download windows 10 photos on windows 8 The Best Photo Viewer for Windows 10: 8 Apps Compared. Windows 10 has a built-in photo viewer that you can use to view, edit, and enhance your photos. However, there are a few drawbacks with the Windows 10 Photos app, including the amount of time it takes before previewing an image. For many Windows 10 users, the slow loading of images remains a major gripe, but that can be resolved by using alternative photo viewer apps. If you’re ready to move on without the Windows Photos app, or prefer a more nimble program, check out our top picks for the best photo viewer for Windows 10. Also, be sure to check out our YouTube channel where we posted a short video going over some of the options in this article. Best Photo Viewer For Windows 10. 1. IrfanView. IrfanView is the best free photo viewer for Windows 10, with a host of image editing functions. The app is snappy, loads images fast, and has no bloatware. Besides its performance, IrfanView offers batch conversions, media file conversion, and allows you to add plugins to extend its features. Plus, IrfanView organizes your images, and allows you to zoom or switch to different images using the scroll bar. The app gives you all the perks of the earlier Windows Photo Viewer, minus the laggy mess that is the Photos app in Windows 10. IrfanView is free to use, lightweight at only 3MB in size, and is compatible with multiple media formats. 2. XnView. XnView isn’t just a photo viewing app. It can also work as an image converter and browser for Windows 10. The program is quick to learn, intuitive, and free for personal use. Plus, it offers 70+ formats so you can export images and create slideshows, web pages, or image strips. With XnView, you can view and navigate to all your photos at the same time, preview images in detail, zoom, switch orientation, or start a slideshow in a single window. The app’s interface is easy to navigate, offers a larger icon view of selected photos, and allows you to open video or audio files. Plus, it has some editing tools such as resizing, batch conversion, batch renaming, and adjustments. XnView also has the Duplicate File Finder that helps you identify and find duplicate photos on your computer. 3. 123 Photo Viewer. The 123 Photo Viewer is another free, lightweight photo viewer that offers a fast experience, opens almost any popular image format, and supports batch operation. With this photo viewer, you can switch between previous and next images, rename and resize images, or quickly fix images using the cropping tool or red eye removal. You can also use the slideshow feature to relive your happy memories. The app has a modern, straightforward, and easy-to-use interface. Plus, you can use its wide range of filters and effects for basic editing tasks. 4. ImageGlass. If you want a photo viewer for Windows 10 that works like IrfanView but with a modern interface and design, ImageGlass is worth considering. The app is an effective program for photo viewing and editing, with an almost negligible image loading time compared to the Windows 10 Photo app. ImageGlass also displays a quick menu on top of the photo you want to view with quick access to zoom, rotation, print and other important features. The photo viewer supports JPG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, SVG, HEIC, and RAW images, and allows you to install new themes and language packages. It’s also easy to use, and you can link different file formats to different image editors for easier management of your photos. 5. Honeyview. HoneyView is a free, lightweight, and fast photo viewer for Windows 10 with a minimal interface, quick image loading, and stable performance. The photo viewer app supports a variety of image formats including JPG, PNG, BMP, PSD, DDR, GIFs, WebP, and popular archive formats like RAR, ZIP, TAR, LZH, CBR, and CBZ. HoneyView isn’t as feature-packed as other photo viewers in this list, but it offers basic features like rotation, resize, save, slideshow, crop, and an image clipboard. You can also bookmark images to find them faster when browsing photos on your computer. 6. Imagine Picture Viewer. Imagine Picture Viewer is a simple, lightweight, and easy-to-use photo viewer for Windows based on the Microsoft.net Framework. The app also offers some basic photo editing capabilities and supports crop, zoom, resize, rotate, and flip functions. You can also adjust the brightness or contrast, blur, sharpen, and add filters like Sepia, grayscale, Pixelette or Black-n-White. Sharing options are available if you want to upload the photo directly to social media management apps for sharing on your social media pages, or send email directly from the app using Live Mail or Gmail. Imagine Picture Viewer also has batch image conversion, screen capture, slideshows, and lets you add supported plugins to enhance the features. 7. FastStone Viewer. If you like viewing your photos in full-screen, the FastStone Image Viewer allows you to get a clear view of the photo. The app is user-friendly, fast, and stable with a wide array of features such as resizing, cropping, red-eye removal, color adjustments, retouching, and emailing. Plus, it has a high quality magnifier, support for major graphic formats including JPEG, PNG, BMP, and animated GIF. The app also supports popular digital camera RAW formats. The latest version of the photo viewer has three themes: Bright, Gray, and Dark, and added support for audio formats. Other features available include image annotation, drop shadow effects, scanner support, lossless JPEG transitions, musical slideshow with over 150 transitional effects, and scanner support. 