Image Processing Software

    Reflet is rather small and compact utility. It serves for one purpose only: allows to generate an animation simulating ripple effect and a reflection of the image in the water, and makes it in a simple and elegant way. It can be useful for logo animating, to decorate Web pages or just for fun. Of course, it can be used for images of stretches of water but in essence you can use any image including portraits, momuments, etc.
    Downloading of the application is avaliable at Download link. (This is an English version of the program; there is also a French version at the French version link).
    The application is downloaded in the form of the .ZIP-archive file containing the application .EXE file proper, two sample images, a simple .htm help-file, and a license .txt file. No installation as such is required. The program is ready for execution immediately after downloading.
    The Main menu of the application contains only three options: File, Options and ?.
    The option File opens File Dialog and has also only three options: Open, Export and Exit. The option Open serves for image file opening; The program works with a number of image file formats including JPEG, GIF, Windows MetaFile, TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, Bitmap, Icon files, etc. Selecting and choosing an image file for opening is being done through the Windows browser. Right after the opening the image is already reflected. The option Export allows exporting the result image in another file. If you activate this option there opens a window in which you can select an animation format, the number of used colors, what to export (an image AND a reflection, or a reflection only). There is a warning in this window that for animating Web-pages only animated GIF-format is appropriate. The standard option Exit is for cancelling the program execution and quitting the application.
    The option Options allows starting the animation (simulating rippling effect) proper and setting its characteristics. The process of animation begins after choosing the option Enter. After that this option is checked. The second activating the option Enter stops the animation;the option becomes unchecked. With the option Speed you can change the speed of the animation; with the option Type of waves you can select short, medium or long simulated waves.
    The option ? opens a Help popup containing three options. The option Information (with the F1 hotkey) opens the simple .htm help-file containing some explanation of the parameters of images available for adjustment. The option Official Web site contains a link to the Web-site of the developer. And the option About Reflet calls the standard About window containing information about the developer (Antonio Da Cruz) and links to his Web-sites.
    Under the Main menu there is a taskbar of the application. It contains three buttons for Open, Export and Start Animation actions (there are on-line tips for the buttons), as well as spinners Images and Height(%), and an option group Perspective/Regular. The option group allows to change the type of the simulation varying its appearance (it defines the movement of the waves). The Image spinner defines how many images are used for the animation (by default 5 frames). And the Height(%) spinner defines the height of the reflection in percentage to the original image (by default 90%).

This is a full-featured 32-bit Windows graphics program for image creation, viewing and manipulation. You can download different versions - commercial or trial, or freeware; see what extras UP gives you compared to other paint programs, take a look at its cool plug-in effects, register the trial version and browse the tutorials.

UP supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, AVI (reading only), TGA, WMF/EMF, ICO (reading only), IFF/LBM and WAP BMP image formats and Twain compatible scanners. You can easily print your image, setting its size, position and orientation.

It has a flexible brush handling method which encourages creative drawing. It’s similar to what good old Deluxe Paint had, so if you’re familiar with DP, you will love Ultimate Paint. You can also retouch and enhance photos using a comprehensive set of built-in tools and plug-ins. Features include resizing, rotating, flood filling, text operations and a lot more. Comes with dozens (more than a hundred!) of cool plug-in filters, and Adobe plug-ins are also supported. All pictures are handled 24 bit.
The user interface is adjustable to the user’s experience level, thus both novice users and experts can use it conveniently.

The icons of drawing functions and the color selector can be found left to the main window. To the right there’s a fast palette for quick color storing and retrieval.
One of the unique features is that you can apply different skins to the program, even easily design your own.

There are several special tools that can only be found in high priced packages. One of them is an image optimizer. It helps you to find the best image settings for saving a particular image with the smallest possible size retaining best quality. You can compare results on-the-fly, zoom in/out particular areas to see the difference.

The navigation panel shows the image around the cursor at 100% magnification ratio which is handy if you’re working in a higher zoom and would still like to see the modifications at the original zoom factor. It also displays the entire image and the color parameters of the pixel currently under the cursor.

