Comments for FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

Comment from Sam77 on 2012-02-11

2012-02-11T15:22:21Z

I, too, have been an Irfanview user for years. Leo's recent article had me look at FastStone and I like it, but I'm far from ready to switch. The beauty of FastStone is: I DON'T HAVE TO 'SWITCH' - I set Irfanview as my external program (in FastStone), and all I have to do is tap my 'e' key and I'm instantly viewing my picture in Irfanview, with those features not found in FastStone - Truly, the best of both programs!

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Comment from Dick Thomas on 2012-01-29

2012-01-29T17:55:02Z

Interesting item! I have been using ZoomBrowser, which came with my Canon camera.
Can anyone give me any comparison info between FastStone & ZoomBrowser???

Thanx

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Comment from Mark Tier on 2012-01-25

2012-01-25T11:50:48Z

Thanks -- and you can view PSDs which you can't do in the Windows viewer.

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Comment from Enderswolf on 2011-09-09

2011-09-09T19:35:31Z

Same here...used Firehand Ember for years and was saddened when it was no longer updated. I switched to Picasa for a while, but never liked it. FastStone is great! It comes real close to being Ember and only differs by adding features that make it better. Highly recommended. Thanks Leo!

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Kerry on 2011-06-16

2011-06-16T17:01:16Z

I too was a big fan of Firehand Ember, but have lost the installation execs. I have been using Irfan, and it's ok, but it looks like FastStone is what I'm going to start using exclusively. I had never come across FastStone in my searches, so thanks for pointing it out.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Michael on 2011-06-15

2011-06-15T14:31:39Z

I have been using this program for a few years and not only do I really like it I have come to rely on it.When I first got it I only used for a few things but the longer I had it I was amazed at all the things it can do.IMO its a no brainer as a gotta have pgm. "Try it you'll like it". Michael

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Mark J on 2011-06-15

2011-06-15T13:35:29Z

I'm an Irfan fan, but after reading this I'm going to check this one out. Thanks Leo.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from GREG JACKSON on 2011-06-15

2011-06-15T13:11:13Z

Thanks again, Leo. A needed improvement over Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Slowly, day by day I replace Windows features with better 3rd party programs. Smaller, usuable, easily configurable 3rd party programs. Life gets better day by day. Yep.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Ron on 2011-06-14

2011-06-15T03:46:56Z

Just to concur with your findings, I have been using FastStone for some time now and cannot praise it enough. Free but really worthy of a generous donation.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Jim de Graff on 2011-06-14

2011-06-14T17:41:02Z

One of the nicest features of FastStone is the ability to display up to four pictures in one window for comparison pictures. In a similar vein, I want to recommend the program VisiPics. It compares image files based on content. The "strictness" of the similarity can be selected. Similar images are displayed in a panel with one row for each image set. You can preview the matched images and determine which (if any) you want to delete. It's free. The VisiPics page is

http://www.visipics.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

If anyone has a recommendation for a similar (and free) utility I'd like to hear about it.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Christopher on 2010-11-23

2010-11-24T03:50:35Z

I am grateful to Leo for clearing up what happened to Firehand. I am sorry to hear that the software and website disappearance were due to the seemingly early death of its author. Equally I'm sorry to that the source code seems lost. For all those, me included, that were faithful consumers of all the various releases of the Ember line, it is really sad that no one will be able to carry it on. I treasure my legit copy of the last release and install on whatever computer I deem current, including my Win7 laptop, using WinXP Mode.

My most sincere, if much belated condolences to those Matthew left behind.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Jonathan Blair on 2010-08-22

2010-08-22T10:59:11Z

I have version 7.3.1 still going strong which is more recent than 7.1.1; sorry to hear he died. Thx for the update.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Digital Artist on 2010-04-27

2010-04-28T06:31:23Z

I found this while looking for an image viewer that would allow me to open an image in one window and a second image in a second window. To take it a bit further, I would like to "page" through the images in a folder in one window while keeping a reference image (from any folder) opened in the second window. Any suggestions?

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from beth on 2010-04-18

2010-04-19T06:40:07Z

with the sample to view, i can see that it only supports jpeg file. most of the pics i recovered are in png file. do you have one?

FastStone support many, many different image types, including PNG.

