for me, but it is definately a program worth checking out due to its rich feature set.

sniggle reviewed v2.0.3 Beta on Apr 18, 2005

Very good app! I was a long time user of ACDSee before this, but considering I didn't really use a lot of the features that ACDSee offered, this was a perfect alternative. The interactivity when viewing pictures in full-screen is amazing, and exactly what I was looking for in an image viewer.

kanenas reviewed v2.0.3 Beta on Apr 18, 2005

excellent software just on bug on some
transpart gifs the background is black and thus I can not see anyhting if I change to the browser mode everything is ok therefore 4!!!

aizo reviewed v2.0.2 Beta on Apr 18, 2005

It's nice image viwer & editer.

yokozuna reviewed v2.0.2 Beta on Apr 15, 2005

The link leads to a corrupted file. The correct one is here: http://fsviewer.tonytse.net/Beta/FSViewerSetup.exe

JeRrYFaR reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 12, 2005

I agree.. this is a nice little proggie to have around..

That's one of the reasons I stopped using ACDSee, was because I wanted a picture viewer.. not a viewer that did everything under the sun..

yokozuna reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 12, 2005

A bit OT. Please inform the author of FSIV about your suggestions and found bugs. The author is very responsive - I informed him about two bugs, and the issues were corrected in next beta. Some guys from dpreview.com wanted the ability of comparing images side by side and now they can enjoy the feature. Just write e-mails to the author (maybe together with the Betanews link). I hope that your wishes will be not contradictory one to another ;-)

some guy reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 11, 2005

ok I used Irfanview for many years, options speed was great.Very small foot print. when I compare it to this its a cloose match but I still like IV better for a few reasons, IV lets you take pictures and create thumbnail for web publish. speed of IV is still faster. The interface aint pretty like this one. But thats not what counts. I rate the secound to IV still very nice software. If it did thumbnail conversion to post to the web save htm file Id switch.

danilloOc reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 11, 2005

The new features are really awesome and it's running really fast on my PS.
I still miss the audio and video support cause why should i use many programs to ready image, audio and video if i can see all in a single program (like XnView), please give this features and a way to disable the built skins.
Congratulations for the excellent software.

zridling reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 11, 2005

Freeware developers tend to work on their own schedule since there's little or no profit, and thus bugs go ignored for version after version. Although there are still a number of small bugs in FSIV that need to be addressed, e.g., you can't wrap scrolls through photos using your Left-Right arrow keys, and just annoyances like there's still no ALT-key menu support, and why is the Windows Classic skin so ugly. But for the basics, this is quite fine (for freeware).

bobad reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 11, 2005

Excellent! We do not need to cheese up this fine program by making it support movies and sounds. When a program tries to do too much it usually does nothing well. Fastone Viewer views images perfectly well, and that's all it should do. If you want a good clean movie player, try MPC. If you want a good clean MP3 player, try Billy.

spiked reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 11, 2005

This is absolutely incredible. A tiny bit larger than IrfanView, but still MUCH smaller than ACDSee and most others. Also, quite snappy in performance.

The UI is both attractive and usable. It prompts you with concise first-time instructions to help you discover features like mouse gestures, then it shuts up and gets out of your way.

Rather than building every feature in the world into a single program, FastStone has a full lineup of programs to cover things like media player, batch convert/resize, etc. Click the Homepage link to get the others (all free for personal use).

File associations are TOTALLY under your control (meaning that it doesn't even try to suggest taking over ANY extension by default; you cannot "accidentally" allow it to hijack an extension, just by clicking OK too fast).

I've tried IrfanView, IView, SlickView, SlowView, Picasa, PicWalker, XnView, FreshView, Snoopy, Futuris Imager, Coffee View, Firegraphic, etc. and none have been good enough overall to get me away from ACDSee. I've only been using FastStone for a few minutes but it looks like it may be the first one to have a shot.

darthbeads reviewed v2.0 Beta on Apr 11, 2005

I agree that disabling the skins is the only thing lacking from this. Otherwise a fantastic image viewer.

danilloOc reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 28, 2005

Excellent software, i only miss 2 things:

1 - Support for video and audio formats

2 - A way to disable the skins (they are great but don't fit if the user use Windowblinds or any other visual style software)

yokozuna reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 19, 2005

There is a new version of the viewer.

Updates in version 1.9 (Mar 18,2005):
- Support slideshow background music, transitional effects selection;
- Support batch image printing;
- Add an option called "Folders in Browser" in the settings to hide folders in thumbnail browser;
- Update the Setting of Wallpapers;
- Fix bugs.

