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Must-Have *Free* Software:
Photo Viewer-Editor-Organizer

This well established freeware program
is better than many apps you pay for

I have used the freeware photo viewer-editor-organizer IrfanView (pronounced "EarfanView") now for about 10 years -- but it has been around for 15 years. It is one of my most used programs. It is my default viewer for looking at jpg files as it loads quickly and closes quickly.

Don't let the fact that it is free scare you away. It has tons of features. And this program keeps getting better and keeps being upgraded -- it is now up to version 4.30. You can for example, view all the EXIF data for a photo or customize an ongoing readout of only essential EXIF data for each picture.

I also use it for batch renaming and batch processing of photos. It can rename, resize, change file formats, and also adjust contrast, saturation, gamma, etc. all in one bath operation, for example.

It comes with a basic editor which frankly is all you need for most of your photographic work such as cropping, contrast and lossless jpg rotation. I like to use it as an auxiliary editor with some of my other photo processing programs.

Saving modified photos with Irfanview is also a snap: You can choose to save to the same folder as the original photo or to a default folder of your choosing.

And it can read a wide variety of file formats as well as convert from one format to another. It works with virtually any version of Windows.

Here is the website address:
http://www.irfanview.com/

To download the program:
http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm

To download the plugins:
http://www.software.com/irfanview-plugin

If you want to get the most out of Irfanview, also download the plugin package.

HERE IS A DESCRIPTION OF IRFANVIEW TAKEN FROM IT'S WEBSITE:

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows 7. It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. IrfanView seeks to create unique, new and interesting features...

Some IrfanView features:
* Many supported file formats
* Multi language support
* Thumbnail/preview option
* Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
* Toolbar skins option
* Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
* Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
* Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
* Fast directory view (moving through directory)
* Batch conversion (with image processing)
* Multipage TIF editing
* File search
* Email option
* Multimedia player
* Print option
* Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
* Change color depth
* Scan (batch scan) support
* Cut/crop
* IPTC editing
* Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
* Screen Capturing
* Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
* Lossless JPG rotation
* Unicode support
* Many hotkeys
* Many command line options
* Many PlugIns

NOTE:See a list of my other articles here at PIXIQ. www.pixiq.com/contributors/rick-doble

For more about my approach to photography see my book: Experimental Digital Photography.

Join me on Facebook. Become a 'fan' of my Facebook page on Experimental Digital Photography. Click on the 'like' button at the top of the Facebook page.