Printable View
You might be familar with the image viewer provide din Windows. When you double click on any image a blue background application loads up with some basic functions below for zooming. I had found that this does not support gif files. Why that so. The gif file do not work under preview mode. I need some good image software which can show me preview and let me manage multiple images at a single time.
It is not true that gif files are not supported in Windows photo viewer. It can view gif files but due to some reason they motion does not works. That is due to the design and you can do nothing in that. The image is shown and the motion does not work there. For that you can use any web brower like firefox or internet explorer. Just right click and then choose open with in that.
I think the gif file can be preview but the animation does not work in Windows Photo viewer. For that best tool which I will suggest you is Picasa. Picasa zoom feature allows you to see dynamic whole album and it is strictly similar to that of Photoshop Album, but much faster. There are tons of features provided in this tool for image managing and editing also.
Windows Photo Viewer just offers you a basic support on image preview. You can see almost all types of image formats in that and even it is possible to see slideshow of the images. And if you need a bit advance viewer for that then you can choose XNView. XNView is a freeware program that allows for incremental changes in images. Its main advantage is to recognize a very large number of file formats over 100.
I am using FastStone Image Viewer. It is the best image manager I found. FastStone Image Viewer draws especially its game by its interface for viewing photos, which allows quick access to the panels by touching the edges of the screen including a touch panel that puts all the necessary tools like rotate, resize, improvements, or red-eye removal. So that this a bit better than Windows photo viewer.
You view the image thumbnails directly in the Windows Explorer or inside the folder where images are located. I use ACDSee. This is a popular image manager where you can preview and edit the images as per your need. It has the ability to add keywords to pictures, share photos on services like Flickr and publish them on a blog. you can also directly create slide show here with effects and add soundtrack.
If you are using Windows XP then Windows Live Photo Gallery is quiet a suitable tool other than Windows Photo Viewer. There is one more tool provided in Windows for much other work which is called as Microsoft Picture Manager. Windows Live Photo Gallery provides an interface to look also very similar to Windows Vista. The new thing it brings for you is integration with Windows Live services.