Windows Photo Viewer (formerly Windows Picture and Fax Viewer) is an

image viewer An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical images; it can often handle various graphics file formats. Such software usually renders the image according to properties of the display such as color depth, ...

included with the

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

family of operating systems. It was first included with

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and Windows Server 2003 under its former name. It was temporarily replaced with

Windows Photo Gallery Windows Photo Gallery (formerly known as Windows Live Photo Gallery) is a discontinued image organizer, raster graphics editor, photo editor and photo sharing, photo sharing program. It is a part of Microsoft's Windows Essentials software suite ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, but was reinstated in

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

. This program succeeds

Imaging for Windows Imaging for Windows from ''Global 360'' is document imaging software. Earlier versions of Imaging for Windows were available for Windows 95-98/Me/NT/2000. Global360 Imaging for Windows is the upgrade to this Imaging software, which was discontinue ...

. In

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

, it is deprecated in favor of a

Universal Windows Platform app Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps (formerly Windows Store apps and Metro-style apps) are Application software, applications that can be used across all compatible Microsoft Windows devices, including personal computers (PCs), tablets, smar ...

called

Photos A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created ...

, although it can be brought back with a registry tweak. Windows Photo Viewer can show individual pictures, display all pictures in a folder as a

slide show A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images (Presentation slide, slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals o ...

, reorient them in 90° increments, print them either directly or via an online print service, send them in e-mail or burn them to a disc. Windows Photo Viewer supports images in BMP,

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

, JPEG XR (formerly HD Photo), PNG,

ICO is an action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, released for the PlayStation 2 video game console in 2001 and 2002 in various regions. It was designed and directed by Fumito U ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

and

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

file formats.Understanding Picture File Types

Evolution

Compared to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, changes have been made to the graphical user interface in Windows Photo Viewer. Whereas Windows Picture and Fax Viewer uses

GDI+ The Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is a legacy component of Microsoft Windows responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers. Windows apps use Windows API to interact with GDI, ...

, Windows Photo Viewer uses

Windows Imaging Component Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a COM-based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista (and later available in Windows XP Service Pack 3) for working with and processing digital images and image metadata. WIC enables application dev ...

(WIC) and takes advantage of

Windows Display Driver Model Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) is the graphic driver architecture for video card drivers running Microsoft Windows versions beginning with Windows Vista. It is a replacement for the previous Windows 2000 and Windows XP display driver model X ...

. Although

files are supported in Windows Photo Viewer, whereas Windows Picture and Fax Viewer displays

animated GIFs The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

, Windows Photo Viewer only displays the first frame. Windows Picture and Fax Viewer was also capable of viewing multi-page TIFF files, (except those that employ JPEG compression) as well as annotating the TIFF files. Windows Photo Viewer, on the other hand, has added support for JPEG XR file format and ICC profiles.

In Windows 10 and Windows 11

In support documentation, Microsoft states that Windows Photo Viewer is not part of Windows 10, and a user still has it only if they upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1. However, it can be brought back in Windows 10 and Windows 11 with registry editing, by adding the appropriate entries ("capabilities") in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Photo Viewer\Capabilities\FileAssociations. It is also possible to restore the Preview option in the context menu. Windows Photo Viewer itself remains built-in, and is set as default for the

Tagged Image File Format Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

files (.tif).

References

External links

*
Windows Picture and Fax Viewer overview
* {{Microsoft Windows components Discontinued Windows components Image viewers Windows components

Evolution

In Windows 10 and Windows 11

See also

References

External links