Editing Image viewer

{{Short description|Computer program}}
{{More citations needed|date=February 2024}}
[[File:GNOME Image Viewer 3.32 screenshot.png|thumb|[[Eye of GNOME]]|307x307px]]
An '''image viewer''' or '''image browser''' is a [[computer program]] that can display stored graphical [[image]]s; it can often handle various [[graphics file format]]s.<ref name="cengage"/> Such software usually renders the image according to properties of the display such as [[color depth]], [[display resolution]], and [[color profile]].

Although one may use a full-featured [[raster graphics editor]] (such as [[Adobe Photoshop|Photoshop]] or [[GIMP]]) as an image viewer, these have many editing functionalities which are not needed for just viewing images, and therefore usually start rather slowly. Also, most viewers have functionalities that editors usually lack, such as stepping through all the images in a directory (possibly as a slideshow).

Image viewers give maximal flexibility to the user by providing a direct view of the directory structure available on a hard disk.  Most image viewers do not provide any kind of automatic organization of pictures and therefore the burden remains on the user to create and maintain their folder structure (using tag- or folder-based methods). However, some image viewers also have features for organizing images, especially an image database, and hence can also be used as [[image organizer]].

Some image viewers, such as [[Windows Photo Viewer]] that come with Windows operating systems, change a [[JPEG]] image if it is rotated, resulting in loss of image quality; others offer [[lossless]] rotation.

==Features==
Typical features of image viewers are:
* basic viewing operations such as zooming and rotation
* fullscreen display
* [[slideshow]]
* thumbnail display
* printing
* screen capture
* photo editor (if installed)
* The ability to jump to a random file in the folder to facilitate searching.

Advanced features are:
* decode next image in advance and keep previous decoded image in memory for fast image changes
* display (and edit) [[metadata]] such as [[Extensible Metadata Platform|XMP]], [[IPTC Information Interchange Model]] and [[Exif]]
* batch conversion (image format, image dimensions, etc.) and renaming
* create [[contact sheet]]s
* create [[HTML]] thumbnail pages
* different transition effects for slideshows

==See also==
*[[Comparison of image viewers]]
*[[Comparison of CAD, CAM and CAE file viewers]]
*[[Desktop organizer]]
*[[Image organizer]]
*{{section link|Binary file|Viewing binary files}}
*[[Electronic document]]
*[[media player (application software)|Media player]]
*[[Text editor]]
*[[Web browser]]

==References==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name="cengage">{{cite book |last1=Shelly |first1=Gary B. |last2=Vermaat |first2=Misty E. |title=Discovering Computers 2011: Living in a Digital World, Complete |date=2011 |publisher=[[Cengage Learning]] |isbn=978-1-4390-7926-3}}</ref>
}}

{{Image viewers and organizers}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Image Viewer}}
[[Category:Graphics software]]
[[Category:Image viewers| ]]


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