The Color Selection dialog is easy to use, allows both fast, intuitive and precise setting of a color. A color can be chosen by setting its RGB components (sliders) or by setting its Hue (color circle) and pointing on a color in the Saturation-Value space (color field). For HTML design the color is also represented in hexadecimal format.

The Image Browser dialog allows you to browse through the images on your hard disk. One of the unique features of Ultimate Paint is the ability to browse effects, too: you can see the thumbnails of the different filters and select the desired one.

Ultimate Paint has more than a hundred professional quality effects which is outstanding among image processing programs. Most of these plug-in effects have several adjustable parameters which gives lots of freedom to get exactly what you desire. See the preview of available effects. Most effects have instant preview (small window), and you can also preview the effect on the whole image. Each effect has a detailed help which describes its usage in detail. If you use the freeware version you must take into account that it has only 20 built-in image filters. Additionally, the freeware version doesn’t support Adobe Photoshop.

Align and resize your images interactively with one movement of the mouse or more accurately using numeric values. Add an optional title text or border around your image, and print the final design - all with the advanced print dialog of UP.

Downloading of the program is available at the Download Web-page of the developer. You can download a commercial, or trial, or freeware version of the program.
And here are Tutorials for the program.

Source: ultimatepaint.com

    This is an image editor which features an export optimizer, editable text, image slicing and image maps, selection tools, smart shapes, and image enhancement tools. This image editor is capable of working with image layers and image animations.
    The program is shipped in two versions: freeware (up to the version 6.0) and commercial (beginning from the version 8.0 and upwards). Downloading of the PhotoPlus 6.0 is available at the Download link.
    While installing the program you have two options: US Standard (Letter size paper) and UK and the rest of the world (A4 paper).
Here is the PhotoPlus web-site

    If you select the task of creating a new image, the program opens a small window requesting you to set dimensions of the image (length and width) in pixels, resolution of the picture in pixels per inch or in pixels per centimeter, as well as the type of background (white, background color, or transparent). You can set and clear the animation flag, too. After opening the image (the existing one or a blank) there appears the application toolbar in the right part of the Main window of the application.
    But even the freeware version of the program demands on-line registration. In the process of this on-line registration the installer informs you about the product identification number. You must complete the registration by typing the registration key which is supplied over the Internet. The developer of the program warns that by completing the on-line registration you give him permission to send to your e-mail box various materials about new releases, patches, etc. But you can unsubscribe later. After completion of the registration process the application is unlocked and ready for use.
    After starting the application the program brings out a window with starting options. The window has intuitively understable pictures and buttons for the following tasks: Open Saved Work, Create New Picture, Create New Animation, Import From TWAIN, View Samples, On-Line Resources. You can select and choose the needed task from this window or simply close it; if you close it without selecting the task, you can do it later in the Main Menu of the application.
    After opening the image (the existing one or a created blank) there appear three other windows in the right part of the Main window of the application. These are: the Tool Properties window, the Color window, and the Layer Manager window. The content of the Tool Properties window at every moment depends from the currently selected application tool. If the tool has no available options for setting at the Tool Properties window there appears the Message “No options available“.
    There is a toolbar on the left side of the Main application window. The toolbar contains buttons for editing tasks; some buttons may bring out small associated with combo-boxes toolbar palettes (for example, the button for selecting options). You can relocate the toolbar to the other place in the Main window.
    Under the Main menu of the application there is the taskbar of the program containing buttons for creating, opening, saving and closing image files, printing images, copying and pasting, as well as undoing and redoing changes. There is the button ? standing for Help.
    The Main Menu of the program contains eight options: File, Edit, Image, Layers, Select, View, Window and Help.
    The File option opens File Dialog. In the File Dialog popup there are options for file opening, saving and closing. There are some peculiarities. The options Save and Save As support saving only in the native PhotoPlus .spp-format. Saving the currently opened image in the original format is being done by using options Save Original and Save Original As. While opening images the program supports a number of image formats including Bitmap (*.bmp), Truevision Targa (*.tga), Windows MetaFile (*.wmf), PaintBrush (*.pcx), GIF (*.gif), JPEG (*.jpg), Portable Network Graphic (*.png) and more. Converting the format of the original image is being done by options Export… and Export Optimizer…. The latter option allows to set some options for the output image in a special optimizer window (for example, the quality of the JPEG image).
    You can import images from some outer source with the option Import.The option Print stands for printing images;it opens the print manager window. The options Preferences allows setting working preferences and options such as enabling/disabling Undo system, setting grid size, setting the directory for plugins and much more. The program supports a list of recently opened files.
    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog containing standard editing options such as Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo/Redo and Clear.
    With the option Layers you can handle layers in the picture; you can apply effects to them, arrange them, mask and unmask them. The option Properties opens the Layer Information window. You can also delete and merge layers.
    The option Select of the Main Menu deals with selection options. You can select, deselect and invert selections. There is a special sub-popup for modifying the current selection (for example, contracting or expanding).
    The option View manages zooming in and out of the image as well as visibility of various toolbar windows and palettes of the program. It also manages tool tabs within pageframes in the tool windows.
    The option Window stands for a usual window handling popup (cascading and tiling windows as well as choosing the window by a number and name).
    The option Help of the Main Menu brings out the Help popup containing the Help-system in the Microsoft Help Format as well as links for the PhotoPlus and Serif Web-sites. And there is a Registration Wizard… option in this popup which allows to go through the registration process if you didn’t do that while installing the program. If you select this option with the registration already complete there appears an information window saying the registration is already complete and showing phone numbers for online support in the US, UK and for the rest of the world. And finally there is a standard About option with the developer’s logo.
For better work with PhotoPlus you can download a Tutorial in a .pdf format from the developer’s web-site.

