FastStone Image Viewer

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FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer
Latest release:	3.0 / February 16, 2007
OS:	Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server
Use:	Image viewer
License:	Free for personal home use only - Commercial or non-home use requires purchase of the Pro version
Website:	www.faststone.org/

FastStone Image Viewer is an image viewing application for Microsoft Windows. It is not quite a full blown image editing tool like Paint.NET, but instead competes with somewhat similar products such as Picasa, Irfanview and others.

As of version 2.7, it is essentially being divided into a "free for personal home use only" version, and a Professional version for commercial customers and those who use the product outside of the home. Those using the product outside the home and/or for anything related to commerical use are required to register and purchase the product, at which time their registration will be converted to the new Pro edition. In addition to the core functionality of the "free" version, the new Pro version will have features exclusive to the paid license. Those are specified in the version 2.7 application help file as follows:

Compare images side-by-side (up to 4 at a time. Find it in Tools menu)
Contact Sheet Builder (Put multiple images on one page, fully configurable. Find it in Tools menu)
Drag and drop to arrange thumbnail orders (Custom Sort)
Create memorable artistic image montages from your family photos for personalized desktop wallpapers (Wallpaper Anywhere. Find it in Tools menu)
Supports dual-monitor configurations (Find options in Settings)

General program features include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. The program also focuses on the slideshow feature, which includes a musical slideshow and over 150 transitional effects.

The program supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) as well as the popular digital camera RAW formats.

The FastStone Image Viewer was first released in 2004 by FastStone Soft. Since then, a new stable version of the program has been released every few weeks to few months. The latest released stable version of the program is version 3.0 which was released on February 16, 2007.

FastStone has made the announcement that version 2.7 and all previous releases have been found to have infringed on copyrights regarding images and icons included in the product, and as a result, FastStone is requested that version 2.7 and all previous copies of FastStone Image Viewer should be completely removed from all systems and all licenses updated to version 2.8, both Free and Commercial versions. This announcement was made on their web site the same date that version 2.8 was posted.