Still More Things You Can Do with IrfanView

This article is a sequel to Ten Things You Can Do with IrfanView and Ten More Things You Can Do with IrfanView. Don’t forget to check them out to learn more cool stuff you can do with IrfanView

IrfanView belongs to the rare category of apps that I have been using for years and I still can’t do without. What started as a simple image viewer has grown into a swiss-army knife of sorts. Long-time back, I had written two particularly popular articles on IrfanView – Ten Things You Can Do with IrfanView and Ten More Things You Can Do with IrfanView. Since then, IrfanView has come a long way and has added tons of new features. So, I guess it’s time that I quickly jot down some more things you can do with IrfanView.

1. Paint: Yes. IrfanView includes a handy set of painting tools, which can be activated from the Edit menu (F12). Some of the especially nifty options include the ability to select a colour from image, change a colour present in the image, straighten the image, draw arrows and clone portions of the image (Clone Stamp).

2. Create Maximised Selection: In the Edit menu, there are several selection options. One of the most handy ones is “Create Maximized Selection (ratio:)”. This option is useful for quickly cropping images into pre-defined aspect ratios like 4:3 and 16:9.

3. Optical Character Recognition: IrfanView can even extract text present in images thanks to the OCR plugin by Kadmos. This feature can be accessed from the Options menu (F9).

4. Email Image: You can even directly e-mail your image from IrfanView. Of course, before you can do so you will need to specify the SMTP server to use. Once again, this feature can be accessed from the Options menu (Shift+M).

5. Image Border: IrfanView ships with more than a dozen fancy looking border effects, which are available under the Image menu.

6. Burn Image Slideshows to CD: In my earlier articles, I had mentioned that IrfanView can be used to create quick and dirty slideshows. However, that’s not all IrfanView does. It can even burn those image slideshows to a data disc or a video disc using the Nero Burning ROM plugin or the default Windows burning service. The “Burn Slideshow to CD” option can be accessed from the Slideshow dialogue box (W).

7. Capture Scrolling Windows: I had mentioned earlier that IrfanView can be used to take screenshots. Just go to Options–>Capture/Screenshot to trigger this module. Irfan Skiljan has been consistently improving this feature. Now, IrfanView can even capture a selection region of your screen and even scrolling windows. However, the later feature doesn’t always work as intended.

8. JPEG Lossless Operations: These features are tucked away under the Options menu. Using them you can rotate or crop images without sacrificing image quality.

9. Tag Images: After opening a JPEG image, select “Information” from the Image menu (I). Click on IPTC info in the dialog box that opens up. This would allow you to define image characteristics including keywords, which can be used by Windows search and other programs.

10. Save Multiple Images as PDF: This is possibly one of the best new features in IrfanView. Go to Options–>Multiple Images and select “Create Multipage PDF”. Once again, here IrfanView is effortlessly doing the task of a standalone application.

Download IrfanView (1.33 MB)
Download IrfanView Plugins (7.85 MB)
Version Reviewed: 4.27
Requirements: Windows All
License: Free for personal use