Picture Viewer

When it comes to the digital realm, a perpetual race between speed and convenience is held with each update pushed to apps and operating systems. One example that tries to succeed on both fronts is Picture Viewer, a swift way to navigate through your photo collection without having to sacrifice performance in the process.

Launching the app summons a straightforward window featuring a top-placed, quintessential command ribbon whose drop-down menus house core features, such as a file picker for easily navigating to the desired folder and commencing the viewing experience. Underneath, a compact function bar allows users to perform light changes that include quickly rotating pictures intended to be taken in a landscape format that were erroneously rendered in a portrait aspect ratio, or vice-versa.

The left side includes what is arguably the program’s flagship feature, a folder navigation panel in a tree-style view that lets you instantly jump to the desired directory and move between various locations when transferring files or comparing them. Picking a folder lists the automatically detected image files in the bottom left section, for a cleaner look at the available pictures, while the selected photo can be maximized on the right side, using controls that scale them concomitantly with resizing the app window.

A second tab on the left panel allows users to bookmark images in a fashion similar to Windows’ Favorites section in the Quick Access menu of the File Explorer. As such, instead of hunting down a particular item in the navigation menu, one can save it to the Bookmark section for later use. To find out more details about the context in which a photo was taken, from the camera used for capturing it to descriptive tags that can help the filtering process, an EXIF window can be spawned from the properties menu.

Finally, while those with keyboard-focused workflows can swiftly copy to clipboard, adjust the size of the image preview section or rename files using dedicated hotkeys to save time when organizing their files, an addition to the available shortcuts in the form of being able to scroll to zoom and use the cursor to pan would tremendously increase the overall usability of the app.

Whether Microsoft’s latest version of the Photos program is not quick enough when opening files, or the preview pane in Windows’ File Explorer is too limiting, Picture Viewer may be a good alternative considering its lightweight and portable form factor that packs a useful array of features meant to speed up your workflow.