# Simple Photo Viewer for Windows?



## Good24 (May 17, 2015)

What do people use or recommend for a simple photo viewer for Windows? (I'm on Windows 7.) Windows Explorer does not provide previews for RAW images but does for jpegs. For Jpegs you also get meta data at the bottom of the screen, which is nice. But I usually shoot only RAW (and only sometimes shoot RAW+Jpeg) so this doesn't always help.

Windows Photo Viewer is even worse, only shows Jpegs but no meta data (which is available if you hit alt+enter but too many steps for me). 

I use Lightroom to edit photos but I just want to look at them quickly, including exif data / meta data, while the files are sitting in a folder in Windows, before I import to Lightroom. I feel like there are probably many options available but I am in the dark here, any thoughts or suggestions appreciated!


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## candyman (May 17, 2015)

Good24 said:


> What do people use or recommend for a simple photo viewer for Windows? (I'm on Windows 7.) Windows Explorer does not provide previews for RAW images but does for jpegs. For Jpegs you also get meta data at the bottom of the screen, which is nice. But I usually shoot only RAW (and only sometimes shoot RAW+Jpeg) so this doesn't always help.
> 
> Windows Photo Viewer is even worse, only shows Jpegs but no meta data (which is available if you hit alt+enter but too many steps for me).
> 
> I use Lightroom to edit photos but I just want to look at them quickly, including exif data / meta data, while the files are sitting in a folder in Windows, before I import to Lightroom. I feel like there are probably many options available but I am in the dark here, any thoughts or suggestions appreciated!




Windows Explorer (not the IE) does support view of RAW-thumbnails as Extra Large Icons. They are not huge but big enough to recognize difference between 2 or more photos.
Furtermore I use ZoomBrowser that came with Canon software in the past. It supports jpeg and RAW (and more) and is a fullscreen photobrowser. I am not sure if you can still download it from the canon website. It was included on the CD's of older cameras.


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## climber (May 17, 2015)

Adobe Bridge


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## tolusina (May 17, 2015)

Is this what you seek?

Microsoft Camera Codec Pack (6.3.9721.0)


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## Jim Saunders (May 17, 2015)

Irfanviewer explicitly supports colour management and RAWs (presumably via the codec above) and can be used simply without getting into its more sophisticated features.

Jim


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## Good24 (May 17, 2015)

based on candyman's comment I looked into the Windows Explorer option a bit more ... found that codec, downloaded and installed it, restarted, etc. And now it...basically works. If I double-click a RAW file it opens into windows Photo Gallery. Once I did that, Windows Explorer started magically showing thumbnails for RAW files. So that part works great. However, it still won't show exif data at the bottom of the screen. I can see the exif data menu and it does show file name and file size. but then there are a bunch of other fields that simply say "add text" and do not have a value. 

This is the case for all CR2/RAW files even when I also shot jpg and when I click on the jpg version I do get f/stop and ISO and exposure values etc. Also when I launch a RAW file it opens in Windows Photo Gallery; I'm able to see the image fine but no exif data. :-\


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