This is a rather small utility allowing you to handle your digital photos on your computer. Main features of the program:

    Although it’s fairly limited in features, PhotoFiltre offers a simple, but elegant user interface and a lot of one-click image adjustments, filters, and effects. There is a built in image explorer panel for visually navigating your file system, basic drawing, painting, retouching and selection tools, and batch processing capabilities.

    PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve.

    Downloading of the application is avaliable at the Download page on the developer’s site Photofiltre.free.fr (this hyperlink is for the english version of the site).

    Basically. there are four language versions of the utility for download including English and French. But at the download page there are a number of additional language packs for downloading including German (Deutsch), Russian as well as other languages.

    A strong side of the application is a lot of available predefined selections and photo masks donating for public use by devoted customers and available for download. Every PhotoFiltre customer can upload on the site his selections and masks.

    The Main menu of the application has ten options: File, Edit, Image, Selection, Adjust, Filter, View, Tools, Window and ?.
    Under the Main menu there are two taskbars of the program; there is a graphic toolbar at the right edge of the Main window, too.

    The option File opens a File Dialog popup. It has standard options for creating new image (New…) and opening an existing image (Open…); the option Recent files supports a list of recently opened files for re-opening; by the option Revert you can substitute the content of the current image with the last saved version of the image. There are standard options for saving images Save and Save as… as well as closing images Close and Close All. PhotoFiltre supports a number of standard graphic formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, RLE, Targa, TIFF.
    There are also options for printing the current image Print and acquiring an image from TWAIN-source (Import TWAIN). The option Image properties opens the window which displays information about the current image; The option Exit serves for cancelling program execution and application quitting.

    The option Edit unites editing options. There are standard editing options such as: Undo and Redo changes, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear, Paste as new image; there is a Paste special option allowing masking for pastes. There are options for clipping selections, rotating and flipping, as well as defining and handling patterns. With the option Purge you can clear the Clipboard and/or histories of editing process.

