Photo viewers on Windows for most users do not cause anything but a skeptical smile, because many prefer to use third-party software developments, the tools of which are much wider than those offered by operating systems. But is everything so bad? Apparently, not everyone has a complete understanding of embedded Windows applications. Let us dwell on them in more detail.
Windows 7 or later photo viewer
First, consider the tool that is present as the default application in the seventh modification of the system. The program belongs to the category of the simplest, it fully corresponds to its name.
The fact is that this is just a photo viewer on Windows systems, and not an application with the ability to organize custom collections or primitive editing.
Using the classic utility, you can change the size and orientation of the image (rotation by an angle multiple of 90 °), delete the image, write data to disk or send by e-mail. There is no need to talk about any sorting of files, about changing color schemes, saturation, and other important parameters. But it is this program that is lightweight, runs immediately and does not consume system resources.
How to call the windows 7 viewer?
You can call this Windows photo viewer in three ways: through the Start menu, through the context menu when you try to open an image file, and through the Run console. The third method is the most cumbersome and is intended mainly for those cases when the tool itself and the context menu are absent for some reason.
The main feature of this applet is that it does not have an executable EXE file to start, and its main component in the form of a dynamic library is in the System32 system directory, it is opened exclusively by rundll32 tools. Thus, to call the viewer, you must enter the appropriate command, specify the full path to the library and additional parameters (for example, viewing in full screen mode).
The full line will look as shown in the image above (the rundll32.exe command is entered first, and after it, the full path using the Windows folder on drive “C” is indicated with a space).
Office viewer
Another standard photo viewer on Windows can be found in some versions of the office suite. It is called MS Picture Manager. This application was present in all releases of the "Office" until 2013, but then the developers for unknown reasons decided to remove it from the main package, although you can install it as a separate program now (the distribution can be downloaded from the Microsoft website).
The application's capabilities are also severely limited, but there are many more than in the standard program. These tools are designed for primitive actions with color gamut, saturation, contrast or the organization of graphic libraries. However, users are not attracted to this at all, but a built-in tool for automatically adjusting image parameters in one click.
Windows 10 Photo Viewer
A similar tool in the tenth modification of the system in the form of the default Photos application has undergone quite strong changes for the better.
In addition to the actual viewing, it became possible to organize custom collections by adding appropriate folders to the list, organizing slide shows, drawing, creating video with music and more. And still, many users complain that the program itself looks somewhat abstruse and inconvenient (although this is actually not so), and try to return the old classic application, despite the fact that its tools are too scarce.
How to return the classic application for viewing pictures?
Actually, returning the standard Windows 7 photo viewer to the tenth version of the system is not so difficult.
To do this, in the options menu or in the classic "Control Panel", you must use the default program section, select the application in the list, then mark all types of graphic files and save the installed options.
After that, through the PCM menu, on the image file, select the "Open with ..." option, specify the Windows photo viewer as an application, and select the checkbox next to the program’s permanent use item for the selected file type.
Setting file associations
But what if the Windows Photo Viewer doesn’t open the images, even with the association with graphic formats in the basic settings? In this case, you will have to turn to the registry editor (regedit), in the HKLM branch, through the SOFTWARE and Microsoft sections, go down to the Windows Photo Viewer directory, in which there is a FileAssociations subkey.
To the right of the window, you will need to create string parameters for each registered type of graphic files, specify the extension as the parameter in the edit window, and enter PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff in the value field.
Application Update Questions
Finally, a few words about updating photo viewers. As a rule, even installing all kinds of update packages for the described toolkit has absolutely nothing to do with it, which equally applies to attempts to manually update by downloading new versions of programs. This does not give a result. However, a peculiar update of Windows 10 photo viewers is made only in one case - when upgrading the system version (for example, when installing Anniversary Update or Creators Update packages), even with the addition of new programs and features.