Image viewing software
Windows Photo Viewer
(formerly
Windows Picture and Fax Viewer
)
[1]
is an
image viewer
included with the
Windows NT
family of operating systems. It was first included with
Windows XP
and
Windows Server 2003
under its former name. It was temporarily replaced with
Windows Photo Gallery
in
Windows Vista
,
[2]
but was reinstated in
Windows 7
.
[3]
This program succeeds
Imaging for Windows
. In
Windows 10
and
Windows 11
, it is
deprecated
in favor of a
Universal Windows Platform app
called
Photos
, although it can be brought back with a registry tweak.
[4]
Windows Photo Viewer can show individual pictures, display all pictures in a folder as a
slide show
, reorient them in 90° increments, print them either directly or via an online print service, send them in e-mail or
burn
them to a disc.
[3]
[5]
[6]
Windows Photo Viewer supports images in
BMP
,
JPEG
,
JPEG XR
(formerly HD Photo),
PNG
,
ICO
,
GIF
and
TIFF
file formats.
[7]
Features
[
edit
]
Compared to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, changes have been made to the graphical user interface in Windows Photo Viewer.
[
citation needed
]
Whereas Windows Picture and Fax Viewer uses
GDI+
,
[8]
Windows Photo Viewer uses
Windows Imaging Component
(WIC)
[9]
and takes advantage of
Windows Display Driver Model
.
[10]
Although
GIF
files are supported in Windows Photo Viewer, whereas Windows Picture and Fax Viewer displays
animated GIFs
, Windows Photo Viewer only displays the first frame.
[11]
Windows Picture and Fax Viewer was also capable of viewing multi-page TIFF files, (except those that employ JPEG compression)
[12]
as well as annotating the TIFF files.
[13]
[14]
Windows Photo Viewer, on the other hand, has added support for JPEG XR file format
[7]
and
ICC profiles
.
[15]
[16]
Bugs
[
edit
]
Some devices and Android phones are able to take photos and screenshots and have a custom ICC Profile being applied to said pictures, however Windows Photo Viewer will display an error when trying to display the picture with the message "Windows Photo Viewer can't display this picture because there might not be enough memory available on your computer." when an unknown ICC Profile is detected. There is a patch available on GitHub that fixes this behavior.
[17]
Also, regarding ICC Profiles, when a custom Display ICC Profile is applied after installing a Monitor driver, Windows Photo Viewer wrongly shifts the picture hue to a warm tint. This feature is intentional but is greatly exaggerated. This can be fixed by removing or replacing the Display ICC Profile.
[18]
In Windows 10 and Windows 11
[
edit
]
In support documentation, Microsoft states that Windows Photo Viewer is not part of Windows 10, and a user still has it only if they upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1.
[19]
However, it can be brought back in Windows 10 and Windows 11 with registry editing, by adding the appropriate entries ("capabilities") in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Photo Viewer\Capabilities\FileAssociations. It is also possible to restore the Preview option in the context menu.
Windows Photo Viewer itself remains built-in into Windows and is set by default for
TIFF
files with the extensions ".tif" and ".tiff".
[4]
[20]
[21]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]