8. Movavi Photo Manager. Movavi Photo Manager helps you view, organize, and manage your photo collection. The app sorts your images automatically by location and date, and allows you to add tags to find your images faster. If you like editing photos together, Movavi Photo Manager selects photos that look similar so you can pick the best and delete the rest. You can also edit one photo at a go, or many photos simultaneously, and use editing functions like crop, rotate, flip, and more. The app supports PNG, JPEG, RAW and other image file formats, and works in Windows 10 and Mac operating systems. You can utilize the free 3-day trial to check out what Movavi Photo Manager can do for you before committing to a paid monthly subscription. Relive Precious Photo Moments. Each photo viewer for Windows 10 in this list has its own unique selling point. You can get a bunch of things done besides just viewing photos, and manage or enrich your photos. Check out our other guides on the best video editing software, best photo recovery tools, how to make blurry pictures clear, and a guide on the best online image compressors and optimizers. Do you have a favorite photo viewer app for Windows 10? Tell us about it in the comments. Elsie is a technology writer and editor with a special focus on Windows, Android and iOS. She writes about software, electronics and other tech subjects, her ultimate goal being to help people out with useful solutions to their daily tech issues in a simple, straightforward and unbiased style. She has a BCom degree in Marketing and currently pursuing her Masters in Communications and New Media. Read Elsie's Full Bio. Photo Gallery for Windows 8.1. I want to inform you that Windows Live Photo Gallery is totally free. Even whole package of live essentials is free. I would suggest you to install the Windows Live Photo Gallery from the link provided below. Photo Gallery. You may also refer to the below link for downloading Windows Live Essentials. Windows Essentials. Hope this would help. If issue still persists post back with current status of your computer and result of proposed suggestion, we will be happy to assist you. How to get Windows Photo Viewer back in Windows 10. If you miss Windows Photo Viewer from Windows 7 or 8, here's how to get it back now that you've upgraded to Windows 10. Windows 10 ($130 at Amazon) has been around for years, but lots of people have only recently made the switch since Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 back in January (you can still download Windows 10 for free if you need to). If you were a Windows 7 or 8 holdout who just upgraded, you may have noticed that the Windows 10 Photo app is different from the old Windows Photo Viewer, and includes the ability to edit and enhance your images with a couple of clicks. Even with the upgraded features, some die-hard Windows Photo Viewer fans are finding their way back to their beloved original photo app. Here's how you can make Windows Photo Viewer the default photo app in Windows 10. Get more out of your tech. If you upgraded from Windows 7, 8 or 8.1. It's easy to get the trusty old Windows Photo Viewer back -- simply open up Settings and go to System > Default apps . Under "Photo viewer," you should see your current default photo viewer (probably the new Photos app). Click this to see a list of options for a new default photo viewer. Assuming you upgraded to Windows 10 from a previous version of Windows, you should see Windows Photo Viewer as an option. Choose Windows Photo Viewer and exit the Settings menu, and you're done -- photos will now open up in Windows Photo Viewer. If you installed Windows 10 from scratch. This is trickier, because while Windows Photo Viewer is still technically available, it's not easy to find. It does involve editing the Windows Registry, which you should not attempt unless you know what you're doing -- editing the Registry can be dangerous if you make a mistake. Here's how to do it: Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET. 1. Copy the code from this post by Edwin over at TenForums into Notepad and save it as a REG file (call it whatever you like, maybe photoviewer.reg). Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET. 2. Double-click on your new REG file to merge it with your Windows Registry. You will need to click through the User Account Control and a few other windows to allow the file to make changes to the Registry. Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET. 3. You should now be able to see the Windows Photo Viewer and set it as the default program for various image files. To do this, open the Control Panel and go to Default Programs > Set Default Programs. Find Windows Photo Viewer in the list of programs, click it, and choose Set this program as default. This will set the Windows Photo Viewer as the default program for all file types it can open by default. How To Enable Windows Photo Viewer In Windows 10. Those of you who have upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 probably have the Windows Photo Viewer program in Windows 10. But some users are reporting that Windows Photo Viewer has gone missing after clean installing or reinstalling Windows 10. As you likely know, in Windows 10, Microsoft has set metro, modern, or universal apps as default for most file types from music to pictures. The classic Windows Photo Viewer, although it has not been dropped from Windows 10, it doesn’t appear in Default Programs or Default apps page of the Settings app when you perform a clean install of Windows 10 from ISO, after upgrading from a previous version of Windows. The new Photos app in Windows 10 is better than the classic Windows Photo Viewer when it comes to the features department. The Photos app not only allows you crop, rotate, enhance, and remove red-eye from your pictures but also offers many filters and effects to enhance your photographs. The only problem with the Photos app is it’s a bit slower when compared to the classic Windows Photo Viewer. The other problem is that it’s not a desktop application, meaning long-time Windows users who prefer using a desktop app might not like it. As said before, after performing a clean install of Windows 10, the classic Windows Photo Viewer might not be available in Default Programs or Default Apps section. If you want to make Windows Photo Viewer default in Windows 10 but can’t find it, here is how to enable Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10 and then make it default. Bring back the classic Windows Photo Viewer to Windows 10. Step 1: Please create a manual restore point by following the instructions in our how to create a restore point in Windows 10 guide as we are going to edit the registry. Step 2: Click here to download the PhotoViewer.zip file on to your Windows 10 PC. Step 3: Extract the ZIP file and double-click on the PhotoViewer.reg file and then click the Yes button when you see the following confirmation dialog to merge it. Alternatively, you can right-click on it and then click the Merge option. Step 4: Finally, click the OK button again when you get the following dialog box. That’s it! You have just enabled the classic Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10. To check if Windows Photo Viewer is enabled and to open a picture with Windows Photo Viewer, right-click on a picture file, click Open with , click Choose another app (if Photo Viewer is not showing here), click More apps (only if you cannot see the Photo Viewer in the list), and then click Windows Photo Viewer to open the selected picture file with Windows Photo Viewer. To make it default for images, you need to follow the directions given below. Make Photo Viewer default in Windows 10. Setting the Windows Photo Viewer as the default program for pictures is not as easy as it was a few years ago. Now that the classic Default Programs redirects you to the Settings app and Settings app doesn’t let you set the Windows Photo Viewer (Windows Photo Viewer doesn’t show up in the list), setting the Windows Photo Viewer as the default picture viewer is a bit tedious. Anyways, here is how to do that. Step 1: Right-click on a JPEG, BMP, or PNG picture file, click Open with , click Choose another app , click More apps if you cannot see the Photo Viewer in the list, select Windows Photo Viewer , select Always use this app to open this type of files option and then click the OK button to set Windows Photo Viewer as the default for the selected picture file type. You need to repeat the above steps for all common picture file types such as JPEG, BMP, and PNG if you want to make Windows Photo Viewer default for these file types. To view the file extensions in the File Explorer, navigate to the View menu (in the File Explorer) and then click File name extensions checkbox. Have you set Windows Photo Viewer as default in Windows 10 or using the native Photos app? OneDrive and my pictures folder. I've been using OneDrive on my laptop and my desktop for many years. Recently I noticed that all my pictures are stored on OneDrive, but not my laptop. I don't recall changing anything except entering the Samsung Promo code on OneDrive. The Samsung promo code was through my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Seemed pretty simple, they gave me 100GB for 2 years. It was really just lucky that I noticed it when I was uploading some pics from my phone to the laptop. I just happened to notice the path when I clicked on Pictures - and it was pointing to /users/ME/onedrive/Pictures. I"m curious how this happened without my knowing, but more concerned about it not removing pics from my laptop. My desktop works the way I want - It uploads my new pics and leaves originals on my PC. Can someone help me to stop OneDrive from removing pics from my laptop? I want the pics copied to OneDrive, but left on the laptop as well. Thanks to anybody for help. And WHY isn't there a category for OneDrive?? Not even sure where to put this. Subscribe Subscribe to RSS feed. Report abuse. Replies (10) Hey Cat. I'm Greg, an installation specialist and 9 year Windows MVP here to help you. OneDrive introduced some features that remove files from the hard drive and store them only in the cloud if Files On Demand is chosen in OneDrive Settings: https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/05/11/intro. Also if the new Folder Protection is chosen in OneDrive Settings > AutoSave Tab, then Documents, Desktop and Pictures folders will be moved into the OneDrive folder. See Folder Protection details