Looking for a simple image viewer - and it doesn't appear to be Photos...

Laptop, Windows 11 Pro…

I have a folder of jpg images. I want to see them FIT in the window, one at a time, with some way to move back and forth. So when I CLICK on one of the thumbnails in the folder, I’d like it to display that image, by itself, filling the window (retaining the aspect ratio), then be able to easily move through the images…

I didn’t use Photos on Windows 10 because it was pretty ghastly. I enabled the old Windows Photo Viewer and used that.

Unfortunately, on Windows 11, Microsoft appears to have found a way to finish it off – EVERY image, perfectly VALID jpg, I attempt to display comes back with the error:
“Windows Photo Viewer can’t open this picture because the file appears to be damaged, corrupted, or is too large. “

Needless to say, the images are NONE of those.

Everything I found about fixing the error was ancient, and nothing even remotely applied to this error.


I looked up Photos on Windows 11, and the pictures I saw look NOTHING like the thing I get on my screen. This thing is white (which is OK), with a picture on it, and a strip across the top with icons for doing things I don’t care about. But NO filmstrip at the bottom (which the information I saw SAID was there), and NO WAY I can find to move through the REST of the images in the folder…

So, is Photos just a complete mess or is it just a complete mess on THIS computer?

IS there a simple, idiot-proof way to FIX Windows Photo Viewer?

Is there a way to have Photos act like a normal viewer – move image to image, have a clean, unobstructed image view, things like that?

Is there a GOOD alternative? I’ve looked at Faststone and Irfanview, but they’re not a whole lot better.

Ideas?

@GracieAllen

I gave up on all other viewers, long ago. 18 or so years ago I switched to XnView, and never looked back.



Scroll down and get the "Minimal" version.

These are the main settings I use...




This is the main window. You can set the thumbnails to whatever size you want.





Double click any image to open. Then you can use the back/forward arrows to "move" through your pics.

Here are two simple and light image viewers that I recently tested.

I'm using Windows Photo Viewer on my 3-month-old Notebook running Win11 Pro in addition to my Win10 computers.

I also didn't really like Photos (and had some odd lockups and process CPU hangs with it). For now I'm using the portable version of Honeyview, but I don't know if it will work exactly in the way you want. You can switch between fullscreen and windowed view, original photo size and fit-to-window, etc. It's pretty configurable, but it's not as simple to use as the old Windows Picture Viewer. Links & info below.

GracieAllen said:

I didn’t use Photos on Windows 10 because it was pretty ghastly. I enabled the old Windows Photo Viewer and used that.

Unfortunately, on Windows 11, Microsoft appears to have found a way to finish it off – EVERY image, perfectly VALID jpg, I attempt to display comes back with the error:
“Windows Photo Viewer can’t open this picture because the file appears to be damaged, corrupted, or is too large. “

Click to expand...

No, MS haven't 'finished it off', it's just your Windows Photo Viewer that's broken. Mine can open some very large jpegs, my largest .jpg being 30,000 x 17,078.



Yes, Photos is a terrible viewer. As others have offered alternatives I'll add mine. My other photo viewer is Irfanview.

For a light solution, I too like Honeyview, but for my regular usage, I use Fastone Image Viewer. It is very much like XNView, but it suits me better. I think the only options I changed were to open the image in a full window and I told it not to display the filename on the image (it shows on the frame anyway). It has some good basic editing, but the Crop function works better then any free editor I tried.

+1 for ImageGlass,
and, Windows Photo Viewer is still fine.

Irfanview isn't bad.

Simple? One of the reasons I always loved Picasa...
... A simple front end overlay viewer..., PERIOD!

Wynona said:

Irfanview isn't bad.

Click to expand...

Irfanview is VERY good.

@Bree

Thanks for the ideas. I'll grab a couple and put them on to see how easy they are to use...

As for Windows Photo Viewer - it's DEFINITELY not working on this Windows 11. I can't open a jpeg of ANY size. I tried a couple that were 250x250 and it complains about the same thing.

This is a brand new Windows 11 upgrade on a working Windows 10 Pro laptop. I've got no idea why it doesn't work, but it doesn't. And it's not worth chasing. I'll try the recommended ones and come up with a good option.

Thanks again.

Irfanview is a very detailed viewer and manipulator. One great thing I like about the viewing capabilities is that you can step through all files in a folder by pressing the space bar to go forward, and the back button to go back. And when you have a picture open you can toggle full screen and regular size by toggling the Enter key.

Irfanview you can use the scroll wheel to go forward and back once you have an image in a directory open, no need to click any buttons

A Guy

GracieAllen said:

I’ve looked at Faststone and Irfanview, but they’re not a whole lot better.

Click to expand...

I will disagree with that one. Between IrfanView and FastStone, I found FastStone to have a better UI. I haven't tried ImageGlass or HoneyView, so can't comment on those. What I don't like about IrfanView is how it keeps resizing the picture Window for each image. There should be a setting to fix the size, but I didn't find it.

Bree said:

it's just your Windows Photo Viewer that's broken.

Click to expand...

Windows Photo Viewer is broken for many users. In my case, I get the insufficient memory error for some of the pictures. Didn't find a simple way to fix the error permanently. So just let go of it and using FastStone now.

starchase said:

Irfanview is a very detailed viewer and manipulator. One great thing I like about the viewing capabilities is that you can step through all files in a folder by pressing the space bar to go forward, and the back button to go back. And when you have a picture open you can toggle full screen and regular size by toggling the Enter key.

Click to expand...

A Guy said:

Irfanview you can use the scroll wheel to go forward and back once you have an image in a directory open, no need to click any buttons

A Guy

Click to expand...

In XnView you can do all that also. In fact you can set the keyboard and mouse, to do whatever you want.

After all the recommendations, I went back and looked at Irfanview and Faststone. I like Irfanview for some things, but once I decided to really dig into Faststone, and eventually got almost all the things I want to work working...

The ONLY problem I still have with Faststone is on Windows 11 - in the folder pane, the text is a very pale grey that's almost unreadable against the white background. On my Windows 10 system the text is black. I haven't been able to find a way to make the text black - I've asked in their forum.

I'm going to pull down and install some of the other suggested tools, but at least I now have Faststone configured so it'll do a decent job.

Thanks again!

GracieAllen said:

After all the recommendations, I went back and looked at Irfanview and Faststone. I like Irfanview for some things, but once I decided to really dig into Faststone, and eventually got almost all the things I want to work working...

The ONLY problem I still have with Faststone is on Windows 11 - in the folder pane, the text is a very pale grey that's almost unreadable against the white background. On my Windows 10 system the text is black. I haven't been able to find a way to make the text black - I've asked in their forum.

I'm going to pull down and install some of the other suggested tools, but at least I now have Faststone configured so it'll do a decent job.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

Try enabling (in Windows), "Smooth edges of screen fonts", if you haven't already.
All my text in Windows looked anorexic, until I did that.
Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings

All that stuff is turned on. It's not that it's anorexic, it's not black - it's light grey. I can't find anything in Faststone to change that color.