1

HOW TO USE IRFANVIEW (I-View) By Vic Jaras

Irfanview is a freeware graphics viewer that is installed on the network workstations. You may also use Irfanview on your home computer or laptop. There are many features in Irfanview that will save you time when working with digital images. This handout will provide you with a good overview about the basic functions of this wonderful graphic viewing and editing software.

BASIC IMAGE EDITING:

OPEN AN IMAGE-Finding your photo and viewing it in Irfanview

SAVE YOUR IMAGE-To preserve any changes and make the picture smaller

HOW TO CROP-How to save only the portion of the photo you want

HOW TO UNDO A MISTAKE-What to do in case of a problem

HOW TO ROTATE-A fast way to correct a bad camera angle

ADD SPECIAL EFFECTS-Check out the cool effects and use plug-ins

MORE ADVANCED FEATURES:

SLIDESHOW-Watch out PowerPoint, Irfanview is faster for a quick slide show.

RESIZE AN IMAGE – Shrink or enlarge your photos in a snap.

BATCH IMAGE CONVERSION-Reduce the size of hundreds of digital images

in seconds with a few mouse clicks.

SCANNERS AND DIGITAL CAMERAS-use the Acquire feature in Irfanview to obtain images directly from a scanner and many digital cameras.

COPY MACHINE-If you have a scanner, you can use it as a copy machine.

2

First time with Irfanview Irfanview is installed on all computers attached to the new network. However, because it is FREEWARE, you can easily install it to a laptop or home desktop computer. You can visit the website (www.irfanview.com) or borrow a CD from Educational IT to obtain the install program. When you install Irfanview it will place an icon in the menu and on your desktop. Within the district, Irfanview is only found from the menu.

(Irfanview Icon) In the district, to find Irfanview: Click on the Start button Move up the menu to Programs Move over to the right for the Apps folder Move up until you select the Accessories folder Move down until you see the Irfanview Icon. Click to start the program.

3

When you first open Irfanview you will see the program window but the center will be blank until you open an image for viewing. Lets take a quick look at the Irfanview menus:

The bottom portion of the Irfanview window will display “no file loaded” until you open an image. After you open a file you will see information displayed at the bottom that you may find useful from time to time. TIP: When you move your mouse over a toolbar icon you will see a pop up display of what function that icon is used for.

Title Bar- Displays the title of the program until you open an image. Then the name of the image is displayed here

Menu Bar- Click your left mouse on File, Edit, Image, Options, View or Help and a drop-down menu will appear with options to use

Tool Bar- This is a quick menu with pre-set icons for the most often used features of the program. Note that some options will be dim until you open an image.

Minimize icon Maximize /Restore iconClose program icon These icons are found in all windows programs to control the window that is running the program.

4

BASIC IMAGE EDITING

OPEN AN IMAGE

Irfanview is a great program to look at images with. It loads them quickly and this will save you time when working with a lot of pictures. Click on File, and select the Open option from the drop-down menu.

You will need to find the folder than contains the image(s) you want to look at.

Select the picture you want to view by clicking on it. Note the highlight. The picture will be displayed at the bottom of the open box (if your preview active box is checked) Note that you will also see the resolution of the image measured in width and height. The physical size is also displayed. If this is the correct picture, click the OPEN button.

5

Now that your image is displayed, most of the toolbar icons are available for use. Notice that Irfanview provides you with information about the image being displayed at the very bottom of the window. A) First, we have the size of the image in pixels (how digital photos are measured). B) Next, we have the current view size displayed in percentage

(which could be smaller than actual size like 45% or larger than actual size 150%). C) The physical size of the image measured in kilobytes (kb stands for thousands of bytes). D) The last section provides you with information on the current date and time TIP: Some mega-pixel (millions of pixels) digital cameras produce images so large that they will not fit on a floppy disk. You can fit an image up to 1,400,000 kilobytes on a floppy disk. If you have multiple images you want to save them to a folder and burn a CD to be able to share the photos. Each pixel is a single dot and the greater the number of pixels, the better the image quality will be. However, more pixels will increase the size of the picture too.

THE TOOLBAR

There are short-cut icons for Open Slideshow, Save As, Delete File There are icons for Cut, Copy and Paste There are Undo and Information icons Zoom in (+) and Zoom Out (-)

A B C D

The Irfanview window

Previous Image file and Next Image File

Toolbar icons not show on the left: the P icon (image properties), About Irfanview Icon.

6

SAVE YOUR IMAGE

It is always a good idea to save your image. Especially since you may want to edit an image while keeping the original view intact. Click on File and Open and find an image on your computer to work with. Click on File and move down the menu to the Save As option.

In the File name box, change the name of your original image file. You can add a number to the end of the name or if it is a cryptic number generated from a digital camera, you may want to change the entire number to a descriptive name. Click the SAVE button, to create a copy of your original image with a new name.

