Participant

Question

Image viewer

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
August 9, 2017
10 replies
37991 views

Hi

I have windows 10 based laptop and Im not that happy with photo app from microsoft. I have inquiry before I buy adobe products.

Can I make photoshop CC or lightroom as the default image viewer and editor in windows, do they have the ability to view images not just for editing purposes, because I couldnt find any straight answer in google so I thought to ask here

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

Ussnorway7605025

Legend

yes you can have Photoshop as the default image viewer in Windows 10... i had it on mine for a year

imo the extra time it takes to open Photoshop is not worth it so I removed it and went back to 'photos' as my default

'photos' = a default image viewer app that comes with Windows 10

Dj_Lune

Participant

I personally have Honeyview as my image viewer. It's extreamly lightweight and loads any image pretty quickly. It also supports more types of extensions then the defualt windows photo app does. You can also link honyview to Photoshop for editing as your defualt editor.

D Fosse

Community Expert

I don't even understand the question. Of course you use Bridge as image file browser. I can't think of a single reason not to, it can do anything any other browser can do, plus lots more that they can't.

Everybody - be aware that Windows 10 "Photos" is not color managed. You won't get the correct preview. That's apparently a policy decision, as the previous "Windows Photo Viewer" was, and very reliably so.

Lightroom is useless for this. Not only do you have to import everything, but it's too slow once you have.

John T Smith

Community Expert

Another one is IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Yes, I like Irfanview. It has been around for a long time, and is what I used to use for renaming and file conversion before I decided Bridge was the way to go.

Another one that a lot of people I know swear by is FastStone. It's like Windows File Explorer on steroids, and a useful way to do your Digital Asset Management. The Nelson Camera Club (across the hill from me) uses it to display their competition images, for whatever that is worth.

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

A

Anonymous

There are actually so many choices for the best image editor and this includes Adobe Bridge. Aside from that, my daughter use a PhotoViewerPro for excellent images and editing.

M

maharith921976Author

Participant

Thanks for the suggestion, is it the same as ACDSee pro 10 becuse when I downladed the file, it open it

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

I use Adobe Bridge to view files and organize photos.

Digital asset management software | Download free Adobe Bridge CC trial

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

Thai Nhat

Participant

Thanks

Myra Ferguson

Community Expert

I see you say both "image viewer and editor." Like Michael and Szalam mentioned, there are a number of reasons why you wouldn't want to use Photoshop as merely an image viewer in and of itself, but yes, you can set it as your default editor. In Windows, you would need to associate whichever file types you'd want to open in Photoshop. That being said, you could associate .jpg with Photos and .psd with Photoshop. And even if you do associate a file type with an app, you can right-click on it from Windows Explorer and "Open with" something else in the context menu that appears.

M

maharith921976Author

Participant

Thanks for the reply guys. when I import images in windows photo app. It shows me the extension of the image not a preview for it so I can choose to import it or not, attached file. This is the issue, otherwise the app have nice editing interface and organization for photo plus other features and the cool look for it.

otherwise what are your suggestions for viewer and editor or app with extensions for the editor like PS CC.

Thanks

Szalam

Community Expert

What does the Photos app not do that you wish it would do?

I wouldn't want Photoshop or Lightroom to be my default for images. They take much longer to load than the Photos app does.

Also, Photoshop is not good for flipping through a bunch of photos. That is to say, you can't really do it. You can flip through a bunch of photos in Lightroom, but you need to import them first for that to work. Bridge is the Adobe software that you might want to use. You can use it to browse through all kinds of files. Again, though, I wouldn't use it as the default app to open something.

Remember, you have a 7 day trial of any of Adobe's software to see if it works for you. Be advised that Photoshop and Lightroom are professional grade products and there is something of a learning curve for both of them. There are plenty of useful getting started tutorials here at Adobe.com

W

wcstarks

Inspiring

The original poster missed the point a image viewer, to view images which have been enhanced by Lr. As stated, it would not be useful to make either PS or Lr a default image viewer in Windows. However, what would be extremely useful would be an Adobe Lr Viewer, like the Adobe PDF reader, but for viewing images enhanced by Lr.

Lr, starting with version 6, includes the ability to tag faces, which I really wanted, and why I upgraded from Lr 5 to Lr6. The only problem with this feature, is that the tagging can only be viewed within one of the Lr image editing applications. I can publish my hard work for my extended families, and they will be able to know what names are associated with an image, but they will not be able to see which person in the image belongs to which name.

Windows Explorer provides the ability to find subsets of images based on any of the metadata: tags, titles and descriptions, etc., put in with LR, but they will never be able to put faces with names.

What Adobe should do is provide a freely distributed, stand-alone, Lr viewer, which would allow others to view all of such features created in Lr, much like Adobe did with the PDF reader for documents. I would think it would not be all that difficult of a task to produce the viewer. They would just need to strip down the code they already have. I posted a suggestion on line for this, and have gotten some others seconding my proposal.

I am surprised Adobe has not already produced such a product for this purpose. It seems such a natural thing to do. So I am putting in a plug for this product.

Michael J. Hoffman

Community Expert

wcstarks wrote
What Adobe should do is provide a freely distributed, stand-alone, Lr viewer, which would allow others to view all of such features created in Lr, much like Adobe did with the PDF reader for documents. I would think it would not be all that difficult of a task to produce the viewer.

To the extent possible, Adobe Bridge already addresses this.

The trouble is, Lightroom manages much of the metadata internally in its catalog - one catalog might have the data for tens or hundreds of thousands of images - and a stand-alone viewer, looking at one image on disk, isn’t going to be able to find the LR catalog and extract the extra information as part of your viewing/browsing experience. To be effective. Your proposed LR viewer would need to read the catalog... something that LR already does (it even maintains its viewing capability after your subscription expires).

Mike

Michael J. Hoffman

Community Expert

Hi Mohamad,

No, I don't think you'd want to use either of these programs to be your default image viewer. Photoshop is a very heavyweight editor, takes awhile to load, and is designed for editing, not fast viewing. Trying to use it as a viewer would be like driving a truck to get from one side of the room to the other.

Lightroom is not an option at all - you import your images with Lightroom's internal database, and manage the images there. Lightroom can only open a Lightroom catalog directly, you can't open a JPG or other image file straight into LR without going through the import process.

Adobe Bridge, which comes with Photoshop, is a good file browser in and of itself, and it is a good replacement for Windows Explorer when you're browsing folders of images. But I wouldn't want to make it the default app to open in image file.

You can try to Google "replacement for windows photo viewer" and you'll see a number of possible alternatives, and can compare the features. In most cases, you'll find that image programs are not as lightweight as the Windows photo viewer.

Mike

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