Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

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Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer for XP.
Developer:	Microsoft
OS:	Windows XP and Server 2003
Use:	image viewer
Website:	Windows Picture and Fax Viewer Overview

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is an image viewer. It is a part of the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. It is capable of viewing JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, WMF and TIF format files.

Apart from its rudimentary image rotating tool, and its TIFF annotation feature, the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer only views, and does not edit images. It is a colour-managed application which recognizes embedded ICC colour profiles in JPG and TIFF files. Windows XP contains other programs that are capable of image editing, such as Microsoft Paint.

1 Viewer capabilities
2 Available features
3 Special handling of TIFF files
4 Convenience of use
5 Criticism
6 Windows Vista
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Viewer capabilities

The viewer is capable of displaying all images listed above. If an image is larger than screen resolution, it is made to fit the screen. The viewer has an option to view the image full size, but scrolling is necessary to see all areas of the image. Shown below is a screenshot of the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer’s toolbar.

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer toolbar

[edit] Available features

The following features are available by selecting the applicable toolbar icon:

Successive viewing of all images in current folder.
Zoom in or out on the image being viewed.
Allow a large image to be viewed full size by scrolling.
Management of files: delete, save, copy, print.
Print a contact/index sheet of selected photos with picture titles.
View a slide show of all, or selected images in the folder.
Rotate images right or left by 90 degrees.
Annotate TIFF images.
Close viewer and open image the image in the default image editor registered for that image type (generally Microsoft Paint).

[edit] Special handling of TIFF files

If a TIFF formatted file is opened in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, a new toolbar will appear at the bottom of the screen. This toolbar has icons that allow other operations to be performed. Lines can be drawn on the image and text added to it. Areas of the image can be selected and concealed.

[edit] Convenience of use

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is/can be convenient for viewing all images associated with it. The user can view each image in the selected image folder in rapid succession, forward, or backward (slower) utilizing the arrow icons on the toolbar. Whilst an image is being viewed, two options are available by right clicking inside the window.

Any image can be edited by selecting the "Open With" option from the menu which pops up.
Any image can be e-mailed by selecting the "Send To" option. Further options allow the image to be mailed full size, or in pixel dimensions of: 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768.

[edit] Criticism

The viewer is known to not render PNG images correctly at times. Even at a 100% zoom level, it sometimes causes entire lines to not be rendered, which can be very confusing when examining critical image data.

A buffer overflow vulnerability has been found in the underlying graphics rendering engine, which could allow an attacker to execute code remotely by getting the user to view a specially crafted WMF file. Microsoft released a patch for this vulnerability in January 2006; their bulletin also states that a valid workaround is to disable the viewer via the registry. See Windows Metafile vulnerability.

The viewer is the default viewer for many file types in Windows XP, but it can easily be replaced as the default by another viewer/editor that a user has installed on the system by right-clicking on a file of the chosen file type and selecting the "Choose Program" menu item.

[edit] Windows Vista

The picture viewer in Windows Vista is completely rewritten and is based on Windows Photo Gallery which uses the Windows Imaging Component (WIC). Since the Windows Imaging Component is extensible, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Photo Gallery Viewer can export and view any image format for which a third party codec is installed. By default, the Windows Photo Gallery Viewer can view JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF and Windows Media Photo images, as well as video. It even supports lossless rotation of images. However, legacy image formats such as WMF and EMF do not have their respective codecs installed in WIC, and therefore cannot be viewed by default.