Review - IrfanView v4.28

Seeing as my last review was about a lightweight PDF viewer, here is a post about a free, fast lightweight image viewer.

Now there aren't many people out there on the web that have never seen or heard of IrfanView.  After all, it is small and loads quickly, it has extra functionality with the help of plugins and has been around since the days of Windows 95.  There's a lot to be said about a program that has been used for so many years by its fans.

I for one use it to browse images on my computer and to sort them into different folders.  I also use it when I take screenshots, resizing and choosing the file format that I consider best for the occasion.  It happens to be the program that I use to take the screenshots of the apps I review when writing these blog posts.

You can use it to view an images metadata, such as EXIF in a JPG file too, which can be handy for people who enjoy photography.  Users can watch video files with it, or listen to audio files too.  You can print images, do some basic editing and adjusting.  It even has Photoshop filter support.  One last little note is that you can even change the toolbar icons, giving it a different feel if you'd like.

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URL: http://www.irfanview.com/

 

Review - Sumatra PDF v1.2

Since the rise in popularity of PDF files, many users have abandoned the default reader made by Adobe choosing instead faster programs, or those with more features out of the box.

Sumatra PDF is a slim, lightweight PDF reader which keeps its goal simple: To display PDF files to the user.  No more, no less.  For users such as myself, it is exactly what I've wanted all along.

With a minimal impact on your computers resources, it will allow you to view PDF files with ease, albeit while rendering the pages a little slowly.  It is the only negative comment I can think up about it, and I figure if that's all I see as a downside while using it, it must be a pretty darn good program.  So why don't you give it a shot?  It's even portable so no data is written to the registry.

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URL: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html