I've been using it for a long time! What I found useful is its batch conversion of my digicam pictures into smaller sizes for my website albums! Comes which sharpening too. Works fast.
Indeed. Even with the whole set of plugins installed, it's still ultra-quick and does everything you want and (just as important) nothing more.
An annoying thing in WindowsXP is its insistence on adding the Preview action to image files to link them to XP's built-in Image Viewer - which is decent, but no more. The problem is that IrfanView knows how to set the Open action to itself, but Preview remains the default action. Some manual action in the Folder Options is necessary, which is always a drag.
I've used a number of different photo managers over the past years, including JASC, Adobe, ACDSystems and Irfan. Irfan is great as a free image viewer/converter on my work PC, but I must say that my new favorite is Adobe's Photo Album 2.0 package. The three things that I like most:
- It uses the EXIF standard to capture notes and to organize images. With EXIF, you can create web albums that pull the image info (notes, date, etc.) without the need for a separate data source (DB, XML, or proprietary).
- It has a really neat calendar inferface. You can look at a month view and see a thumb nail on each day that you have pictures from.
- Best part, it integrates with HotMail so now, my wife can send her own pictures from Photo Album and have them resized and attached to HotMail without any help from me!
Of course, I had been using JASC products for a long time so I bought their album product at Christmas without giving Adobe Photo Album much of a preview. Once I gave it a real try, it was a no-brainer.
I agree with Dejan, I prefer XnView.
Maybe viewer is not as fast as Irfanview's one (anyway faster that ACDSee), but includes lots of features, and an amazing file browser.