Photo Browser is a powerful image viewer, once a commercial product but now freeware.
The program opens by displaying the first image in your Pictures folder. There are no toolbars, menus or anything else to get in the way, but if you hover the mouse over the window then back/ forward/ play (slideshow) buttons appear (or you can use left/ right arrow and similar keyboard shortcuts).
File format support is relatively basic at JPG, JP2, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIF/TIFF, TGA, PCX, ICO. Although Photo Browser makes up for this by handling a range of RAW formats: DNG, CRW, CR2, RAW, NEF, PEF, RAF, SRF, SR2, ARW.
Right-clicking the window allows you to change View Mode ("fit to window" or "original size plus a zoom factor"), launch the magnifier (zoom in on any area of the image), rotate the image left or right, or apply a few editing options (resize, crop, tilt, and tweak brightness/ contrast/ gamma/ saturation/ sharpness).
A thumbnail browser and favourites system makes it easy to navigate your hard drive.
The browser's "Extras" menu adds a couple of other bonus features. Batch processing tools resize, rename or add watermarks to your selected photos, while the Export option creates PDF-based contact sheets to help keep them organised.
Version 3.2.1 (Changelog):
- Bugfix release: fixed a null reference exception and a memory leak in the GongShell.dll library
Verdict:
Photo Browser's interface isn't always comfortable to use, but its wide RAW file format support is a plus, the editing tools are reasonable and we like the PDF contact sheets, too.
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