    The option Image handles the image as a whole. You can change color Mode of the image, Flip vertical and horizontal, Rotate and Skew…, change Image size… and Canvas size…, as well as Fit image… and Duplicate it. There are options for image cropping, too (Crop and Automatic crop). The option Text allows text insertion. There are options for setting transparency to the selected color.
    The option Selection handles selections in the image.
    The option Adjustment of the Main menu deals with adjustments of color balance, hue, shades, contrast and so on.
    The option Filters serves for applying filters to the image. With the Filters popup you can apply predefined filters as well as use custom filters developed by you or some other person (the option PhotoMasque).
    The option View of the Main menu allows zooming in and out, show grid and snap to grid and so on; it enables/disables Filter bar and Tools palette, and Show bounds and shadow.
    The option Tools allows to select a needed tool for work. The Tools popup has also Image manager allowing file copying, moving, renaming and deleting. The option Export as icon… allows saving the image as an icon-file. The option Preferences allows to set preferences to work with the application.
    The option Window contains standard window handling options.
The option ? stands for Help. The actual on-line help is called with the option Information. The ?-popup has also web-links to the official web-site of the program and the customers forum, as well as standard option About.

    This is a simple highly specialized image converter developed for one purpose only: converting images in EMF/WMF (Windows Metafile) format to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format. Actual converting of the image is being done using the PostScript driver installed on the user’s PC. Without the PostScript driver the converting of the image format by this application is impossible. The structure of the program is pretty simple.     The Main menu contains four options: File, Edit, Convert and Help. The Pop-up menu File has two options: Open (for selecting and opening EMF/WMF images for converting) and Save As (allowing to save selected pictures under another name). The pop-up menu Edit has standard options for working with a selection list (Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete) and the option Preferences. Actually, the options Cut and Delete perform the same task - they delete selected file from the list for conversion. The option Preferences serves for selecting the PostScript printer (which should be installed earlier, of course). You can also set the resolution of the output image with this option (taking into account capabilities of the installed PostScript driver). The option Convert serves to convert image format of the whole list of image files or the selection of files within that list. During the process of converting the PostScript driver is called; the converted image is shown in the left lower corner of the Preview window of the printer driver. Actually, the destination of the output of the converted image is saving to EPS file, not the printing on paper. The option Help of the Main menu actually contains no help at all - only a pop-up About.
    The distribution package of the application is available at link http://www.projectory.de/emftoeps/emftoeps.zip or through a link in http://www.projectory.de/emftoeps/index.html.
    As a matter of fact there are no installation process, however. The distribution package is a .zip archive containing a ready-for-work copy of the application directory; the executable is EMFToEPS.exe. It’s interesting that the author of the application graciously supplies source files of the program, too. They are contained in the sub-directory ‘source‘.
    The author of the application - Dirk Struve warns that there are some bugs in his applet:

• Some WMF images can’t be loaded correctly, because the WMF format is not well defined and I don’t now all different versions. Solution: Always save images as EMF.
• Some WMF images are not converted correctly. (This seems to be a PostScript driver problem) Solution: Try saving images as EMF or WMF images with True Type fonts as curves.
• Preview of File Dialog sometimes wrong (Bug in Delphi libraries).
• On some Windows systems, images are not displayed correctly or dieappear.

But he writes he probably won’t continue work on it.

    This is a simple free Pixel-Based editing tool. i.Mage features:

• Load/Save: Gif, Tiff, Jpg, Pcx, Bmp, Ico.
• 2 pane view, zoomed and 1:1.
• Downsampling/upsampling bit-depth, dithering, halftone, error diffusion. Resampling (smart resizing), cropping, rotating, offseting and flipping images.
• 8-bit palette editor: RGB/HLS ramps, colour cubes/stock palettes, reverse ramps, remapping.
• Clipboard support.
• Alpha blending.
• Basic linear/radial gradient fill.
• Undo queue for most tools.
• Conversion of image to C/C++ code.
• Transparency support.
• Invert image.
• Convert to grayscale.
• Brightness/contrast adjust.
• Save/load/flip/rotate the current brush.
• Flood fill.
• Basic drawing primitives.
• Polyline editor.
• Text tool.
• Simple scripting language.
• Basic colour management via Little CMS, does RGB< ->RGB on load/save to the internal colour space (sRGB), allows viewing of colour profile details

    The Main menu of the application features nine options: File, Edit, View, Image, Brush, Colour Profile, Tools, Language and Help.

