Open source image viewer for windows

Image Viewer is a software we all use in our everyday life. Different people use different image viewer depending on their needs and the OS they use. Most people stick with the default image viewer offered by their OS. And, to be honest, many of those image viewers are not so good. For example, most of the time, the default Photos app in Windows 10 takes some time to open an image. This might not matter to all but it surely does to many. So, those people start looking for a viable alternative. This article talks about 10 open source image viewer software that have the potential to be your default image viewer.

Each of these image viewers offers a good set of tools and functions. Most of them also include adjustment tools to tweak images. And, some are even viable to be your default photo manager.

If you are also looking for open source image editor, do check out our other article 10 Free Open Source Image Editors for Windows.

So, let’s explore these image viewers one by one.

nomacs

nomacs is an open-source image viewer that has the potential to be your default image manager. With its cross-platform availability, you can use it on all major desktop OS including OpenBSD and OS2. It is not just a photo viewer that supports a vast range of image formats, it is also an image editor. You can perform pretty much every basic photo-adjustment task such as color adjustment, tint, exposure, flip, rotate, sharpen, crop, resize and more.

Apart from that, you can view metadata, histogram, file info and can add notes to an image. It also has an option to generate mosaic images and support batch operations. On top of that, it has a plug-in manager where you can add plugins to gain more features. And, you can open multiple instances of nomacs at the same time which is another useful feature most people want/need sometimes.

You can download nomacs open source image viewer here.

ImageGlass

ImageGlass is an open source image viewer software. It is versatile and small in size. It supports all major image formats including HDR, RAW and PSD image. ImageGlass has all basic features and tool that an ideal image viewer should have. Its magnify and scale adjustment tools enhance the user experience.

ImageGlass can be used as a photo manager software. You can add your entire photo-collection to it and easily view, delete, rotate any image with its simple to use tools. It also has an edit option which you can associate with an external software for photo editing. You can also change the visual appearance of ImageGlass by installing themes, changing the background color and other toolbar and thumbnail options.

Download ImageGlass open source image viewer here.

JPEGView

JPEGView is an open source simple image viewer. It has a clean user interface with an auto-hide toolbar. In terms of functionality, it covers all the basic aspects of an image viewer. It offers basic image adjustment tools including auto correct, color-balance and lossless image transformation.

Apart from that, you can view histogram and metadata of images and perform batch operations like batch rename, copy, etc. You can also tweak the GUI to improve the user experience. You can change the navigation style, sort images by various aspects and set hotkeys for various options and tools. All these features make JPEGView a decent image viewer.

Here to download this open source image viewer.

QuickViewer

QuickViewer is another open source image viewer. Rather than offering more image adjustment tools like others, its main focus is to improve the user experience. To do that, it offers many features that you might not know you needed. For example, you can set the default orientation for the wider images, 2-page spread and so on.

Apart from that, you can rotate the image, change its brightness, contrast, and gamma value. You can create catalogs of images and tweak it accordingly. It also has a shader feature which adds different shades to your images. You can use this feature to tweak the shades and shadows in your images.

Download this open source image viewer here.

vJPEG

vJPEG is a borderless image viewer that offers an immersive photo experience to its users. Despite the name, it can open all major image format including PSD. The whole idea behind this image viewer is to open larger images files rapidly. After opening an image, you can drag it around the screen and resize it simply by pushing to the left or the top edge.

With 138KB executable file, its size is very tiny for an image viewer. Regardless of tiny size, it also has hidden keyboard commands. With its different keyboard commands, you can resize, rotate, and auto-levels images and email the actual or compressed version of images.

You can find this open source image viewer here.

PhotoQT

PhotoQt is a powerful open source image viewer written in C++/Qt. The UI is divided into 3 sections; one shows standard folders, second includes the sub folders and the third lists all the images within a particular folder. PhotoQt always runs in full screen mode, you can not resize the window size. It supports many formats and uses GraphicsMagick and Libraw image processing system.

In terms of functionality, you can flip, rotate and scale your images and can apply these parameters permanently. You can also perform basic file management tasks, renaming, deleting, copying, and moving. It also has keyboard and mouse shortcuts which you can customize accordingly. You can set an image as wallpaper and can also play a slideshow of your images. Lastly, it also has a button to upload an image directly to imgur.com

Download this open source image viewer here.

LightGallery

LightGallery is another simple image viewer software. It does not offer any type photo adjustment tools which is okay, its a photo viewer after all. It enriches your image viewing experience with many different features and options. For example, you can change slideshow timing, speed and transition mode, loop the slideshow, enable and adjust auto play options and so on.

