XnView, simply put, is a file explorer. What makes it a bit special is that instead of treating every file as equal, it tries to make sense of each and every one and let you see, in the most relevant form possible, what exactly is contained in the file.

When checking this program out, we were immediately reminded of another quality file previewer, ACDSee. While that has gone on to become a fully featured photo manager, available for $50, XnView will take care of most users’ basic needs while boasting a price tag of $0 (for personal use). With its built-in preview engine, the program can display 400 different image file formats as well as play various media formats such as AVI or MP3.

Using the program will already be second nature to most users as it works like Windows Explorer. On the left side of the screen you see all your directories, with the contents of the directories being displayed in the upper half of the right window. Selecting any of these files will then bring up a preview in the lower half of the window. If you’re browsing through some photos you can run them as a slideshow and view in full screen. If you’re browsing through simple TXT or INI files, the opening few lines of text will show up as an icon and you can view the entire contents of the file without needing to open other programs.

There is a good level of support for various formats and the interface zips along without delays, even when displaying large video files. On encountering a file that it doesn’t recognize, XnView displays its hash values, which may or may not be of use. If you run into any difficulty, there is a help file that is sufficient but not overwhelming.

One aspect that wasn’t quite as we would have liked was that it didn’t recognize the native format of files. For example, a simple text file with a LOG extension wasn’t treated as the same file with a TXT extension. It’s a small inconvenience but does stand out because of the general high quality of the software. For anyone with a large number of files that they want to organize, convert or just browse, XnView is certainly worth a look.

Download XnView 1.95 in Softonic

As the hard drives and Flash memory cards of the world’s burgeoning photography community continue to fill up, there is increasing demand for low-cost methods of keeping their images in some kind of order. With some snap-happy enthusiasts taking hundreds of pictures a week, there’s a danger that the fun of photography will be replaced by the mundane task of finding the shots you once they’re on your PC. While programs such as Photoshop Album and PaintShop Album are pretty good at helping you sort images, StudioLine aims to take things one stage further – by not charging you for the privilege.

You might expect that by not demanding a fee for a photo organizing program, you’d have to settle for a largely scaled-down version of its costly equivalents. We were pleasantly surprised to see this wasn’t the case, and the application is brimming with features that not only make it easier to sort and search for photos, but which can instantly improve the appearance of your images.

The main premise of the program is to help you whip your photo collection into some sort of order, and it does this admirably. You start with an Image Archive, which is basically a database where you can load in all of your images. From here, you can create a hierarchical tree system of folders based through an Explorer-style interface, making it a painless process. Sorting through your images is aided by the capacity for adding information about a photo using the ‘Descriptors’ data, photos, allowing you to categorize by image topic, date, location or person. You can even enter a star rating for each image to help you later in the sorting process. Another nice inclusion is the ability to change the size of thumbnail previews using a slider when viewing all the images within a folder.

As if the slick sorting facilities weren’t impressive enough, the program boasts a range of editing tools that rival many priced image editors. There’s a diverse variety of tools ranging from preprocessing, through photo correction, to special effects, all of which can be previewed and applied with ease. The Classic version of StudioLine Photo comes with a raft of features that you don't get in Basic. These extra treats include a Timeline view that automatically organizes images by date, a star rating facility, and a neat image archive filter which significantly ramps up your picture hunting speed.

The user interface is generally a joy to use, with lots of customizable options, and draggable palettes like those you see in professional editing suites. There are a couple of bothersome aspects of the interface which could do with changing though, such as the fact that an image loads in a new pop-up menu when its thumbnail is clicked on, rather than in the main window (as a tab perhaps). The tips boxes that spring up a little too frequently can also get a tad irritating, especially as there seems to be no way to permanently disable them.

Apart from these minor niggles, this is a fantastic program which, is arguably the cheapest way of effectively managing your image collection. The addition of features for creating slide shows, web galleries and emails only serves to raise its status as a serious contender to its big budget rivals.

