Robert Irvine recommends new programs that won’t cost you a thing
IMAGE VIEWERHandy Viewer 2.0
www.snipca.com/49155
What you need: Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11
As big fans of IrfanView and FastStone Image Viewer, we approached this new image viewer with a degree of scepticism – what could it possibly offer that those programs don’t? So we were pleasantly surprised to find that Handy Viewer packs lots of useful features into its lightweight, easy-to-use interface. Although this is version 2.0, it was only made publicly available at the start of this year and has already made several improvements.
Most notably, unlike the programs mentioned above, Handy Viewer offers tabbed browsing, so you can open and switch between dozens of photos – just click the View menu and choose Tabs View. It also goes beyond the basic editing tools you find in most image viewers (such as crop, rotate and colour correction) to offer all kinds of creative effects and enhancements.
In the Image menu, you’ll find options for removing red-eye from photos, converting them to black-and-white, and inverting their colours. But it’s the Effects Browser that really impressed us, as it lets you do everything from tinting, blurring and warping images to applying mosaic, pencil-sketch and reflection effects. Further options are available in the Paint menu, including the ability to erase, clone and retouch elements of pictures, and add text and shapes.
Handy Viewer supports more than 150 image and video formats (though you can’t edit the latter), and lets you browse folders in a ‘tree’ view, similar to FastStone’s, and as a slideshow – like in IrfanView.
Its main flaw is that it doesn’t label its toolbar options or display tooltips when you hover your cursor over them. You can either guess what the buttons do, read Handy Viewer’s online manual at www.snipca.com/49156 or access tools through its menus instead.
When you install Handy Viewer, it offers to set itself as your default program for image formats, but you can untick this option if you’re unsure.
1Handy Viewer offers several ways to explore images stored on your PC, including a tabbed-browsing view. Click ‘Tabs View’ in the View menu, then click the File menu and choose Open to select pictures to open in separate tabs.
2To browse folders of images in a tree-style view, click the button in the top-right corner of the main window or choose Tree View in the View menu. Select a folder to display its contents on t