The user interface is modern with good animations. The cross-platform availability makes it a good options if you need same photo viewer on all of your systems.

Download this open source image viewer here.

Frame

Another open source image viewer in this list is Frame. With Frame, you can easily browse through your photo library and perform a set of specific tasks. When you open an image in Frame, it shows its basic info at the bottom of the screen. With its channel function, you can adjust the color channels in your image. Here, you can sort your images in any order you like and toggle tile image (makes a 3×3 tiling image) and channel montage. You can set an external photo editing software so that, whenever you have to edit, you can easily switch to that.

You can download this open source image viewer here.

Pictus

Pictus is a small image viewer software. Just like Focus, it shows the basic info about an image at the bottom bar along with loading time. Apart from being a tool to view images, it is very responsive and offers some useful features. With Pictus, you can easily change the orientation of an image and adjust its brightness, contrast and gamma values. You can also rename the image and set it as wallpaper right from the Pictus. It supports all major image file formats including PSD and PSP. It also helps Windows Explorer to show thumbnails for these formats.

Download this open source image viewer here.

MComix

MComix is another open source image viewer in this list which is specifically designed to handle comic books. It supports a variety of container formats including CBR, CBT, CBZ, CB7, LHA, and PDF. It has Double Page and Manga mode to make the magazines and comics reading experience a bliss.

Here, you can transform images and enhance them by adjusting their brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness values. You can add bookmarks to images and can also edit those later. In the Manga mode, you can switch between right-to-left and left-to-right, as per your comic. With these features, it serves as both, an image viewer and a comic book reader.

Download this open source image viewer here.

Wrap Up

All these open source image viewers are viable to be your next default photo viewer. They include all necessary tools and features along with their own custom functionalities. If you think your image editor can be better, do check these out and share your opinion with us in the comments.

ImageGlass — A lightweight, versatile image viewer

ImageGlass is a lightweight software designed for seamless viewing of images in a clean and intuitive interface. With support for over 80 common image formats including WEBP, GIF, SVG, PNG, JXL, HEIC,… ImageGlass also offers advanced features that cater to the needs of both regular users and designers, making it the excellent tool to enhance workflow efficiency.

📥 Download

ImageGlass on Microsoft Store!

• If you want to support the development of ImageGlass, you can purchase ImageGlass from Microsoft Store.
• Alternatively, you can use the one-time donation from ♥ GitHub Sponsor, then drop me a message in ImageGlass Discord or email, and I will send the code shortly.
• ImageGlass Store provides the convenience of fast, easy installation onto all of your Windows devices along with fully automatic, behind-the-scenes updates with all the newest features, improvements, and fixes.

🛣 ImageGlass roadmap

gantt
dateFormat YYYY-MM
title ImageGlass Roadmap

section v8 Official
v8.x - Bugfix only             :crit, active, des1, 2023-08,2024-01
v8.x - Critical bugfix only    :crit, active, des1, 2024-01,2024-04
v8.x - End of support          :crit, milestone, m1, 2024-04, 1d

section v9 Beta & RC
v9.0 Beta 5              :done, des2, 2023-08,2023-11
v9.0 RC                  :active, des2, 2023-11,2024-01

section v9 Official
v9.0 Official release    :milestone, m1, 2024-01, 1d
v9 Official              :active, des2, 2024-01,2025-01

ImageGlass 9.0 is the biggest update ever, supports hardware acceleration and many more. I have been rewriting the entire app for months. There will be a few more beta releases before version 9.0 reaches a stable state. In the meanwhile, you will still receive the updates for version 8.x.

• ✅ Version 9.0 beta 1 was released.
• ✅ Version 9.0 beta 2 was released.
• ✅ Version 9.0 beta 3 was released.
• ✅ Version 9.0 beta 4 was released.
• ✅ Version 9.0 beta 5 was released. Try it and let me know your feedback.
• 🎯 Version 9.0 RC is under development.

🔴 ImageGlass 9 minimum requirements:

• .NET Desktop Runtime 6
• Webview2 runtime 64-bit
• Windows 10 version 2004 (20H1) — 64-bit

👨‍💻 Development

• Windows 11
• Visual Studio 2022
• .NET Framework 4.8 for v8.x, .NET 6/7 for v9.0

The develop branch contains the latest commits of version 8.x while the prod branch is for the final stable release. For the source code of version 9.0 beta, you can check v9 branch.