Download StudioLine Photo Classic 3.50 in Softonic

As the hard drives and Flash memory cards of the world’s burgeoning photography community continue to fill up, there is increasing demand for low-cost methods of keeping their images in some kind of order. With some snap-happy enthusiasts taking hundreds of pictures a week, there’s a danger that the fun of photography will be replaced by the mundane task of finding the shots you once they’re on your PC. While programs such as Photoshop Album and PaintShop Album are pretty good at helping you sort images, StudioLine aims to take things one stage further – by not charging you for the privilege.

You might expect that by not demanding a fee for a photo organizing program, you’d have to settle for a largely scaled-down version of its costly equivalents. We were pleasantly surprised to see this wasn’t the case, and the application is brimming with features that not only make it easier to sort and search for photos, but which can instantly improve the appearance of your images.

The main premise of the program is to help you whip your photo collection into some sort of order, and it does this admirably. You start with an Image Archive, which is basically a database where you can load in all of your images. From here, you can create a hierarchical tree system of folders based through an Explorer-style interface, making it a painless process. Sorting through your images is aided by the capacity for adding information about a photo using the ‘Descriptors’ data, photos, allowing you to categorize by image topic, date, location or person. You can even enter a star rating for each image to help you later in the sorting process. Another nice inclusion is the ability to change the size of thumbnail previews using a slider when viewing all the images within a folder.

As if the slick sorting facilities weren’t impressive enough, the program boasts a range of editing tools that rival many priced image editors. There’s a diverse variety of tools ranging from preprocessing, through photo correction, to special effects, all of which can be previewed and applied with ease. The fact that you can apply changes you’ve made to one photograph to hundreds of other images in one click is another major boon, and is ideal if you want to turn a batch of images into black and white, or apply an auto-colour correction to an entire album of photos, for instance.

The user interface is generally a joy to use, with lots of customizable options, and draggable palettes like those you see in professional editing suites. There are a couple of bothersome aspects of the interface which could do with changing though, such as the fact that an image loads in a new pop-up menu when its thumbnail is clicked on, rather than in the main window (as a tab perhaps). The tips boxes that spring up a little too frequently can also get a tad irritating, especially as there seems to be no way to permanently disable them.

Apart from these minor niggles, this is a fantastic program which, is arguably the cheapest way of effectively managing your image collection. The addition of features for creating slide shows, web galleries and emails only serves to raise its status as a serious contender to its big budget rivals.

Download StudioLine Photo Basic 3.50.54 in Softonic

This is the convenient portable version of the legendary FastStone Image Viewer that you can take anywhere with you on a USB stick.

FastStone Image Viewer is an image browser, viewer, converter and editor with an easy-to-use interface and a nice array of features that include resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments and more. It also includes an intuitive full-screen mode that provides quick access to EXIF information and thumbnail browser via hidden toolbars that emerge when you touch the edge of your screen with the mouse.

Other features include a high quality magnifier and built-in slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image frames, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA.

Download FastStone Image Viewer Portable 3.6 in Softonic

Anyone who works with images on a regular basis will be familiar with the default image viewer of Windows, and also with its very limited scope for doing anything meaningful. There is a healthy selection of alternatives but FastStone Image Viewer has come to our attention as one that deserves to be singled out not only because it is free but also because it brings to the table a strong combination of speed, usability and versatility.

While the viewing functionality is a no-brainer, FastStone comes with a range of methods with which to browse pics. First off, there is the standard file browser that displays thumbnails of your images with a preview window for the file that is currently selected. There is also an option to check out individual pictures at their original size in the “Windowed View”, which is along the same lines as the default image viewer in Windows. Finally you can see images in full-screen, switching between files using the keyboard, the middle mouse button or the slide-in toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

However, FastStone Image Viewer goes beyond simply displaying images. You can perform some quick edits to really bring out the best in your pics such as adding a stylish frame mark that acts as a mask to reduce the sharp edges or if you happen to be working with 3D there is also a very effective bump map option that will serve you well for texturing. There are of course the standard tools of brightness/darkness adjustment, sharpness/blur, grayscale, red-eye removal and more. For results better than those you get with FastStone, you would need to use a professional package like Photoshop.