19-Apr-2010

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Ember Lover on 2010-03-24

2010-03-24T21:24:11Z

I just did a full review of all products and came to the same conclusion that you did, Leo. FastStone beats out other competitors to Ember but is not as good. I was hoping for an equivalent program that took advantage of multi-touch since I've now got a multi-touch monitor.
Note that Ember 7.1.1, which is the latest version, does work on Windows 7 (64 bit) except for trying to open the new Libraries folders. I've been using it for months now and have used a variety of batch and individual file functions with no problem.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Jake on 2009-05-15

2009-05-15T12:34:00Z

firehand ember has been my favorite image viewer for many years -- super-fast and no bloat. i'd always suggested it to my colleagues. thanks leo for recommending faststone. i'm delighted with the features and performance so far and glad to be using a supported product. i'll definitely be offering the author a donation -- and a few suggestions! [j]

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from John on 2009-04-18

2009-04-18T12:28:57Z

I too have used fully licensed firehand products for MANY years and I too am sad to see my favorite image viewer no longer being upgraded or produced. The authors of it were very talented and will be missed. I will definitely give FastStone a try.
--John

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Morgan Schweers on 2008-12-06

2008-12-06T10:55:12Z

Greetings,
...wow.

I know this article is about FastStone, but thank you for the info on Firehand Ember. It was (and is!) my favorite image viewer and manager ever. I have a license for it, and I treasure it. There's all kinds of great touches, like an image scaling algorithm that makes even VERY scaled up images still look very good. It's blazing fast, and perfect for my needs.

If you know where to download the last version of Firehand Ember, I'd love to know. I have various versions, but I was an idiot and didn't save the download for the most recent of them years ago when I downloaded it, and that makes it hard when changing computers.

I wondered what happened to the company, and while I imagined that they didn't make enough money due to a lack of exposure, I never imagined the truth.

Thanks again; while I didn't know the author personally, I also count it a sad loss to the software industry.

-- Morgan

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Ziggie on 2008-09-09

2008-09-09T14:38:36Z

I think this program is really neat, but I stick with Irfanview because of it's support for EPS and AI images.

Well, in theory. I'm still trying to get that part to work.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Ron on 2008-09-02

2008-09-02T21:08:15Z

I use Irfanview, which seems to have all of the same functions. If anyone uses both, please tell me which you prefer, and why.

I found FastStone's UI more intuitive. IrfanView always annoyed me in some way - not displaying pictures zoomed when I wanted it to, and just not generally obvious how to make it do what I wanted. I know many people are happy with IrfanView.

-Leo

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Barry on 2008-09-02

2008-09-02T20:45:55Z

To the person below or anybody having freezing or stability problems:

Click on the link that Leo provided, called 'FastStone Image Viewer' - it will take you to the FastStone home page.

Under 'Products', click on the 'download' link. You will then see 4 different versions of the ImageViewer. (ie: exe, exe (site 2) zip and portable).

Click on the 'portable' download link to download a portable zip file called 'FSViewer35.zip'. Once downloaded on your PC, unzip the file and it will create a new folder with the same name as the zip file.

Inside are ALL the portable files. Place the unzipped program folder anywhere on your PC or flash drive.

The program is now yours! With no-installation, there are NO files scattered in your Windows System folders.

Since the program is PORTABLE, this *should solve all your freezing and stability problems. (*Depending [of course] on the stability of your entire PC).

It works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, both 32bit and 64 bit systems. By the way, the viewer does what the 'Resizer' does and much much more. You only need this one program: FastStoneViewer! It's the BEST!

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Comment from Kathy Dennis on 2008-09-02

2008-09-02T18:52:34Z

Looking at this for my husband to use, and it's frozen 3 times in a few minutes. Any stability problems? Do I need to download extra software for some of the features?

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Nelson Webber on 2008-09-02

2008-09-02T14:46:40Z

Hi there. I've been using FastStone Image Viewer for several years and I do like it very much. FastStone makes several great programs and one I use fairly often is FastStone Photo Resizer. It will resize your photos (obviously) but it can do so much more! You can use it to convert, rename, manipulate, crop, rotate, etc. You can even add text or a watermark to your photo. An added plus is that it will allow you to do all of the above and more in batch mode. It's fast, efficient and it doesn't suck up a lot of memory while it's running. This combined with the Image Viewer pretty much give you all the basic editing tools you're likely to need.

In short, FastStone anything rocks!

Nelson

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from James Moberg on 2008-09-01

2008-09-01T16:30:42Z

I've been using this for a while. The slideshow feature is awesome! I was going to use PowerPoint or a dedicated slideshow program for a 20 Year Reunion presentation... but I opted to use FastStone Image Vier's built-in slideshow feature. The transition effects are nice and it can automatically display the image name as a caption.

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

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Comment from Barry on 2008-08-31

2008-08-31T18:29:30Z

Incredible program! Don't forget it plays music and videos. Click the area with drop-down menu that says "Images". There you will find Images, Videos or Both. Play music while watching a slideshow. You'll love the program!

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A comment on: FastStone Image Viewer - An easy to use tool to view, organize and manipulate images

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
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