IrfanView 4.2 released

[G M Fude]

This update slipped by me as it's been out a month or so, however I don't see any posts about it here so I'll bring it to the attention of Irfan Skiljan's loyal fans.

- Basic Unicode support added (Properties->Misc 1, thanks to Christophe Paris!)
- New zoom options; improved relative zoom (Properties->Viewing)
- Thumbnails can be sorted manually using drag/drop
- GIF animations can be played in fullscreen/slideshow mode
- New Advanced batch options: Fine rotation, Blur, Median ...
- Option to show TIF Annotations created by Kodak Imaging (Properties->Viewing)
- New JPG save option: Set file size (PlugIn: thanks to Lucian Sabo)
- New save menu: Save for Web (PlugIn: thanks to Lucian Sabo)
- New thumbnails options to disable or configure info text on mouse over
- New edit menu: Auto crop borders (remove outside lines/rows of same color)
- New feature in Canvas dialog: negative border sizes are allowed (border crop)
- New option in Capture dialog: Capture desktop on current monitor only
- New options in Custom selection dialog: Set custom ratio; Save values
- New slideshow option (window mode): Set window position
- New Fullscreen display options: Fit to screen width/height (Hotkeys: 5/6)
and many, many more.

CNET is one place to get it.

[mithrandir]

Thanks for the heads up. I missed the upgrade as well.

[k100d]

i've been using it for about a week now. best thing is that it now recognizes the orientation flag on JPEGs, particularly those extracted out using Pentax Photo Browser

[Nico]

I really like the IrfanView. It displays true and accurate colors straight from the raw files. Raw colors on Picassa is the worst. CS3 is reasonable but little soft in my opinion..
Do you know how to make the IrfanView perform the auto rotate? It reads Exif data and auto rotate when available is enabled but does not rotate the image. Thanks.

[k100d]

on my K100D, the orientation is manual, i have to have your raw file rotated on the camera and then it will show up the right way. however the thumbnails don't have the correct rotation :S

[pop4]

I'm still on 4.00, I didn't seem to like 4.10. Perhaps I might check out how 4.20 goes.

I love IrfanView, I pretty much use it for all image viewing and browsing purposes on my computer.

[LaRee]

Thank you very much for the heads up Steve. I keep irfanview on my machine to use mostly for resizing photos at panachallenge.com. I help run the challenges and when someone doesn't know how to resize their photos (or are too lazy?) I resize them to fit the proper parameters. Irfanview is a quick compact program that does a good job. It loads in a heartbeat (love that!), unlike other larger processing programs like pspx2 or photoshop.
Now with the new resizing options it's made my job much easier.
Thanks again Steve.

[furby]

Does this version save the exif info after converting to jpeg? That's one of the things that I really wanted in the last version.

[daleroy]

Does it support colour profiles?

[todd]

Don't know about the profiles, but I like irfanview and was hoping 4.2 would fix the bug where the raw batch conversion to jpeg doesn't keep the exif data. In some cases I like to batch convert all my raw files with irfanview... I stay away from paywares and like the interpretation from irfanview better than picasa as it seems more accurate... I attached a conversion comparison below, and these images were also resized... the irfanview result is on the left...

Once i have my batch converted copies I then do manual conversions of my keepers with ufraw and gimp, and then compare/contrast with the batch converted copies to see where I am getting my best results. In some cases I keep the irfanview interpretations and edit those further in gimp, and in other cases I prefer the ufraw results and go with those. (by the way, in the case of this comparison picture below I went with the ufraw result)

When I discovered the bug of the irfanview batch conversion losing the exif data, I went and read on the Irfanview forums that the developer doesn't have any plans to deal with this bug, so I went looking for a solution, and found Exiftool (command line), and it's essential interface for dummies like me, called Exiftoolgui. These tools allow me to easily (once I figured out the process) export and reimport the exif data.

Irfanview/Irfanview plugins: IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

Exiftool/Exiftoolgui: HBx Hobbypage (read the instructions in the included readme for setting up the gui, which simply involves removing then "-k" command from the filename of exiftool.exe so the exiftoolgui can use it)

Here are some basic steps, roughly stated, assuming the programs mentioned above have been installed/configured:
1. Batch convert images in Irfanview (open the first one then batch conversion options are in the File menu)
2. Using Exiftoolgui, select all raw images you want to export the exif data from, and select 'export metadata into mie files' (and select the exif data boxes on the next screen).
3. Using Exiftoolgui, select all the converted jpeg files and then select the 'restore jpeg metadata' option and pick the first mie file of the lot of exported files. If it works, it will update the jpegs quickly. If something isn't right, the gui application will likely hang up on you.

[pop4]

Originally Posted by furby

Does this version save the exif info after converting to jpeg? That's one of the things that I really wanted in the last version.

Just checked, and nope, it doesn't.

I do love the fact that there is now Unicode support