Further great features come in the form of batch rename and batch convert options. These could prove invaluable to many web developers looking for a quick way to prepare their PSD files for the web. With the inclusion of these batch functions, it would have been good to push the boat out even further and have an option to apply batch effects, for example to brighten up a group of photos that were taken in a dark space but alas, it’s not there!

Looking for faults with FastStone Image Viewer is like looking for the corner of a circle although if you insist on nitpicking, you can say that in the thumbnail browser view dragging and dropping should be possible for moving files. However when you realize that it is possible to drag and drop with the left nav bar that argument looses its legs. As I mentioned, there is healthy competition in the image viewer arena, but thanks to the innovative features of FastStone Image Viewer the bar has been raised to new heights.

Download FastStone Image Viewer 3.6 in Softonic

ACDSee Pro is one of the most comprehensive image viewers you'll find. Elegant and full of features, it's an essential for anyone working regularly with images.

To discuss and review all the features of this program would require an essay but from the quick viewing of images to support for a vast amount of image formats, audio and video, the possibility of examining within compressed files, retouching images, batch processing of images and mass conversion formats it's an impressive piece of software. This Pro version, as its name suggests, is particularly focused on the professional end of photography. It offers excellent support for RAW format images, new tools for editing and retouching images, more possibilities for processing huge images (now you can also apply sepia effects for example) and the interface has changed slightly to make the work flow even better.

Probably one of the best image programs out there outside of Adobe software.

Download ACDSee Pro 2.5.333 in Softonic

Want to hang the photos of your holiday on your blog or web page in a well-organised and unique way? If so, AAA Photo Album can help, as it is specially designed for the creation of online photo albums in HTML. The best thing about the software is that you don't need to be an expert in HTML programming in order to use it. You simply select the photos that you wish to include in the gallery, choose a frame and a colour scheme, and the program magically generates the necessary code for you in seconds.

The images can be organised in a highly efficient manner, with the use of thumbnails making it easy for your visitors to browse through what you've got. Personally, I'd have liked to see at least some basic image editing features in AAA Photo Album, but as a tool for quickly publishing pictures to the web, it does its job with aplomb.

Download AAA Photo Album 2.10 in Softonic

There are many ways to share photos with your beloved ones, both offline and online, but few of them are as spectacular as PhotoSynth.

PhotoSynth is presented by Microsoft as an innovative and original way of publishing and sharing your photos on the Web. It's as easy to use as other photo sharing websites, only that its photo player includes special 3D features that makes PhotoSynth especially suitable for panoramas.

After logging in with your Windows Live ID and creating a PhotoSynth profile, you're ready to start using the program. Use the client to choose and upload photos, and then check your creation on the web browser (you'll need a special plug-in for this, but this is automatically installed with PhotoSynth). You'll be able to navigate the panorama in a three-dimensional environment by dragging and clicking your mouse around the stitched photos.

While Photosynth is definitely an easy yet impressive way to share your pictures online - especially with the full-screen viewer - it lacks all the social tools you find in other similar websites, such as being able to rate pictures or leave comments, just to mention a couple of them.

With PhotoSynth you can create, publish and share online your photos in a nicely design interface, with special support for 3D panoramas.

Download Photosynth 2.0.1403.6 in Softonic

PixFiler is a program that makes it quick and easy to keep your digital photos organized. The program is designed to be easy to use. It will locate and display your photo in just seconds. It will read most image formats, even raw files from most digital cameras, no matter if they are stored on your hard disk or on a CD or DVD. And it doesn't slow down as your image collection grows. Several 10,000s is no problem for PixFiler.

Benefits of PixFinder:

• Fast and easy to use
• Powerful tools makes it easy to categorize and annotate the photos
• Will let you browse photos on CD/DVD without having to insert the CD/DVD
• Make reports, prints, and contact sheets
• Make auto-run CDs and DVDs
• Supports many file formats, including RAW for most digital cameras
• Full screen viewing and zooming
• Get information from EXIF and IPTC meta data
• Users can share the same data on a network

Download PixFiler 5.2.6 in Softonic

When it comes to photo viewers there are many alternatives to choose from. I've always had something of a crush on Picasa and this new version has made it my absolute favorite.

