Windows 7 Software Compatibility Testing - IrfanView

IrfanView is an extremely useful image viewer and manager with a lot of features that allows you to visualize images, to play video and audio files, to carry out screen captures, presentations and a lot more. IrfanView's most outstanding characteristics are its agility, ease of use and low resources consuption. It puts functionality over beauty, being a clear example of a practical application that is beyond unnecessary flourishes and ornaments.

Another of its countless interesting functions is the capability to perform batch image conversion. IrfanView is capable of making the best of this task, since it brings a lot of configuration options that allows you to perform conversions that perfectly suit your needs. Among the basic image conversion options that you will be able to select there is the possibility to select output format, folder, quality, etc. and several more advanced options like to maintain the EXIF information, or to carry out all kinds of adjustments (rotation, greyscale conversion, to apply effects, contrast, brightness, saturation or range adjustments, etc.). To read a full review of its features, check this article at HandyWare and here.

Regarding novelties, recent changes and improvements in IrfanView's latest version (4.25) we can find its new screen capture option (Region capture), new color management options, support for OCR plugins, support for Nero and it also brings an improved full screen mode, for further reading on changes check here.

So I downloaded and installed IrfanView to test its integration and behavior under Microsoft's latest operative system, Windows 7.

Installation & First Run
Installing IrfanView was an easy and quick process consisting on 5 steps.
To start IrfanView installation it showed the Welcome window where I was prompted to choose shortcut creation, user availability, and destination folder, clicking the "Next" button took me to the "What's new…" window displaying all novelties concerning this version.

After that I was shown the file association selection windows. As you can see in the next screenshot it is a long long list.

In the next step I was offered to install Google toolbar for Internet Explorer along with IrfanView which I considered quite unnecessary as it seemed to keep no direct relation with the software being installed. But let's assume this is the price to keep IrfanView freeware.

Finally it said it was ready to install and the installation process itself took less than a second showing the "Installation successful!" window which offered to start the app immediately after.

Running IrfanView for the first time presented no trouble.

Functionality and Integration
So, in order to test basic features I opened several image files I keep on my HDD including different file formats.

To deepen the testing I edited one picture inserting text and some shapes, see the results:

Retouching another picture was also easy and straightforward and I can say that with a little of time you can get amazing results using the Paint dialog toolbox. To find it go Edit->Show Paint dialog or press F12 while having an image opened.

As you can see, no hitches, troubles or delays so far. Playing audio files brought the same results.

I can say that audio quality was more than acceptable. Regarding video playback, I got similar results: good video quality without hitches delays or incompatibilities.

Converting images was not different at all quick and easy, couldn't ask for more!!

IrfanView integrates perfectly with Windows 7 environment, even with the Aero features by showing accurate thumbnail preview of the interface and its content and in the context menus while browsing in Windows Explorer.

Bugs Report
This section is going to be left empty because no bugs hitches malfunctions or incompatibilities arouse during this testing nor could they be found searching the web in general or specialized forums in particular. Moreover there are really positive comments like this.

Final Words
In short, IrfanView is the "Swiss Army knife" for digital image editing and photo retouching, integrating multiple tools and features on a single interface, a powerful and solid solution for practical, simple and quick edition and management of all your multimedia content. Is all this not enough? Well, it's free for non commercial use.

Have you tried IrfanView on your Win 7 machine? If yes, please tell us what you think about it.