Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

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Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer under Windows 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, BMP, PNG, GIF, WMF, EMF and TIFF format files.

1 General
2 Viewer capabilities
3 Features
4 Special handling of TIFF files
5 Criticism
6 Windows Vista
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] General

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 (ICC v2 only) in JPG and TIFF files. Windows XP contains other programs that are capable of image editing, such as Microsoft Paint.

The viewer program starts up if any of the picture format files is selected when viewing a file folder. It is not accessible from the normal Start|All Programs menu option. It is actually a Dynamic-link library (shimgvw.dll) file. A shortcut can be created using the target: %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe %SystemRoot%\system32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen (Note: there is a space after "rundll32.exe").

[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] 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).
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] 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] 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.

The ability to modify a file by rotating can be considered undesirable in an application that is otherwise read-only on the file.

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, renamed Windows Photo Gallery Viewer, 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 organize 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 HD Photo images, as well as video. RAW image formats used by high-end professional cameras are also supported by installing their respective codecs in WIC. The viewer also supports lossless rotation of images and ICC V4 embedded color profiles. However, legacy image formats such as WMF and EMF do not have their respective codecs available in WIC, and therefore cannot be viewed by default.