    Under the Main menu there is the Taskbar of the editor. It has a number of buttons for the often used actions. One button deserves special attention - the button Tools. It opens up the Toolbar otherwise disabled. This button (the most right button in the Taskbar) has no associated tip; its designation is defined by a title. Other buttons have associated tips which are activated when a mouse cursor touches a button.
    At the bottom of the Main window there are the status bar which indicates current position of the mouse pointer and color composition of the current pixel.

    The option File starts File Dialog. Besides usual options of file opening/closing (Open, Save, Save As amd Close) it features options of creating a new image file New/Properties and New From Clipboard. They are rather peculiar and demand some explanation. The option New From Clipboard creates a new image if there is some image in the Clipboard - using the Clipboard image as a template. The option New/Properties has dual assignment: If there is no opened image in the workspace of the editor it creates a blank image. If there is some opened image in the workspace this option opens the Properties window of the current image.
    The option Recent… is standard and maintains the list of recently opened image files.
    The options Page Setup and Print must support printing but they are currently disabled. Working with the application I couldn’t enable them.

    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog. This popup is rather short. It contains only options of undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo, the checkable option of enabling/disabling the Undo function Enable Indo, discarding the Undo queue Discard Undo Queue, and options of copying the whole document either as a new image Copy Document or as a code sample Copy Document as Code. There are no standard options such as Cut, Copy, Paste etc.

    The option Image calls the popup containing options of various effects you could apply to images. The option Brush serves, in essence, the same purpose; here you can copy to clipboard some other image and paste it into current image, rotate and flip the image. There is also the option Save As allowing to save the current sample to disk.
    The option Colour Profile handles colour profiles of the application.
    The option Tools handles registered in the application file types, allows colour testing and working with scripts.
    The option Language opens a small language popup. Currently this popup has only two options - English (the basic language of the utility) and Afrikaans (rather exotic, eh?).
    The option Help of the Main menu calls a popup with two options: Help and About. The application Help is in an .html form and rather short. There are no context-dependent help. Be cautious by choosing the Help option because it replaces the currently opened web-page in an Internet browser by its own .html page.
The option About initiates the About window containing some information about the application and contacts with the developer.

Some remarks about working within the application from the developer:
Tools generally use the current foreground colour on a left click and the background colour on a right click. The primitive tools can either be filled or outline. You can select which behaviour using the icon
    i.Mage has only one “document” open at a time. This document is a linear array of pixels of a given bit depth, either 8 bit indexed colour or 16/24/32 bit true colour. The same document is displayed in both the right and left panes at different zoom levels. The left pane shows the pixels zoomed to a specified level and the right pane shows pixel for pixel.
    When you select part of an i.Mage it is copied into whats known as the “brush”. The brush is just another bitmap which attaches itself to the mouse cursor as it travels over the document. If you click while holding the brush over the document the brush is combined with the document using the current opererator. The brush is not the windows clipboard. Although it can be easily copyed and pasted to and from the clipboard.

    Downloading of the application is available at the web-page http://www.memecode.com/image.php. Currently there are several versions of i.Mage for downloading - the newest version is 1.06.
The author honestly warns he hasn’t much time for work on the instrument so requests for bug fixing may take some time to get attention from him.

    The GIMP is an Open Source multiplatform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.
    It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. The powerful feature of GIMP it can handle multilayer images and save them as an animation sequence.
    GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

    Initially the authors of the program were Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis. But now, being an Open Source platform, GIMP has a whole lot of developers contributing to various aspects of the application.

    You can start GIMP simply by clicking on its icon or with command-line arguments. The detailed list of available command-line arguments is in the Chapter 3.1 of the tutorial.

