IrfanView — The Complete Guide: A Fast Image Viewer With Batch Convert and Resize
IrfanView is a small, very fast image viewer for Windows that supports many formats. Beyond viewing, it offers batch convert, resize and rename, scanning, printing, slideshows and basic editing — tools that save time when preparing hundreds of site photos for a report.
IrfanView
Irfan Skiljan
A fast image viewer with batch convert, resize and rename — for sets of site photos and scanned drawings.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Fast viewing — move between images with almost no waiting.
- Batch convert and resize — hundreds of images in one operation.
- Batch rename — consistent names for a series of photos.
- Scanning and printing — scan documents and drawings straight into the program.
- Basic editing — crop, rotate and simple corrections.
Licence: who may use it for free
IrfanView is free only for private, non-commercial use at home, for educational use — schools, universities, museums and libraries — and for charity or humanitarian organisations. Use at a place of business or for commercial purposes, including an engineering office, requires a paid licence: US$18 or EUR 15 per user, perpetual. Students can use it free; an office needs to buy a licence or choose an open alternative.
Related tools
For a cross-platform alternative under similar licence terms — XnView MP. For open-source batch convert and resize, free for businesses too — Converseen or ImageMagick.
XnView MP
XnSoft
A cross-platform image browser and batch converter supporting more than 500 formats, including RAW and HEIC.
Get it from the vendor
Converseen
Faster3ck
Convert and resize hundreds of images at once — prepare site photos and figures for reports, including PDF to images.
Get it from the vendor
ImageMagick
ImageMagick Studio LLC
A command-line suite for processing and converting images in more than 200 formats — automate resizing, cropping and conversion.
Get it from the vendorFastStone Image Viewer
FastStone Soft
An image browser and editor with side-by-side compare, batch convert and rename and annotation — free for personal and educational use.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
IrfanView is a fast viewer with very useful batch tools. For home and study it is free; in an office you need an inexpensive licence.