Windows Photo Viewer

Last updated

Windows Photo Viewer
Developer(s) Microsoft
Operating system
Predecessor Imaging for Windows, Windows Photo Gallery
Successor Microsoft Photos
License Proprietary
Website windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/View-and-use-your-pictures-in-Windows-Photo-Viewer   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Windows Photo Viewer (formerly Windows Picture and Fax Viewer) [1] 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, [2] but was reinstated in Windows 7. [3] 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. [4]

Contents

Windows Photo Viewer can show individual pictures, display all pictures in a folder as a slide show, reorient them in 90° increments, print them either directly or via an online print service, send them in e-mail or burn them to a disc. [3] [5] [6] Windows Photo Viewer supports images in BMP, JPEG, JPEG XR (formerly HD Photo), PNG, ICO, GIF and TIFF file formats. [7]

Evolution

Compared to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, changes have been made to the graphical user interface in Windows Photo Viewer.[ citation needed ]

Whereas Windows Picture and Fax Viewer uses GDI+, [8] Windows Photo Viewer uses Windows Imaging Component (WIC) [9] and takes advantage of Windows Display Driver Model. [10]

Although GIF files are supported in Windows Photo Viewer, whereas Windows Picture and Fax Viewer displays animated GIFs, Windows Photo Viewer only displays the first frame. [11] Windows Picture and Fax Viewer was also capable of viewing multi-page TIFF files, (except those that employ JPEG compression) [12] as well as annotating the TIFF files. [13] [14] Windows Photo Viewer, on the other hand, has added support for JPEG XR file format [7] and ICC profiles. [15] [16]

Bugs

Some devices and Android phones are able to take photos and screenshots and have a custom ICC Profile being applied to said pictures, however Windows Photo Viewer will render an error when trying to display the picture with an "Windows Photo Viewer can't display this picture because there might not be enough memory available on your computer." exception when an unknown ICC Profile is detected. A patch is available on GitHub that fixes this behavior. [17]

Also regarding ICC profiles, when a custom Display ICC profile is applied after installing a Monitor driver, Windows Photo Viewer wrongly shifts the picture hue to a warm tint. The feature is intentional but greatly exaggerated. This is fixed by removing or replacing the Display ICC Profile. [18]

In Windows 10 and Windows 11

In support documentation, Microsoft states that Windows Photo Viewer is not part of Windows 10, and a user still has it only if they upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1. [19] However, it can be brought back in Windows 10 and Windows 11 with registry editing, by adding the appropriate entries ("capabilities") in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Photo Viewer\Capabilities\FileAssociations. It is also possible to restore the Preview option in the context menu. Windows Photo Viewer itself remains built-in, and is set as default for the Tag Image File Format files (.tif). [4] [20] [21]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PNG</span> Family of lossless compression file formats for image files

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".

Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition, image manipulation, desktop publishing, and page-layout applications. The format was created by the Aldus Corporation for use in desktop publishing. It published the latest version 6.0 in 1992, subsequently updated with an Adobe Systems copyright after the latter acquired Aldus in 1994. Several Aldus or Adobe technical notes have been published with minor extensions to the format, and several specifications have been based on TIFF 6.0, including TIFF/EP, TIFF/IT, TIFF-F and TIFF-FX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Preview (macOS)</span> Image and PDF viewer software by Apple

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Paint</span> Raster graphics editor

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Picasa</span> Image organizer and image viewer (2002–2016)

Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing website, originally created by a company named Lifescape in 2002. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the word casa and "pic" for pictures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Photo Editor</span>

Microsoft Photo Editor is a raster graphics editor component of Microsoft Office first included with Microsoft Office 97. It features editing tools to texturize, create negatives, adjust gamma, and add transparency to GIF images. It was replaced in Microsoft Office 2003 by Microsoft Office Picture Manager, although many Photo Editor features were not available in Picture Manager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imaging for Windows</span> Software product for scanning paper documents

Imaging for Windows from Global 360 is document imaging software. Earlier versions of Imaging for Windows were available for Windows 95-98/Me/NT/2000. Global360 Imaging for Windows is the upgrade to this Imaging software, which was discontinued as of Windows XP. Its image viewing, editing and scanning functions are superseded by Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and Microsoft Paint, both of which are based on GDI+ in Windows XP. However, the multi-page picture editing functions are gone with the Imaging software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft PhotoDraw</span> Vector/raster graphics editing software

Microsoft PhotoDraw was a vector graphics and raster image editing software developed by Microsoft. It was released in 1999 as part of the Microsoft Office 2000 family of products and was specifically designed for creating and editing graphics, illustrations, and photo compositions.

The Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is an ISO standard, originally created by Adobe Systems Inc., for the creation, processing and interchange of standardized and custom metadata for digital documents and data sets.

An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be compressed or uncompressed. If the data is compressed, it may be done so using lossy compression or lossless compression. For graphic design applications, vector formats are often used. Some image file formats support transparency.

A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed, and contain large amounts of potentially redundant data. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter, in a wide-gamut internal color space where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a viewable file format such as JPEG or PNG for storage, printing, or further manipulation. There are dozens of raw formats in use by different manufacturers of digital image capture equipment.

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.

As the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000, as well as the successor to Windows Me, Windows XP introduced many new features but it also removed some others.

Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are very numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. Windows Vista also removed some others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Photo Gallery</span> Discontinued image organizer, photo editor and photo sharing program

Windows Photo Gallery is a discontinued image organizer, photo editor and photo sharing program. It is a part of Microsoft's Windows Essentials software suite. The product has been unavailable for download since January 10, 2017, as the Windows Essentials line of products have been discontinued.

JPEG XR is an image compression standard for continuous tone photographic images, based on the HD Photo specifications that Microsoft originally developed and patented. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, and is the preferred image format for Ecma-388 Open XML Paper Specification documents.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FastPictureViewer</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebP</span> Image file format

WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency.

References

  1. ↑ "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer overview". Windows XP Professional Product Documentation. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 2 December 2010. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  2. ↑ "What happened to the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer?". Windows Vista Help & How-to. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 22 November 2010.
  3. 1 2 "View and use your pictures in Windows Photo Viewer". Windows 7 Help & How-to. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 5 January 2008. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  4. 1 2 Tkachenko, Sergey (31 July 2015). "How get Windows Photo Viewer working in Windows 10". winaero.com. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  5. ↑ "Windows Photo Viewer slideshow turns secondary monitor black". Microsoft TechNet Forums. Microsoft Corporation. 5 February 2010. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  6. ↑ "How to Run the Windows Photo Viewer Slide Show on a Secondary Monitor". WindowsSevenForums Tutorials. Designer Media Ltd. 2 October 2010. Archived from the original on 18 January 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  7. 1 2 Understanding Picture File Types Archived 17 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ "Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-029 – Critical". docs.microsoft.com. Retrieved 8 May 2022.
  9. ↑ "Introduction (How to Write a WIC-Enabled Codec) (Windows)". Microsoft Developer Network . Microsoft Corporation. 22 November 2010. Archived from the original on 28 December 2010. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  10. ↑ "Windows Vista Display Driver Model". Microsoft Developer Network. Microsoft Corporation. July 2006. Archived from the original on 23 February 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  11. ↑ Zhu, Sean (1 June 2010). "Why does Windows Picture Viewer does not show animated GIFs?". TechNet forum. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 24 November 2010. Retrieved 24 November 2010. Q: I have noticed that in Windows 7, the Windows Picture viewer only displays the first frame of an animated GIF. Why is this? [~snip~] A: Hi, this is by design.
  12. ↑ You Cannot View TIFF Images Using Windows Picture and Fax Viewer Archived 4 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ↑ "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer Annotation overview". Windows XP Professional Product Documentation. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 4 November 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  14. ↑ "Annotation toolbar overview". Windows XP Professional Product Documentation. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 4 November 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
  15. ↑ "Delete Calibrated Display Profile to Increase Speed of Windows 7 Photo Viewer". My Digital Life. 24 January 2010. Archived from the original on 27 January 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  16. ↑ "Windows Vista Photo Gallery Yellow Tint Background Problem". My Digital Life. 11 July 2007. Archived from the original on 26 January 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  17. ↑ "Patch "Out of memory" exception when opening images containing an unknown color profile". GitHub.
  18. ↑ "Fix Windows Photo Viewer Yellow Tint Background". OptimWise.
  19. ↑ "Photo Viewer for Windows 10". Microsoft Support.
  20. ↑ Tkachenko, Sergey. "How to Enable Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 11". Winaero.
  21. ↑ "How to open .tif files without compromising on quality". Windows Report.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.