    Installing of the GIMP for the first time at your PC isn’t possible without prior installing of the environment GTK+. In such a case the installer detects a fatal error of the installation process and indicates the need for installing GTK+ at first. While installing GIMP you see the setup window in which you get information in the language native for your system version.
    You should take into account that GIMP installer creates a number of work directories in your Documents and Settings directory. Without these working directories the work with GIMP may be hampered.
    It’s interesting that the language of the application interface is detected automatically from the native language of the operational system; apart from English there are a number of interface languages available including Russian. You could change the current interface language in the GTK+ Runtime Environment menu from the whole lot of available languages.

    Downloading of the program and its environment as well as libraries and documentation is avalibale at the web-page http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/.
There is also an on-line manual for GIMP in the Web, available in several languages: English, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Swedish. The English version of the manual is available through the link http://docs.gimp.org/en/, the German version - at http://docs.gimp.org/de/
You can install help-files on your PC via the corresponding link at the web-page www.gimp.org/windows/. These help-files are exceptionally detailed and contain a complete manual and tutorial for work in GIMP.
At the download page there are tips for installing GIMP for the first time at the link http://www.gimp.org/unix/user_install.html

    The basic Main menu in the Main window of the application has only three options: File (opens File Dialog), Xtns (contains a list of configuration options) and Help. But every GIMP window has its own Main menu. The Main menu of the image window has 10 options: File, Edit, Selection, View, Image, Layers, Tools, Dialog, Filters and Scripts-Fu.

    The option File of the Main menu opens File Dialog popup. Apart from usual options of file opening and saving/closing there are options of opening the image from the Internet (Open Location) and opening the image as a layer (Open as Layer…) and saving it as a template for future images (Save as Template), as well as options of closing the current window, quitting the application and printing setup/printing the current image.
The option Edit of the Main menu opens Edit Dialog popup. Here there are usual editing options such as Clear, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clipboard, etc, as well as pasting from Clipboard and colour pouring. There is an option of Undoing/Redoing changes.
The option Select contains various selection options.
The option View contains view options. Some of them are checkable; if checked they enable the feature, otherwise the feature is disabled. The option Scale sets the scale of the image view. The option Information window shows detailed information about properties of the current image. The option Screen filters allows to apply various screen filters to the current image.
The option Image of the Main menu contains other image handling options such as setting the grid, setting the size of the canvas, scaling, getting screenshots, transforming the image.
The option Layers contain opens layer handling popup.
The option Tools allows to select and choose a needed image handling tool.
The option Dialog allows working with the instruments in a dialog mode by selecting and choosing tools from the toolboxes.
The option Filters unites available image filters. It has the option Text allowing to add texts in the image in the selected font.
And the option Script-Fu contains a list of available special effects to apply.

    Of course this description of the application is very short and incomplete. It is very sketchy. GIMP is very powerful image handling tool. You can receive detailed information about interesting aspect of work with GIMP either from the manual or using context-dependent help.

    IrfanView is a rather small and compact image converter and refinisher (the size of the installer executable is only 885K). It’s especially useful for working with digital photos and their refinishing. IrfanView is a very fast image viewer/converter. It features: viewing support for dozens of formats both popular and obscure, drag and drop support, fast directory view, print support, TWAIN support, slideshow view, batch conversion, color depth and more.

