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For many years I've been installing Picasa on my computers only so that I can use its photo viewer. I like its UI very much (I have no interest in photo organisation and cloud storages).

Picasa Photo Viewer as it pops up on clicking an image on Windows 10

But Picasa has been off-development for a long time. Are there any newer Photo viewers that resembles the Picasa Photo Viewer interface?

EDIT

What I am looking is for an image viewer that opens up on clicking an image file in the windows explorer. The following are the UI features I liked in Picasa Photo Viewer.

  1. Smooth transitions. So there is a continuity to whatever is being done. For example, when I zoom-in from one point on the photo, it centers that point and does the zooming in a smooth, non-step way.
  2. Opens fullscreen. Translucent dark background.
  3. Zooming is possible by the mouse scroll-button in a smooth transition. Also the zoom ratio is in the range of 1000s. I was able to zoom a full hd image up to 6630%.
  4. Thumbnails at the bottom
  5. Keyboard shortcuts for zooming, next slide, previous slide
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  • Welcome to Software Recommendations! We will need much more information to give good recommendations here – asking for "a tool like X" is never giving enough details, even if linked. You should always list your requirements explicitly. Please see How to ask for an alternative to some software and the questions linked to it for details. What features do you need? Would you be willing to pay for the software and if so, what's the limit?
    – Izzy
    Commented Dec 19, 2016 at 16:34
  • Check out faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
    – Mawg
    Commented May 3, 2017 at 7:44
  • I had used Faststone, but it is too complex for an image viewer. I'm looking for a simpler interface that doesn't crowd the entire window... Don't need editing facilities, have Photoshop and Illustrator for those... And I do my folder organizing manually.
    – Pavi
    Commented May 3, 2017 at 10:29
  • I'd use ACDSee Free
    – onurcano
    Commented Oct 25, 2021 at 5:14

5 Answers 5

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After much search, I still couldn't find one as good as Picasa photo viewer. Only JPEGViewer came close. I would recommend it. However, if Picasa could play GIFs it would still trump JPEGViewer.

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Picasa was originally created by the maker of vjpeg. This is the same person who made f.lux. I remember long time ago, there was another version of vjpeg on author's website which also showed the thumbnails at bottom, but I can't find that anymore.

I could be mixing it with Picasa itself but I remember I was very happy finding something exactly like picasa but it was not full blown picasa.

UPDATE: I asked vjpeg's author and there was never anything like that. Alternatively, you can use Picasa's Image Viewer executable as a standalone image viewer.

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    Commented Oct 25, 2021 at 14:37
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Did you try ImageGlass?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNXpHBMcjAI

It looks pretty similar to what you are looking for, except huge zoom maybe. And by the way it is open-source which is a great thing for privacy-paranoids.

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Tonfotos has "quick view" mode very much to your requirements (though just like Picasa it is photo library management tool, which might be a slight overkill for your task). If set as default viewer, it opens image by mouse click right away on translucent background, smoothly zooms and scrolls. You can switch next and previous images in the folder by cursor keys.

The only difference is that it does not show thumbnails at the bottom (at least current version).

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This is an old thread. Yes. Yet there still is no real good alternative to the Picasa UI.

Until this: http://stereopsis.com/vjpeg (Picasa's original dev.)

Found it from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/5qyg7n/what_is_the_best_photo_viewer_replacement_for/

It's ...well, it's the closest thing to the Picasa Image Preview functionality that I've found.

Note: It does not cover the original poster's requirements, but in terms of barebones functionalities, it's very sweet. Maybe someone could convince Michael Herf to add thumbnails to the bottom... 🙄

Give it a try and spread the word.

edit: [insert swearwords here!] I just read LifeH2O's answer, which talks about ....the same thing. Sorry.

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