TIP: You do NOT have to save your image as a JPG- you CAN select the file type and create a GIF, BMP or many other types from the drop-down menu.

7

There are many types of graphics you can save your image as. For example, if you wanted to create an animation you would need to save your pictures as GIF or Graphics Interlaced Format. If you wanted to create wallpaper for your desktop you could save your picture as a BMP or Bit Mapped Picture. PNG pictures are becoming more popular on the Internet. TIF pictures are the common graphics format for desktop publishers. PCX is an older style type of clipart. JPG is an image type that is great for pictures because it supports 16 million different colors. In contrast, the GIF file format supports only 256 colors. ICO is a type of graphic for desktop icons. And there are even more somewhat obscure types of graphic files you can save your picture as. TIP: If you click on Options and move down the menu to Set as Wallpaper, then you can instantly change your wallpaper with a few easy mouse clicks. However, this will not work on the network, but will work at home or on a laptop.

8

TIP: One of the outstanding features of Irfanview is that is automatically saves image files with a high rate of compression. It is common to open an image and save it using Irfanview to discover that your image is now a 40% smaller file while retaining all the quality of the original image. Another way to reduce the size of your image is by cropping out the material in the picture you do not need. Cropping also helps you create better looking graphics that are more focused and quickly convey the message you want. For example if you have someone standing next to a fence on a crowded street, you can crop out the extra people until you are left with your subject standing next to a fence.

HOW TO CROP Irfanview makes cropping easy. With your image open to normal view, (you cannot crop

an image that has been zoomed in or out-it must be at normal view) you can simply click and HOLD your left mouse button and draw a box around the part of the image you want to keep. Follow these steps: 1) Click and HOLD your left mouse button and draw a box around the part of the image you want to keep (see picture on left). 2) Click on Edit and select CROP from the drop down menu.

Notice that after cropping, you have a smaller image with all the extra information that cluttered your picture gone. Save this new image but be careful NOT to simply click save, since that will erase your original picture 3) Click on File, select Save As from the menu. Find a location to save your work to and

then give your cropped image a NEW NAME.

9

HOW TO UNDO A MISTAKE Everyone makes mistakes, it is how you react to them that makes all the difference. Irfanview will let you undo the very last thing you did. For example, if you cropped too much of a picture and want to quickly cancel the results of the crop, simply:

1) Click on Edit, and select UNDO from the drop-down menu.

TOOLBAR TIP: There is also a handy toolbar icon that you can click on which functions exactly like clicking on edit and selecting undo from a menu.

HOW TO ROTATE AN IMAGE

If you have ever turned the camera when taking a picture, you might get an image that cannot be properly viewed without turning your head on an angle. With Irfanview we can rotate the digital image until it is aligned for proper viewing. Here is what to do:

1) Click on Image, select Rotate Right. 2) Check to make sure the image displayed

correctly. 3) Save your corrected image. You may want to

overwrite the original image after you have rotated your picture.

ROTATION TIP: Notice that there are 2 ways to rotate an image and 2 ways to flip an image. Notice the difference after the picture was Rotated to the Right.

Before Rotation

After Rotation

10

ADD SPECIAL EFFECTS Irfanview has several cool effects you can add to your photos. For those special “cute as a button” pictures you might want to create a 3D button. CREATE A BUTTON: 1) First crop the area for your button or

select the area within your picture that will be changed into a button.

2) Click on Image, and move down the menu and select Effects. Select 3D button from the menu that appears.

3) Save your button as a new file with a new name.

Another popular special effect is Emboss which can make a picture appear to be etched in stone. All the effects are applied just like the procedure for creating a 3D button. Select the image or part that you want to use an effect on, then select your affect and click. Experiment with each of the image effects one at a time with your own photo. Use Save As to create a new picture with each effect.

Button Effect

Emboss Effect

11

There are addition settings for effects that are found in the SETUP option (of the Image menu). Set Parameters simply means to change a setting or value

for an operation. In this case, we will adjust the settings of the effects menu. You can adjust the value of how sharp you want an image. You can control the values for Blur, Oil Paint, and Median Filter. You can control the mask for Explosion and Pixelize. You can adjust the degrees of fine rotation. You can adjust the borders of your 3D button. TIP: If you go overboard and change the settings beyond a reasonable level and need to quickly restore settings, then click the Set Default Values button.

PLUG-INS

To see what plug-ins are installed, click on Help, and Installed Plug-ins.

Irfanview supports a wide variety of plug-ins that enhance the features of Irfanview. You can add a plug in to view flash animations, listen to real audio and even view movie files all within Irfanview. Many graphics programs use plug-ins.