    The Main menu of the utility has 6 options: File, Edit, Image, Options, View and Help.
The option File opens File Dialog. The File Dialog popup menu is very elaborate and has many options gathered in separate groups. Many options of the File Dialog has associated with them function keys. The first such group includes standard options of opening files Open, Reopen, Open with external editor, Open As. The option Reopen allows for yet another opening of yhe last opened file. The option Open with external editor allows for the opening of the selected image with the help of the other image editor if such external image editor is written in preferences. The option Open As allows for th1e opening of the image in specific formats ASCII, HEX and RAW.
The standalone option Thumbnails allows for opening of images by selecting and choosing thumbnails in a directory tree.
The option Slideshow allows you to open slideshows. The option Batch conversion/Rename… allows for conversion image format of a selected group of files. It opens a window of built-in image converter. In this window you can define a file group for conversion (optionally including subdirectories), an output image format, an output directory and path, and much more. You can also set some specific options of the selected output format.
There is also the group of standard options of dealing with files in the File Dialog: Rename File…, Move File…, Copy File…, Delete File…. These options allows for working in IrfanView as in any file browser.
The option group Save and Save As allows for saving of the selected image in a chosen image format.
The standalone option Print allows for printing of the selected image. It opens the Print window in which you can set various properties of printing and actually start the printing process.
Then there is the group of options dealing with image hardware: Select TWAIN source…, Acquire/Batch scanning… and Copy Shop….
The standalone option MRUDs opens the popup of recently opened image directories.
The standalone option Exit cancels program execution.

    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog popup which comprises various editing options mainly to deal with selections in the selected image. It allows undoing recent actions, and clearing the whole picture and the Clipboard, and inserting texts in the current selection.

    The option Image opens the Image Dialog popup containing yet another group of image editing options - mainly various special effects. As usual there are, of course, rotating and flipping of the image, resizing the image and/or the canvas, color changing, negation of the color and converting it into greyscale, and more. The option Information opens the information window which contain extensive data about the current image.

    The option Options opens the Options popup allowing for setting of various options and preferences of the application. Some of the options (Start Multimedia Player and JPG Lossless Operations…) require external plug-ins which can be downloaded from the website of the developer. The option Capture/Screenshot let you make screen captures.
The option Change language… deserves special mentioning. It allows changing of the program interface. In the basic configuration two variants are envisaged: English and German (Deutsch). But you can select one of the two dozen plus European and Asiatic languages if you download the corresponding language support file from the web-site of the developer. You can see there the list of currently supported languages. It includes Russian . Apparently, the languages support DLLs are developed by the programmers community. At least, the Russian language DLL is developed by some guy from Zelenograd, Russia. The multilanguage support is exceptionally strong feature of IrfanView. It’s very rare in other FreeWare applications.

    The option View of the Main menu opens the popup of view options. Here you can set showing/hiding of application tools (the taskbar, the toolbar, the meny bar), select full-screen or window mode, select an option of fitting the selected image or no fitting at all. You can also change the current image in the editor by scanning the current image directory (options Next/Previous/First/Last/Random File in Directory), or even set an automatic view of the current image directory (the option
Start/Stop automatic viewing). There are options of zooming in and out, or returning to actual size of the image (the option Original size). There is also and option of viewing the HEX-content of the image file (Show HEX view). And you can view multipage images with the option Multipage images or even create them (but creating of such images require an extenal plug-in - except TIF format).

    The option Help opens a Help popup. There are context-dependent help in the Microsoft Help formay, the FAQ list, the Keyboard Shortcuts explanation and options of various info about the program and its developer. The is the option
Registration… for customer registering. Registered customers can receive technical support.

    Under the Main menu bar of the application there is the taskbar containing buttons for various most often usable actions in the applications. In the taskbar there is a small window for selected the current image directly by specifying its directory index. You can see in the window on-line tip about the number of image files in the current directory. The current selected file is indicated in the format The Index Number Of File-Slash-The Number Of Image Files In Directory.
    At the lower edge of the Main window there is the status bar of the application. The status bar contains information about bits per pixel of the image, its directory index, the file size, the date and time of its creation.

Here are some reviews about the application from the Web:

Reviewed By: Richard Weil
I’ve been using this viewer for years and wouldn’t use anything else. I’ve tried others and remove them and return to Irfan View exclusivly. This freeware program is probably as good or better than most viewer software. Adding the available plug-ins makes it even better. It can view any type graphic file you desire. It’s the best!