here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/116029-turn. Strangely, recent Updates have set these on by default and even caused file losses that resulting in withdrawing the October Version 1809 Upgrade. So I would check closely those OneDrive Settings, your OneDrive folder, the PC Recycle Bin, and also check the Onedrive Online Recycle Bin. If you want to express your opinion on this to Microsoft use the Feedback Hub app in Start Menu where developers are tasked to process consumer feedback. They will not even see it here. This is a tech forums staffed mostly by volunteers trying to help others with your problems. If you want to post back a Share link from your Feedback here others who see this thread can vote it up and add to it. I will vote up the feedback with my MVP badge and also monitor and track the issue for you. I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved. ______Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it. Windows MVP 2010-20. Millions helped via my tutorials and personally in forums for 12 years. Now an Independent Advisor. I do not quit for those who are polite and cooperative. Report abuse. 10 people found this reply helpful. Was this reply helpful? Sorry this didn't help. Great! Thanks for your feedback. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback. This is caused by a bug in a recent Windows Update, where users library folders were moved into the OneDrive folder by default, this will require a registry fix. Click your Start Button, type regedit and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor. Click View and make sure 'Address Bar' is turned on. Paste this into the Address Bar at the top and hit Enter. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders. Please post a screenshot of the resulting Registry Editor window . . . Power to the Developer! MSI GV72 - 17.3", i7-8750H (Hex Core), 32GB DDR4, 4GB GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, 256GB NVMe M2, 2TB HDD. Report abuse. 1 person found this reply helpful. Was this reply helpful? Sorry this didn't help. Great! Thanks for your feedback. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback. Hi Dave and Greg, Thanks to both of you for your quick replies. Sorry for my slow one. I went out of town soon after I posted that question. I made a problem a bit worse than it already was because when I saw that my pictures folder had moved, I suspected a serious problem with OneDrive or Windows. I’ve been using OneDrive problem free for so long, I was suspicious of Windows. I wanted to do something to protect my pics from any other demonic behavior, so I made a new folder with a name unlike Pictures on a different drive, and then I moved all of the OneDrive Picture folder contents to the new folder. Well you guys probably know what happened. Yes, all of those files that I moved to the new folder were now gone from OneDrive on the web. My Internet d/l speed is awesome – 250 Mbps, but upload is 12 Mbps. So it will take probably a week to upload all those pics again. And I’m concerned that the pictures that are on the laptop are incomplete. I have no reason to trust that the pics are all there… I have a backup for the laptop that’s about 2 months old, and my phone has all of the pics I’ve taken in the past several months. Nope, I don’t delete them from my phone when I import them to computer. I got burnt by that once. I have a large SD card so I keep about a years’ worth of pics on the phone. So I’ll just plan to do a restore of my pics from the 2 month old backup, and get the rest from the phone. I had a pretty crummy trip out of town since I was wondering what my laptop status was – I checked my desktop and very quickly I was able to verify that my Pictures folder for OneDrive had the same size as my desktop Pictures folder. And my pics folder hadn’t mysteriously moved on its own. I think I’ve gotten the settings the way they’re supposed to be – Thanks a lot for the links, even with them I was a bit confused because of the wording used to describe what was going to happen with my files. I’m making changes in my cloud storage. Amazon came along with a terrific plan for those of us that are Prime Members looking for photo storage. And there is no charge on top of the standard annual/monthly fee for Prime Membership. They have unlimited storage for photos, AND unlimited photo resolution on any pics you upload. That’s a big deal to me. Google photos chops my resolution by over half, Shutterfly has max size of 2 MB for a photo, Flickr did have unlimited storage and full resolution for $25 for years, but that’s going away this April, last I heard. I looked up a few more and none of them come close to Amazon’s offer. Amazon’s syncing is very basic. You either Enable SYNC or Disable SYNC. I’ll disable, thank you. I can handle that myself, on the rare occasions it’s needed. The only drawback with Amazon is they only give you 5 GB for Videos and other file types. That’s absurd. But since my desktop seems to be working with OneDrive, and I don’t SYNC, so I’ll use all of my OneDrive storage for my Videos. That might not hold all of them, but I can always do backups and find a really basic plan for holding what OneDrive won’t. Or pay OneDrive for any excess I need. Dave, you said there is a Reg fix for what Windows did? Or OneDrive, or as a team? I’d love to know what that fix is. I want to know if I should even consider using OneDrive.