Screenshot of XnView showing a .png image with transparency. |
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| Developer(s) | Pierre-emmanuel Gougelet |
| Stable release |
Windows: 1.98.5 / November 18, 2011 |
| Development status | Active |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, Unix-like |
| Size | 12.1 MB |
| Available in | 44 languages (Windows only)[1] |
| Type | Image viewer Image organizer |
| License | Freeware for private non-commercial or educational use freeware |
| Website | www.xnview.com |
XnView is a cross-platform image viewer used for viewing, converting, organising and editing graphical & video files. It is free of charge for private, educational and non-profit organisations. For commercial use and distribution, the user must register the program.
It is popular with users as it provides features normally found only in commercial image viewers.
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XnView is highly customisable and multi-lingual, supporting 44 languages in the Windows version.[1] The language can be changed via the options menu. The toolbar buttons can be modified to a certain extent, or be replaced by altering skins.
Also, XnView has been able to support an increasing number of file formats (mainly image file formats). It can read more than 400 image file formats, some audio and video file formats, and write 50 image file formats.[1] XnView also supports ICC profiles in JPEG, PNG and TIFF files.
XnView can show IPTC, Exif and XMP metadata, and write IPTC metadata (but cannot do batch writing of IPTC metadata, and some users are longing for the batch IPTC editing function).[2] A further limitation is that it currently does not allow to sort thumbnails within a folder by a user-defined order.[3]
XnView can search files that have the same filename or data, and can search for similar graphics as well.
In addition, the display of the histogram of a picture is possible. And within a few mouse clicks, scripts can be created to convert, manipulate and rename a batch of images in one go.
Several image editing tools are included, for instance color and size manipulation, several filters and effects (full version even includes Harry's Filters 3.0). Lossless (without new encoding) turning, flipping and cropping of JPEG files is supported. Creation of advanced slide shows is also possible. Furthermore, it can upload images to an FTP site or ImageShack, burn images to a CD or DVD (Nero Burning ROM required) with a few clicks (full version only).
The author no longer uses exe compressors to compress executables in the newest version, 1.95, after a long discussion about XnView 1.95 rc1 in the official forum.[4][5]
XnView is accompanied by NConvert, a command line image conversion tool.
XnView MP (XnView Multi Platform) will eventually replace all other versions of XnView (*nix and Mac OS X and Windows) using the same source code for all platforms and is intended to have a unified look and feel. It will have native unicode support and be able to load full bit depth pictures (8/16/32 bits per component), easier handling of native language support (text based files) and a better database. Currently the newest version is 0.39.
XnConvert MP (available on Windows, Linux & MacOSX) allows easy batch conversion of image files, resizing, filtering, adding watermark and more.
XnView Mobile Fx is a photo effects editor application first released for the iPad running on Apple's iOS. A smartphone version of this application is also planned for Android and iOS's iPhone/iPod Touch.
XnView exists now for Pocket PC and smartphone with Windows Mobile 5 & 6, Pocket PC 2002-2005. Latest version (as of 7 January 2009) is XnView Pocket v1.51.
XnView Deluxe was developed by Pierre-Emmanuel Gougelet for Xzeos Software. It was a commercial version that was more feature rich than the standard free XnView. On January 1., 2006, development, distribution and selling was stopped as a result of increased competition from Adobe Albums among others. The features in the XnView Deluxe were later incorporated into the XnView (free). XnView Deluxe is no longer supported.[6][7]
XnView has received multiple awards,[9] including five cows from Tucows,[10] and Cnet.com reports that the XnView has received four out of five stars from both the editors and users.[11]