Reviewed By: Jamie

This tiny software is wonderful! You can resize pictures, touch them up change the color and view all types of gif, jpg, bmp and tons of other extensions

Reviewed By: Sven

It is small, fast and has all functions it needs. And it’s free!

Downloading of the application is available via download page
http://www.sofotex.com/downloads/d59.html

Technorati Profile

    This is rather simple image editor allowing to edit images fom a variety of formats (GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PCX, BMP, TARGA, AVI); create images for websites; create and view GIF animations; adjust colours in photos; apply filters and transformations; magic wand selections; use any picture as a brush or fill pattern; blur; sharpen.
    The program is developed by Paul Bird from England. The program has a commercial version, too. The commercial and freeware versions are different in that help files, sample images, texture and fill patterns are available only in the commercial version. In the commercial version there are more filters, the 3D Shape Maker, Object to Bitmap Converter and the RAM Viewer. The commercial version is shipped by the developer on a CD-ROM. The freeware version has no on-line help.
    Downloading of the freeware version of the application is available on
    The Main menu of the application has eight options: File, Edit, Selection, Toolboxes, Picture, Run…, View and Help.

    The Help option opens the Help popup, containing options Brush Strokes Manual, General Tips, What Do I Do Next? and a standard option About (some information about the application and its developer). As a mater of fact, in the freeware version the option Brush Strokes Manual (the on-line application manual) is, in essence, disabled; it opens a window containing information that the on-line manual is available only in the commercial version. But the options of on-line tips (General Tips and What Do I Do Next?) work.

    The option File opens File Dialog containing options of opening/closing image files (New…, Open…, Save picture as…), getting images from a digital camera (Capture from Camera) and from a video image file (Get frame from Video); printing images (Print… and Print Preview), cancelling the program execution (Exit) and a link to the web-site of the developer (Free Software Website). It must be noted that in the freeware version the option of printing images Print… doesn’t work; but the option of Print Preview works.

    The option Edit opens Edit Dialog containing only the usual options of selecting and editing (Copy, Cut, Paste, Select All, and Crop Selection), clearing the window content (Clear), and undoing/redoing changes (Undo/Redo).

    The option Selection calls the popup containing options for working with the current selection (Paint Background, Set Transparency - sets transparency level of the selection, Linear Interpolation - if checked it improves the quality of transformations in slight expense of speed, and Colour Tolerance - sets how colors and shades need to be considered part of the same selection).

    The option Toolboxes calls the popup containing checkable options of opening/closing toolbars of the application (Pens&Brushes, Lenses&Filters, Selections, Transformations, Frame Tools), the option of opening the window of applying plug-in filters to the current image Plug-in Filters, the option of inserting some text in the image in the selected font Texts&Fonts, checkable options of opening/closing palette toolbars (for 16 and 256 colors), the option Greyscale Colors which actually replaces colors with shades of grey, and the option of resetting color palettes Reset Colors.

    The option Picture of the Main Menu calls the popup containing options of changing the size of the image Change Size, swapping current frames Swap Frames (which is assigned the function key F1), Adjust Colors - calls the window of adjusting colors of the current image, and checkable options Use Only 16 Colors and Use Only 256 Colors.

    The option Run… serves to call the plug-ins Object To Bitmap Converter, 3D Object Maker, and RAM Show. As has been mentioned above these plug-ins are absent in the freeware version; the corresponding options of the popup Run link to the webpage for ordering the commercial version instead.

    The option View calls the popup of zooming the image and displaying it in full screen. This popup has the option of animation preview, too. An animation consists of several frames; in this option you can set the number of frames in the animation.

    Under the Main Menu of the application there is the main taskbar containing buttons for various actions. If you want on-line tip for the button just press the right-hand button of the mouse while the mouse pointer points to the chosen button.

    At the bottom of the Main window of the application are displayed information about the current position of the cursor and the composition of the color at this point (in shares of Red, Green and Blue).

The first button in the main taskbar with a question mark is present only in the freeware version. It calls the page warning about absent help files and inviting to visit the webpage for ordering the commercial version.