Don’t forget to check out the other two articles in this series – Ten More Things You Can Do with IrfanView and Still More Things You Can Do with IrfanView.
IrfanView by Irfan Skiljan initially started off as an simple image viewer but has grown into an extremely functional and powerful tool. However, even people who have been using it for a long time aren’t fully aware of what IrfanView is capable of doing. Here are 10 simple things that you can do with IrfanView.
1. View Multimedia Files : The most obvious feature. IrfanView can open an impressive number of file types. It is a true multimedia viewer with the ability to open not only images but also audio and video files. Click here for the full list of file formats supported by IrfanView.
2. Compress Images : Save your bandwidth with IrfanView. Compress images before you upload them on the web. While saving images check the “Show Options Dialogue” check box. Now you can set the quality of your output in the options dialogue box. Fiddle around with it till you manage to strike the right balance between quality and file size. I generally use 70% quality setting for jpg images. While saving png images you can use the PNGOUT plugin by Ken Silverman for effective compression.
3. Convert Images : With IrfanView you can save Images in as many as 20 file formats. Choose the one according to your requirements. I would recommend JPEG for most purposes, gif when you require transparency and PNG when quality matters. Avoid using JPEG format when the image contains a lot of text. Also be careful while using transparent png images on the web as Internet Explorer has a lot of issues with PNG images (more info)
You can even create high quality transparent icons from images using Irfan View.
4. Resize Images : Press Ctrl+R (or clicking Resize/Resample from Images Menu) to bring up the resizing tool included in IrfanView.
5. Crop Images : This is very simple. Simply select the area of the image you want to retain, press Ctrl+Y (or select “Crop Selection” option from Edit menu).
6. Extract all Frames from Animated GIF Images : Open the animated gif and then select “Extract All Frames” option from Options Menu.
7. Take Screenshots : You can use Prt Scn button to first copy the screenshot to clipboard and then paste it in Irfan View. Or you can use IrfanView’s inbuilt Screenshot Capture utility. Press C (or select “Capture/Screenshot” from Options menu) to bring it up. You set a custom hotkey, include or exclude cursor from the screen capture and automatically save the screenshot in a file. IrfanView can capture the entire screen, active window or the client area in the active window based on your requirements.
8. Add Text to Images : Open the image and select the area where you want the text to be added. Now press Ctrl+T (or select “Insert Text into Selection” from Edit Menu). You can either make the text background transparent or add custom colour.
9. Adjust Colour : IrfanView is capable of basic colour correction. Open the Image and select the area you want to process. Now press Shift+G (or select “Enhance Colours” option from Image Menu). You can change brightness, contrast, saturation, colour balance and gamma level. Press Shift+S (or select “Sharpen” from Image menu) to sharpen the image. You can also create a greyscale or negative of the image.
10. Remove Red Eye Effect : You don’t need expensive software to get rid of that pesky Red Eye Effect present in your photographs. Open the photograph in IrfanView. Select one eye and press Shift+Y (or select “Red Eye Reduction” form Image menu). Now repeat the process for the second eye.
In this guide I have only scratched the surface. The real power of IrfanView lies in its Batch Processing abilities. I will deal with that and more in my next article on IrfanView. You can ensure that you don’t miss out on that by subscribing to my RSS Feed.
Download IrfanView (1.1 MB)
Download All IrfanView Plugins (5.69 MB)
Requirements : 98/NT/2k/Me/XP/95/2003/Vista
Cost : Free for Personal Use
Visit IrfanView’s Homepage
[…] of the software could also be appreciated once you all seen it hands-on. Read the full article – Irfanview __________________ AffiliateBOT.com – Giving You No Reason Not To Earn! JOIN US TODAY AND WIN […]
Well except for the add text feature, I knew about all other features and use them regularly.
And if one installs the plugins pack for Irfanview it does so much more.
I just love Irfanview.
I used to use the initial version…not after that…
Irfan View is a pretty handy tool for picture edit, but I use microsoft office picture manager to do these things, although the features are lesser than Irfan view.
Irfan View is a pretty useful tool for picture edit and browse, but I prefer ACDSee, I used to its powerful functions and interface. for creating software tutorials and simulations I used to use demobuilder, it is powerful, but the output file only keeps 256 color depth. Now I’m using DemoCreator. it’s pretty cool, easy to use and more affordable than demobuilder.
Thanks for your input guys 🙂
Democreator really falls in a different category. It is somewhat similar to Wink and Camtasia.
Irfan View on the other hand is mainly an image viewer with a few options thrown in. It’s biggest advantage is that it is fast (loads in couple of seconds) and light.
[…] Ten Things You Can Do With IrfanView- by Pallab […]
IrfanView is my most favourite editor and I just love it. I use it mostly for resizing and converting images, other than just using it as a viewer. Good post here.
[…] Ten jobs you can do with IrfanView Image Viewer – Pallab […]
[…] Pallab has written a Ten Things you can do with Irfanview with more […]
The shortcut for Red-Eye reduction is [Shift]+[Y]. [CTRL]+[Y] crops the selection.
[…] Ten Ways of using IrfanView by Edward de Leau 2. Ten things you can do with IrfanView by Pallab 3. Just make sure that when you download IrfanView, then don’t forget to download […]
Thanks GreenEgg.
[…] month I blogged about “Ten Things You Can Do With IrfanView” (you should read my previous article on IrfanView before reading this). I covered basic […]
[…] use Irfanview (Freeware) for this purpose. I had covered this topic in one of my previous articles (Ten Things You Can Do With IrfanView). Here is a short guide to compressing images in IrfanView : JPEG/GIF Images : Open the Image and […]
Nice article. And for those of you who haven’t jumped on the Irfan team what are you waiting for?? It’s simple, it’s functional and it’s free!
[…] Pallab has written a Ten Things you can do with Irfanview with more […]
[…] Pallab has written a Ten Things you can do with Irfanview with more […]
Nice article about this great software “InfanView”. Light weight gem for photographers. If some one want heavy weight gem try “Gimp”.
InfanView is my all time tool for my site PhotoForPublic.com.
You can also use it for batch processing.
.-= Shaunak´s last blog ..26 November – Mumbai Terror Attacks, A year on. =-.
Yep. I covered batch processing in the 2nd part of the article.
Nice software. Thanks for the info.
Great review. Thanks for introducing InfanView, we use it on a regular basis now.
.-= Egadget guy´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Amazing free software for all photo editing needs.
[…] 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 […]