Portable Network Graphics is a raster-graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)—unofficially, the initials PNG stood for the recursive acronym "PNG's not GIF".
Preview is the built-in image viewer and PDF viewer of the macOS operating system. In addition to viewing and printing digital images and Portable Document Format (PDF) files, it can also edit these media types. It employs the Aqua graphical user interface, the Quartz graphics layer, and the ImageIO and Core Image frameworks.
Paint is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens, modifies and saves image files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. The program can be in color mode or two-color black-and-white, but there is no grayscale mode. For its simplicity and wide availability, it rapidly became one of the most used Windows applications, introducing many to painting on a computer for the first time.
IrfanView is an image viewer, editor, organiser and converter program for Microsoft Windows. It can also play video and audio files, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. IrfanView is free for non-commercial use; commercial use requires paid registration. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats. It was first released in 1996.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archivers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in the footnotes section, comparisons are based on the stable versions—without add-ons, extensions or external programs.
Windows Photo Viewer is an image viewer included with the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was first included with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 under its former name. It was temporarily replaced with Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista, but was reinstated in Windows 7. This program succeeds Imaging for Windows. In Windows 10, it is deprecated in favor of a Universal Windows Platform app called Photos, although it can be brought back with a registry tweak.
On Microsoft Windows operating systems, starting with the Internet Explorer 4 Active Desktop Update for Windows 95 to 98, a thumbnail cache is used to store thumbnail images for Windows Explorer's thumbnail view. This speeds up the display of images as these smaller images do not need to be recalculated every time the user views the folder.
FastStone Image Viewer is an image viewer and organizer for Microsoft Windows, provided free of charge for personal and educational use, as of version 7.0. The program also includes basic image editing tools.
A comic book archive or comic book reader file is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for comic books. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay sequential image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.
Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a COM-based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista (and later available in Windows XP Service Pack 3) for working with and processing digital images and image metadata.
The Hanlin is an e-Reader, an electronic book (e-book) reading device. The Hanlin v3 features a 6" (15 cm), 4-level grayscale electrophoretic display with a resolution of 600×800 pixels, while the v3+ features a 16-level grayscale display. The Hanlin v5 Mini, features a 5" (15 cm), 8-level grayscale electrophoretic display with a resolution of 600×800 pixels. The device runs a Linux-based OS.
FastPictureViewer is a freemium image viewer for Windows XP and later. Its aim is to facilitate quick review, rating and annotation of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow, with an emphasis on simplicity and speed. As an app with a freemium license, a basic version is available cost-free for personal, non-profit or educational uses, while a commercial license is required for the professional version with additional features. The basic version starts as a full version trial.
A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.
STDU Viewer is computer software, a compact viewer for many computer file formats: Portable Document Format (PDF), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), DjVu, comic book archive, FB2, ePUB, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Text Compression for Reader (TCR), Mobipocket (MOBI), AZW, multi-page TIFF, text file (TXT), PalmDoc (PDB), Windows Metafile (EMF), Windows Metafile (WMF), bitmap (BMP), Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), JPEG-JPG, Portable Network Graphics (PNG), Photoshop Document (PSD), PiCture eXchang (PCX-DCX). It works under Microsoft Windows, and is free for non-commercial use.
STDU Explorer is a file manager for previewing and managing PDF, DjVu, Comic Book Archive, XPS and image file formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PSD and WMF. It works under Microsoft Windows, and is free for non-commercial use.
Xena is open-source software for use in digital preservation. Xena is short for XML Electronic Normalising for Archives.
GonVisor is a freeware sequential image viewer utility for Microsoft Windows used mainly to view digital images in the style of a comic book, manga or magazine. It has some additional features to create and manage archives and also to enhance the images.
PMView is a raster graphics image viewer, converter, and organizer with basic image editing capabilities. It was originally developed for OS/2 but is also available for Microsoft Windows.
Photos is an image viewer and image organizer developed by Microsoft. It was first included in Windows 8 as a functional replacement for Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Photo Gallery.