🗝️ License

ImageGlass is free for both personal and commercial use, except the Store version. If you intend to use ImageGlass at your place of business or for commercial purposes, it’s recommended but not enforced to register at https://imageglass.org/license.

📚 Docs

• Features
• Supported formats
• Shortcuts
• App configs
• Command lines
• EULA

For more information about ImageGlass, go to ImageGlass Docs.

🤼 Community and Support

• GitHub issues
• ImageGlass Discord
• Google forum

💖 This project needs your help!

ImageGlass is an open source, free, and ad-free photo viewer, but developing and maintaining it is not. By providing financial support, you can help me stay motivated and continue to deliver even better versions in the future.

You can sponsor my work through various platforms, such as GitHub (one-time or monthly donations with no service fee), Patreon (monthly donations), and PayPal.

If you choose GitHub Sponsor or Patreon, make sure you check out the tier benefits included.
Thanks for your support!

👑 Hall of fame (v8.x)

To honor those people who spent their time contributing to the development of ImageGlass v8:

• @BenHUET
• @2480258
• @siblount
• @SylwesterZarebski
• @Sxderp
• @fire-eggs
• @AutomationBoi
• @datasone
• @dixonte
• @cocoon
• @Norgerman
• @flyxyz123

Thank you!

Windows 10 has done away with the photo viewer altogether. Many users miss it since a photo viewer is needed. Thankfully, there are many open-source options available. Here is a selection of some of the best.

There are many free and open-source photo viewers available in the market that can be used in place of the photo viewer that has been done away within Windows 10. This article features a few free and open source photo viewers for those who want to try out something different.

ImageGlass

ImageGlass is simple, very lightweight and fast. It looks similar to Windows photo viewers. It displays photo collections just like the Windows’ default option does.

Features

• Easy installation.
• Free and open source software.
• It supports more than 70 image formats including all the popular ones like .jpg ,.png, .gif, .svg, etc.
• An image can be opened directly from the clipboard.
• Faster switching between images.
• Faster thumbnail view.
• Drag-and-drop is supported for image viewing.
• There are many zoom options like scale to width, scale to height, lock zoom ratio, zoom to fit and auto zoom.
• Sharing of images is possible.
• Images can be viewed in the slide show format.
• An image can be converted from one to another extension.
• Different shortcut keys.
• Minimal UI and multi-language support.
• It also provides different themes which we can install as an add-on over the ImageGlass software.

JPEGView

JPEGView is a very configurable photo viewer/editor for JPEG, BMP, WEBP, TGA, PNG, GIF, and TIFF images. JPEGView’s GUI is very minimal and, in terms of looks, it’s pretty average compared to other photo viewers. Apart from that, on-the-fly image processing is provided for sharpness, rotation, colour balance, contrast, and local under-/overexposure.

Features

• It is very fast and small in size. It uses SSE2 and up to four CPU cores.
• It has the basic image processing tools.
• It can play all images in movie mode.

Nomacs

Nomacs is one of the free photo viewers that supports many platforms like Windows, Mac and Linux systems. It is fast and handles almost all common image formats including RAW. One of its advanced features is synchronisation with multiple viewers. It can also compare different images and highlight their differences.

FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer is all-in-one software that provides image browser, editor and converter functionalities for Windows. It is free and open source software. Again, it offers all the basic functionalities like support for different image formats, resizing, rotating and cropping. It supports advanced functionalities like red-eye removal, screen-capturing, transitions, undo/redo, etc. It is fast and reliable all-in-one software.

PhotoQt

PhotoQt is a powerful yet simple image viewer written in the C++/Qt language. It is free and open source software so anyone can use it and modify it under the terms of the licence agreement. It supports a number of operating systems like Windows, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Slackware Linux, Applmage, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Linux, Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux, Chakra, etc.

PhotoQt contains all the necessary features expected from any photo viewer.

• It supports a variety of image formats
• Rotating, flipping, zooming images – no permanent changes
• Scaling images – zooming in or out
• Renaming, deleting, moving, copying file operations
• Shortcuts
• Can share an image to imgur.com
• Image slideshow
• Touchscreen support
• Customisable interface
• Thumbnail cache
• System tray usage
• Command line options
• Several translation features are available

The five photo viewers mentioned in this article are the most popular. There are many other free and open source photo viewers available in the market–some support Windows and some are specifically for the Linux operating system. Go ahead and try them out too.