The brand new Picasa 3.0 is still at a beta stage, but you can already get a glimpse of all the eyecandy it brings to your desktop. The interface remains pretty similar to the previous one, but has been enriched with new options to manage and edit your photos, as well as some new ways to show them off.

Among other features, Picasa now includes a folder manager to handle your folders right on the hard drive, a screen capturing tool, an improved and extended photo editing menu (with new filters and effects) and new exciting options for your creativity, such as creating a movie with your photos.

Picasa now lets you manage your pictures in more comfortable way, both online – by automatically syncing your photo library with Picasa web albums – and offline, with an awesome photo viewer you can use instead of the default Windows image viewer.

The all-new Picasa has successfully completed what it seemed a difficult task: improving a software app that was already very good.

Download Picasa 3.0 Beta in Softonic

Fresh View is a free program designed to help you organize and view multimedia files (images, audio, and video). It gives you the ability to watch movies, listen to music, and view graphics in a slide show.

Image files in a folder can be displayed using a number of views, such as thumbnails view that lets you quickly see what your images are without having to open them. You can convert graphics from one type to another, print, and even create a HTML album. This easy-to-use software supports 86 different formats.

Download Fresh View 7.54 in Softonic

Most multimedia publishing programs only allow you to publish one type of format be it photos, video or audio - Gallery Designer allows you to publish all 3 at once and does all the HTML coding for you.

Everything is explained and taken step by step until your gallery is online with no further effort required on your part. To get going, first of all you're asked which image files you want to upload. Secondly, you're asked what title you want to give the album and the layout parameters - how big, what style etc. Then, you simply click "Build" and the software whizzes into action building a perfect HTML gallery, complete with thumbnails, for publishing on the net.

Once ready, you are given detailed control over exactly how you want the gallery to look such as by changing the thumbnails to full image size, the titles, layout gallery style, border colors etc. If you see another gallery online that you like developed using Gallery Designer, you can even borrow that template or alternatively, design your own.

With support for for a wide range of video and photo formats and even support for text files, Gallery Designer takes the pain out of coding your own online gallery.

Download Gallery Designer 1.0.9 in Softonic

Kodak Easyshare is a digital photo organizer which gives you access to your Kodak Gallery and make use of Kodak's project and print services.

You'll find it offers what you expect of a digital photo organizer, such as being able to save your photos in albums and show them in calendar view, adding tags, easy transferring from your camera and sharing them with others via email or burning on a CD. You can also create a little slideshow to view albums in full screen.

I did find the application a little counter-intuitive, partly due to the color of the interface, which makes it difficult to set buttons apart. A simple action like adding an album, wasn't easy as it should be.

Although limited, the range of editing tools available was OK. You can enhance your picture, set the balance and add a few effects to make a little snazzier. Both the tips and online guide provided by Kodak are thorough.

You can use Kodak Easyshare without actually having a Kodak account, however you'll find many places in the application where it encourages you to do so. Your use of the application will also obviously be limited if you don't have one as you won't be able to print photos or create projects.

Kodak Easyshare is a digital photo manager, that gives access to Kodak services online.

Download Kodak Easyshare 7.0 in Softonic

When you live and work away from your home town (or even your home country), as many people do these days, it can sometimes be difficult to stay in touch with the folks back there.

One of the best ways to keep your friends and family posted on what you're up to is to share your photos with them. This can get a little boring for them though if you're just emailing them the shots, so it's a good idea to create a web gallery to hang your pictures in a more elegant fashion.

If you don't your HTML from your elbow then PhotoOnWeb provides a good way of creating a cool online gallery with ease. All you need to do is load your photos, select a template then publish the gallery on your PC, on your FTP server or on the server provided with the software.

If you've never worked with servers before then don't worry because the program pretty much takes care of the nuts and bolts for you. Although not as powerful as using the Flash authoring tool, it's a great free tool for anyone who wants to communicate with home without actually saying anything.

Download PhotoOnWeb 0.8.6 in Softonic

Browsing your digital photos on your PC can be a cumbersome affair using the Windows Photo Viewer. If you're looking for a replacement, you could give Alternate Pic View Lite a go.