Actually, I am waiting for one_click_fix_photos only. It will save the time of my friends who are not experienced and do not know how to correct pictures in a manual way.

PS v.2.0 is already out. I wrote a message to BetaNews some days ago that the service should update some data more often. Wake up!

New Features in Version 2.0 (April 8, 2005):
- Paper ratio crop added to Crop board (hotkey changed to X);
- Side by side image comparison added;
- Slideshow with 150+ transitional effects enhanced

robmanic44 reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 5, 2005

Very good, but Irfanview is still the best and it is still freeware.

Obren reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 2, 2005

Great viewer, not overbloated but stable and versatile. Loading speed for large pictures could be improved, though. For normaln pictures this is unnoticable, but loading of some very large scanned pictures takes up to 2-3 seconds on mu P4 3.0GHz, while Windows Picture and Fax viewer displays such pictures immediately. I think that FastStone generates prezoomed picture in memory in advance, and that this operation eats that much CPU time. Anyway, I give it 5 stars rating.

BTW, this is final version 1.8, not beta.

Arnvid reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 1, 2005

For FS Image Viewer being a winner - it already is so, for being a freeware tomorrow - for the future of FS I do hope so. Many tried to turn brilliant freeware into shareware based on some reviewers and users having their kick out of a freeware program being this good. Once a shareware - life start to change - and its far less than 10% of this upper level of freeware software who will survive.
My advise would be to keep FS Image viewer as a freeware-showcase to what FS is cabable to do - and add new and different shareware goodie here.

Athena reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 1, 2005

I agree the fullscreen mode is really nice.
everything you need from a viewer, batch rename, convert, skinnable etc etc...
And it's a freeware. what to say more
excellent !!!

robertguda reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 1, 2005

blazingly fast display and a very nice and innovating feature: when double clicking a picture to view full screen mode moving the mouse to the border of the screen popsup different sub menu's. of course it isnt photoshop, but for what it offers it is outstanding. being this good, I wonder about its free status as to how long that will stand. bound to be a winner this one !!!

brucetp reviewed v1.8 Beta on Mar 1, 2005

Very impressive! I really like the slide out windows when viewing in fullscreen. Very nice work!

yokozuna reviewed v1.8 Beta 01.16 on Feb 19, 2005

zridling, you are very right, actually I would like to write a bit more about it. FSIV is blazingly fast, the only faster viewer I know is CompuPic Pro (it seems to be not developed anymore (???), shareware), so only PicaJet (shareware/freeware) can compete with FSIV in terms of speed now. FSIV beats its competitors in the quality of various transformations. I take pictures often (with my Canon EOS 10D) and I have to tell the algorithms used in the program can compete, to some extend, with Photoshop (I use both programs). It is very uncommon, usually viewers tend to add their own distortions to the picture (grain, blur, noise, etc.). It is not so visible when someone uses a 3 Mpix camera with a cheapo lens, but it is VERY visible if you use something more advanced. Of course, FSIV cannot compete with Photoshop with its flexibility and the richness of features (it is intended to be only a viewer...), but it is perfect for minor corrections.

A bit OT, I can add FSIV to the category of programs which I call "the most underestimated or unknown programs in the world". I wonder how come that, let say, such great applications as FSIV, Becky! Internet Mail, XanaNews, or EssentialPIM are almost completely unknown, however, much worse programs are incredibly popular. Strange.

zridling reviewed v1.8 Beta 01.16 on Feb 18, 2005

FastStone Image Viewer beats Picasa at its own game, does more, is WAY faster, provides unique single-key keyboard shortcuts (only VuePrint does this as much as FastStone Image Viewer), and has a better interface. Oh, and it's JUST AS FREE as Picasa. Fantastic.

guevara reviewed v1.8 Beta 01.16 on Jan 25, 2005

EXELENT and free.
Get this right now

allsiante reviewed v1.8 Beta 01.16 on Jan 24, 2005

I give it a 4, but it is in no ways better than Picasa2.

Obren reviewed v1.8 Beta 01.16 on Jan 24, 2005

Excellent and incredibly intuitive image viewer. I'm using in since version 1.6 (replaced overbloated and unstable ACDSee 7).

Common operations are performed by docking mouse cursor to different screen margins so it is possible to navigate thru pictures or perform various picture operations very fast.

The only thing I lack is the possibility to replace ugly default icon (flower) with something more convinient, but it is really a minor issue.