It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

IrfanView is trying to create new and/or interesting features in its own way, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 7+ years).

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.
One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.
The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.


Some IrfanView features:

• Many supported file formats
• Multi language support
• Thumbnail/preview option
• Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
• Toolbar skins option
• Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
• Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
• Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
• Fast directory view (moving through directory)
• Batch conversion (with image processing)
• Multipage TIF editing
• File search
• Email option
• Multimedia player
• Print option
• Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
• Change color depth
• Scan (batch scan) support
• Cut/crop
• IPTC editing
• Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
• Capturing
• Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
• Lossless JPG rotation
• Many hotkeys
• Many command line options
• Many PlugIns
• Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like "I Agree" or "Evaluation expired"
• No registry changes without user action/permission!
• and much much more