12

MORE ADVANCED FEATURES

SLIDESHOW What slideshow will do is allow you to view an entire folder full of pictures in full screen mode by simply hitting the space bar to go forward or the directional arrow key to go backward if needed. To stop the show, simply hit the ESC key.

To start SLIDESHOW, Click on File, and move down the menu to Slideshow. 1) In the Slideshow window (below) you will have to select a folder with images in it.

2) Next you have to select the individual pictures you want to include in your show. Select the file and click the ADD button. You should see the image listed on the left hand column of the window that says: SLIDESHOW FILES.

3) If you make a mistake and add a wrong picture, simply select the picture and click the REMOVE button. 4) You can control slide advance and even save your settings to a text file to reuse later. 5) Click the PLAY button to start your slideshow. Slideshow

provides a quick method for presenting a group of pictures to a group. Simply put your digital photos into a folder, and choose ADD ALL, then click the PLAY button.

13

RESIZE AN IMAGE When you buy a digital camera you are told that the larger the number of pixels, the better the quality of the image. While this is true, these large images are great for publishers but make the average user resort to reducing the size of the picture in order to make the image useable. A mega-pixel image will exceed the size of the PowerPoint slide or spill over the sides of a Word document. And many email servers do not allow you to send images that are that large. The answer to this problem is to use the resize feature of Irfanview.

The information Icon was used to display facts about the picture file in view.

1) Click on Image, move down the menu to Resize/Resample.

This image is a mega-pixel JPG 2048x1536 (2 mega-pixel) notice how we are seeing only the upper left hand corner? NOTE: This image has been formatted to fit.

14

When the resize/Resample image window appears you can simply click on the HALF button to get an instant reduction of your image. Then Click OK. However, if you are one of those tactile people who like to touch., then you can adjust your image by typing in the new width and height or you can use percentages. You can also click in a radio button for a pre-set dimension.

There is also a place to select which filter you want for a resample.

Here is the same image with half the size (1024x763). Notice the little girl who we could not even see before image reduction.

15

BATCH IMAGE CONVERSION Imagine that you have a folder full of mega-pixel images that all need to be re-sized in order to use them in PowerPoint. You could spend hours reducing the size of each image one at a time or you could harness the power of batch conversion and be done in seconds. The batch conversion window operates much like the slide show window. However, you are changing file attributes.

To re-size the entire folder of pictures, Click the ADD ALL button.

Then, you need to click the Advanced Options button. TIP: The output directory is where your new, converted images will be stored. It is a good idea to create a new folder for your new images. You need to have your new folder created before you attempt to store batch-converted images there.

Click the browse button to select a folder for storage of your new images.

16

The Set Images window has control over your image options. A quick way to reduce the size of a folder full of images is to click on the Percentage of Original radio button. Check the preserve aspect ratio box. Then set height or width to the percentage you want (50%, 70%). With preserve aspect ratio checked, if you type in one box the other will automatically adjust. Finally, click the OK Button. Wow, within seconds you can reduce the size of hundreds of images! NOTE: You can also rotate an entire folder or group of pictures. Note the Other Options section. TIP: If you know that you ONLY need smaller images you could check the box in the miscellaneous section that says: “Delete original files after conversion”. However, I do not recommend this method since mistakes are common and you may lose some really great pictures. It is always a good idea to have a back up of anything you work with on the computer.

17

SCANNERS AND DIGITAL CAMERAS There are many programs that will scan or connect to a digital camera to download the picture directly into the software. Irfanview is easy to use to acquire images from twain digital sources like a scanner or camera.

1) With Irfanview, click on File and move down the menu to the item: Select Twain Source. Twain is a way that scanners and cameras can communicate with software programs. 2) The Select Source window will appear. You need to select the device you will be using to transfer pictures. 3) Click the SELECT button. 4) Click the Acquire button to start communication with your scanner or digital camera. Software from your scanner or camera

should appear with some options for you to select. When you are finished, your picture will be downloaded directly into Irfanview.

You can use your scanner like a copier.. check out the COPY SHOP feature..

18

COPY SHOP A new feature added to Irfanview (version 3.51 to 3.7) is the COPY SHOP. This allows you to use your scanner like a copy machine. You can scan a piece of paper and have the digital input go directly to your printer. 1) Click on File, move down the menu to the Copy Shop option. TIP: If you do not have this option, then you need to upgrade to a newer version of Irfanview.

The copy shop window will appear

2) Click the SELECT TWAIN SOURCE button to make sure you Have your scanner selected.

3) Make sure the correct Active Printer is selected. If not, click the Select button. 4) Select the number of copies (try 1 to test your settings before doing multiple

copies). 5) Click the Start button. The scanner should start and the printer should print your

copy. What a great feature! Now you should be more comfortable using Irfanview. Visit the Irfanview website at: www.irfanview.com to download the latest version, new plug-ins and other add-ons to this terrific program.