FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER PART 1
SUPER FAST PHOTO SELECTION AND EDITING
These days there are a lot of programs and apps you can use to edit photos. Alongside paid professional software, I have been using the program FastStone Image Viewer for years. The software is free, easy to use and has a lot of useful and smart features.
I won’t explain all the features, but below are some handy tips and functionalities you can use for organizing, selecting and editing your (vacation) photos.
Read below about photo editing with FastStone Image Viewer and super easy and fast photo selection.
In Part 2, you will read about adjusting the time stamp of photos and super fast renaming of file names of your photos.
FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER
DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL
Download the free software FastStone Image Viewer from the FastStone Image Viewer website here.
Installing the program is fairly easy. All you have to do is click ‘next’ each time, after which your installation is automatic.
A more detailed guide on how to install the program can be found here.
Once you have the program installed you will probably see very small views of your photos. You can change it to a larger size:
Go to Settings > click on Settings > Go to ‘Thumbnail Browser’ tab > Adjust ‘Thumbnail Size’ to ‘260×195’.
Check out some super useful features below that I will explain step by step.
FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER
EASY PHOTO SELECTION
FastStone Image Viewer is super fast at loading photos. If you double-click on a photo and then move to the next photo using the arrows on your keyboard, FastStone Image Viewer has loaded your next photo right away. With the standard Windows photo program, loading the next photo often takes a while, but with FastStone it’s super fast!
In addition, your photo is displayed in full-screen mode. With [Esc] ends the full-screen view and you are back in the overview with all your photos.
Another super useful feature is photo comparison. You select 2, 3 or up to 4 images that look alike. FastStone places these photos side by side so that you have a good overview at a glance and can choose the best one.
This works as follows:
1. Select the photos you want to compare (up to 4, and hold down the [Ctrl] key while selecting).
2. Then click the button below (blue squares with tree inside) to compare all the photos.
The selected photos now appear side by side, but are zoomed in at 100%.
Now click the button next to 100%, as shown.
You can now see your selected photos in full, side by side and compare the photos properly. This way you can more easily choose which photo(s) to keep and include in your photo book, and which photo(s) to delete.
FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER
EDITING PHOTOS
FastStone Image Viewer is more advanced than many other free editing software. If you double-click on a photo and then move your mouse to the top, sides or bottom of the image, various menus appear.
One of the super useful editing features can be found both on the left and bottom sides. This is the exposure feature, which you can adjust using the ‘sun’ icon. This option gives you the chance to edit underexposed or overexposed areas of your photos.
If you have a photo with a lot of dark areas, you can lighten these dark areas without making the well-exposed areas lighter. You will then get a photo that is well exposed overall.
Below you can see the difference between making the entire photo lighter (usually possible with standard free editing software) or just making the dark parts lighter (possible with FastStone Image Viewer).
As you can see in the photo edited with standard software, the rocks are now clearly visible, but the canyon floor is lost because it becomes too light.
In the photo edited with Faststone (rightmost photo), you can ensure that only the dark parts of the photo are lightened, thereby keeping the bottom visible and achieving proper exposure throughout the entire photo.
Original photo
Dark parts are not visible. Light parts are visible though.
Edited with standard software
Dark parts are visible. Light parts are not visible.
Photo edited with FastStone
Both dark and light areas are well visible.
You can edit the underexposed (but also overexposed) parts via the sun icon.
Play with the “slider” of Underexposure to ensure that the underexposed areas are lightened. Don’t overdo it; if you make the underexposed parts too bright, it will look artificial.
Once you click OK and scroll (or right arrow) to the next/other picture, the software asks if you want to save the change.
Click “Yes” and then save under a different name, so that the original photo is always preserved.
You can also adjust colors, among other things, and there are many other editing options within FastStone. I won’t explain this further now, but of course you can play with it and try it out for yourself. In any case, always save your changes under a different name so you will always have the original photo if something went wrong.
