Tips

These tips come from the program's Tip of the Day feature and years of user feedback. They help you browse faster and get better results on everyday hardware.

In the application, open Help → Tip of the day to see rotating hints. Click Next to read additional tips.

Full-screen navigation

Press Enter to view the selected photo full-screen. Use ← → or Space / Backspace to move between photos. Press Enter again or Esc to return to the windowed view.

Speed up loading on slow CPUs

If your PC or laptop feels sluggish when opening large JPEG or RAW files, open Settings → View and try Render 1/4 for JPEG and RAW performance. JPEG and RAW are configured independently - you might render JPEGs at full quality but RAW at 1/2 for a balanced experience.

EXIF subtitles in full-screen

Press E while in full-screen mode to show or hide EXIF shooting data as on-screen text. Configure default behavior and font under Full-screen settings.

Start a slideshow instantly

Press S from any photo to begin an automatic full-screen slideshow. Set the interval and random order in Settings.

Fill widescreen monitors and TVs

Horizontal 4:3 or 3:2 photos often show black bars on 16:9 or 16:10 displays. Enable Zoom image to vertical screen borders in Full-screen settings to scale photos to full width. A small crop at the top and bottom is usually unnoticeable, and your original files stay untouched.

Export metadata for clients

Use File → Save EXIF and IPTC tags… to create a text or HTML report of all metadata from the current image - handy for proofing or archiving. See EXIF & IPTC.

Open in Photoshop or another editor

Need more than quick adjustments? Choose File → Open with to send the current image to Adobe Photoshop, Paint, or any editor installed on your PC - then return to Free Photo Viewer to keep browsing the folder.

Set as your default RAW viewer

In Settings → File types, click RAW to associate all supported camera formats. Double-clicking a NEF, CR2, or ARW file in Explorer will open it directly in Free Photo Viewer.