Alternate Pic View Lite lets you browse your photo collection in several ways: as small-sized thumbnails, inside the program's window, in full screen or even as a slideshow. What's more, Alternate Pic View Lite includes a pretty varied array of filters and effects you can apply to your images, including rotation, color and brightness adjustment, greyscale and red eye fix, among others.

So far, so good. The problem comes when you have to deal with the interface in Alternate Pic View Lite: it just doesn't work like the other photo viewers. To begin with, it shows the selected folder content in a window that's too small to be comfortable. Then, each photo has to be double-clicked in order to be displayed (instead of just selecting it with the mouse). Also, viewing options in Alternate Pic View Lite are not saved between photos, so you have to be constantly resizing images in order to view them.

Alternate Pic View Lite could be a good photo viewer with some nice editing tools and special effects. Too bad the interface is lacking in usability.

Download Alternate Pic View Lite 1.415 in Softonic

XnView Portable is, put simply, a file explorer that has been especially adapted for image files and is developed to be run from a USB key.

XnView Portable features the same design and the same tools as its older brother XnView, which makes it a really convenient photo editor that you can carry anywhere with you. It has support for a few hundred different graphic formats as well as other media files such as AVI and MP3.

The interface in XnView Portable is divided into two sections: the left pane shows the folder structure, while the right one is where the contents of the selected folder are displayer. A double click on any image is enough to open it in full screen and work on it with the program's set of tools. XnView Portable is obviously no Photoshop, but you'll be able to do some cropping and resizing, adjust brightness, correct red eyes and other basic editing and retouching tasks.

If XnView is your favorite resident image viewer, now you can take it anywhere with you thanks to XnView Portable.

Download XnView Portable 1.94.2 in Softonic

Publishing photos to the web has to be one of the biggest areas of software development but many fall short of the mark in terms of usability and speed of use.

Photo! Web Album offers and easy way to create photo galleries for the web with an emphasis on being user friendly and usable. This makes Photo! Web Album ideal for beginners who aren't looking for anything that looks great but works quickly and in a straightforward manner. From the moment of installation of Photo! Web Album, you're asked how you would like to post your photos to the web via a built-in wizard which makes it simple to use.

There's no need to worry about hosting either - Photo! Web Album allows you to share your photo albums on the developer's own website although how much space you've got here is not clear but it's likely it's not particularly generous. What's nice though is that by using the Photo! Web Album service, you can edit your photo presentation and online creations from the Photo! Web Album desktop interface. All changes are made in realtime so there's no waiting around for the server to catch up with edits you make. Photo! Web Album also lets you add subfolders of photos related to another subject which means that it's actually a better way to organise your photos than even Picassa.

Basic photo editor, uploader and hosting in one, Photo! Web Album is a competitive solution for novices or those new to photo uploading.

Download Photo! Web Album 1.1 in Softonic

If you're looking for a plainly simple image viewer, you've come to the right place: here's VJPEG, a photo viewer that displays images right on your desktop.

After installing it, VJPEG takes over the native Windows image viewer and opens all JPG, BMP and GIF files on the desktop. Images are opened as is, in other words, without any additional frames, windows or interface: just the image itself.

So without any interface, how do you manage images in VJPEG? Easy: with mouse and keyboard combinations. VJPEG lets you drag and move images around the desktop with the mouse and close them with a right click. If you want to resize them (just for viewing purposes, no actual size changes are applied) stick the image to the left screen edge and drag it. Other tools available in VJPEG are rotating, zooming in and out, adjusting levels and even sending by email.

VJPEG is a good solution for those who want just a simple photo viewer without all the bells and whistles of other programs. I miss having some kind of documentation though, as well as having a nicer icon for my graphic files, which lose their standard icon as soon as they're associated with VJPEG. Other extra options, like being able to minimize or tile images, would be nice too.

VJPEG replaces Windows default image viewer with a dead simple app that displays pictures right on the desktop and lets you drag and resize them with the mouse.

Download VJPEG 2 in Softonic

In these days where most things have been commercialised to the hilt, it’s always refreshing to come across a free piece of software that performs as well as its pricey rivals. Irfanview has long been a shining example of such a program, and I’ve been using the app for some time for perusing and managing my ever-growing photo collection.

Amazingly, since Bosnian developer Irfan Skiljan released the image viewer back in 1996, he’s generously kept it free of charge in spite of its massive popularity. Perhaps even more incredibly, the app still stands at just over 1Mb, bucking the trend of programs that swell immensely as the feature updates go by. In fact, it’s Irfanview’s slimline qualities that are its greatest asset, helping to make it the fastest image viewer in the West. Images load almost instantaneously when you click on them and you get rapid-fire results when cycling through a directory of photos using the Back and Forward buttons. It’s only when you’re flicking through vast amounts of images using the thumbnail viewer that things get a bit slow, which could easily be remedied do with an improved caching function.

Another of Irfanview’s crowd-pleasing talents is its ability to handle an enormous range of different file formats, including g, somewhat rarely, icon (.ico) files. Unlike many of its rival tools, Irfanview doesn’t try to impose itself as the default viewer for all image types, giving you the option to specify the formats you wish to associate with it for yourself.

The program’s functionality can be expanded by installing plug-ins that allow Irfanview to open other file types, such as movies and audio – again a unique feature among photo viewers. You also get a smattering of basic editing features such as crop, rotate, flip and resize, along with some bread-and-butter effects like blur and sharpen, plus a smart crop function.

Upon first try, many users might be put off by the somewhat basic interface and the fact that it loads new images externally, rather than within the GUI itself. Nevertheless this is a small sacrifice to pay for a program that proves to be probably the quickest way to view images on your PC.

Download IrfanView 4.20 in Softonic

With the increasing popularity of digital cameras, the need for programs that help us share our pictures is also growing. As digital photos cannot be stuck onto the pages of traditional albums, the perfect solution is creating a digital album, something you can do very easily with MemoriesOnTV. Even if you're not the computer-savvy type, you'll find yourself very comfortable when using this application and the results are really attractive.

MemoriesOnTV divides the process of creating a digital photo album into five easy steps, represented in the menu bar located between both panes: import, music, effects, menu and burn. To begin with, simply drag and drop files from the bottom pane onto the top one to add content to your photo album. The only downside would be the fact that you cannot resize the bottom pane, so if you have a large directory structure you're going to be scrolling a lot. After choosing pictures, you can work on selected photos individually: double click on any of them and the photo will be displayed in a separate window, along with a complete editing menu. You'll be able to fix colors and brightness, add a caption, change background color or apply any of the many special effects featured in the program. You may move to the next photo and continue working this way. However, unless you want to personalize every single detail of every single image it's not really worth it, as it's going to take a huge amount of time. Besides, the program can do it automatically! Just keep on reading and we'll show you.

The next step in the process consists of adding a soundtrack to your album. You'll be able to choose the music files you want to use in your project by just dragging and dropping them on the program's interface or clicking on the button with the plus sign. Don't worry about calculating the song's length; MemoriesOnTV features an excellent sync tool that will adjust the duration of both music and photos, making them fit perfectly.

Now it's time to add special effects to your pictures. This is where you can set the program to choose the effects for you (if you select the "random" option) and also apply them automatically to all pictures, instead of having to edit them one by one. You can choose both photo effects and transition effects. The amount of options available for each of them is certainly gorgeous.

The last step before actually finishing the project is choosing a menu template, that is, the image you will see when viewing your photo album on your PC or TV. Once again, you have a wide range of options to choose from, though the preview pane is so narrow they're hard to see. Fortunately, you have the possibility to preview the whole project as you work your way through the different steps. Once you've created the menu screen, end your project by saving it as a video file or burning it to a disc directly from the application itself.

MemoriesOnTV is definitely one of the best choices to create digital photo albums for novice users as it doesn't require any special knowledge. You'll be amazed to see how well your pictures look on your TV, with the appropriate background music and some smashing visual effects.

Download MemoriesOnTV 4.1.0 in Softonic