Best Photo Viewers for Linux

digiKam is an advanced open-source digital photo management application that runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS. The application provides a comprehensive set of tools for importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files. You can use digiKam’s import capabilities to easily transfer photos, raw files, and videos directly from your camera and external storage devices (SD cards, USB disks, etc.). The application allows you to configure import settings and rules that process and organize imported items on-the-fly. digiKam organizes photos, raw files, and videos into albums. But the application also features powerful tagging tools that allow you to assign tags, ratings, and labels to photos and raw files. You can then use filtering functionality to quickly find items that match specific criteria. digiKam features powerful searching capabilities that let you search the photo library by a wide range of criteria.

nomacs is a free, open source image viewer, which supports multiple platforms. You can use it for viewing all common image formats including RAW and psd images. nomacs features semi-transparent widgets that display additional information such as thumbnails, metadata or histogram. It is able to browse images in zip or MS Office files which can be extracted to a directory. Metadata stored with the image can be displayed and you can add notes to images. A thumbnail preview of the current folder is included as well as a file explorer panel which allows switching between folders. Within a directory, you can apply a file filter, so that only images are displayed whose filenames have a certain string or match a regular expression. Activating the cache allows for instantly switching between images.

No toolbars or distractions, pure space efficiency. qView was designed from the very start to be as visually minimal and space efficient as possible. No cluttered interface, just your image, and a title bar. You shouldn't have to wait just to view an image, qView opens practically instantly, and switching images is just as quick, all while having low memory and CPU usage. qView features a myriad of configurable preferences to ensure the best experience for as many people as possible. qView supports all common image formats including bmp, gif, jpg, png, tiff, and webp. Whatever operating system you use, the experience is designed to be as native as possible. qView is completely free and open-source software based on Qt5. It can be found on GitHub under the GPLv3 license. Localization support, with many community-supplied translations. The image now reverts to its original resolution when zooming past the scaling threshold (images aren't blurry when zooming in close).

Digital image organizer powered by the web. Scan local files, and keep your privacy. Don't upload your private photos to a cloud service and give a big company the rights to analyze them and do whatever they like. Non-destructive, the original images won't be touched (unless you purge the trash). Read various photo formats, JPG, PNG, TIF, WebP, and HEIC/HEIF. Read the raw formats of a whole bunch of cameras (only on Mac and Linux). Browse photos by dates, and view photos in detail (zoomable). View EXIF information, tags, and favorites, rotate, tilt and crop photos, and delete photos.

The Ristretto Image Viewer is an application that can be used to view, and scroll through images. It can be used to run a slideshow of images, open images with other applications like an image-editor or configure an image as the desktop wallpaper. The image types supported by Ristretto are those supported by the gdk-pixbuf library. This library itself supports a number of basic image types (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc.), but then relies on optional libraries to extend the range of supported image types. This means that you will have to install these libraries yourself to extend the range of image types supported by Ristretto. Examples: libwmf, libopenraw, libavif, libheif, libjxl, librsvg, webp-pixbuf-loader. The following describes how you can use Ristretto, and how you can configure it to your preferences.

Support reading Picture format : BMP files, Dr. Halo CUT, DDS, EXR files, Raw Fax G3, GIF files, HDR files, ICO files, IFF, JBIG files, JNG files, JPEG/JIF files, JPEG-2000 File Format, JPEG-2000 codestream, JPEG-XR files, KOALA, Kodak PhotoCD, MNG, PCX, PBM/PGM/PPM files, PFM files, PNG files, Macintosh PICT, Photoshop PSD, RAW camera, Sun RAS, SGI, TARGA files, TIFF files, WBMP files, WebP files, XBM, XPM files, PFM, SVG, AVIF AND HEIC. Support reading Video format (DXVA2 acceleration support) : mpeg4, avi, mkv, webp, y4m, AV1 format, quicktime and AVCHD. Open DMG file and Copy RegardsViewer to Application Folder. Add new button for linking external program for video and picture edition. Correct crash when you keep push down space bar after video thumbnail. Correct bug on scrollbar disapear on Thumbnail video and Thumbnail effect.

This software performs reading of image data in advance. And drawing the imported image data on the screen with OpenGL. You can browse images with much smoother response than ever before. 2 Page Spread viewing (two images once, for digital books/comics). Select a menu on the main menu which choose a folder from the dialog, or Drag Drop a folder contains image files from Windows Explorer to the window.

PhotoQt is an image viewer that provides a simple and uncluttered interface. Yet, hidden beneath the surface awaits a large array of features. Here are some of its main features (not an exhaustive list). Suggestions for new features are always welcome! Set image as wallpaper directly from inside PhotoQt. Display Exif information (including tagging of faces).

Created to be simple and elegant. It’s minimalistic interface provides more screen space for your images. Viewnior was inspired by big projects like Eye of Gnome, because of it’s usability and richness, and by GPicView, because of it’s lightweight design and minimal interface. So here comes Viewnior – small and light, with no compromise with the quality of it’s functions. The program is made with better integration in mind (follows Gnome HIG2).

Ephoto is an image viewer and editor written using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL). It focuses on simplicity and ease of use, while taking advantage of the speed and small footprint provided by EFL. Enlightenment was launched in the 1990s by Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler as an easy to use Window Manager (WM) for X11. Since then it has expanded to include the one million lines of C code that form the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) and a diverse set of applications. There's a vibrant and active community of developers and users who work on and use the code every day. Editing your images with features, such as cropping, auto enhance, blurring, sharpening, brightness/contrast/gamma adjustments, hue/saturation/value adjustments, and color level adjustment. Applying artistic filters to your images, such as black and white and old photo. Browsing the filesystem and displaying images in an easy to use grid view.

Photivo is a free and open source (GPL3) photo processor. It handles your RAW files as well as your bitmap files (TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG and many more) in a non-destructive 16 bit processing pipe with gimp workflow integration and batch mode. Photivo tries to provide the best algorithms available; even if this implies some redundancy. So, to my knowledge, it offers the most flexible and powerful denoise, sharpen and local contrast (fake HDR) algorithms in the open source world. (If not, let's port them. Although, to get the desired results, there may be a quite steep learning curve. Photivo is just a developer, no manager and no “Gimp”. It is intended to be used in a workflow together with digiKam/F-Spot/Shotwell and Gimp. It needs a quite strong computer and is not aimed at beginners.

XnView MP/Classic is a free Image Viewer to easily open and edit your photo file. The Image Viewer supports all major image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, WEBP, PSD, JPEG2000, OpenEXR, camera RAW, HEIC, PDF, DNG, CR2). As Image Viewer you have features like color adjusting, image resizer, cropping, screen capture, metadata editing (IPTC, XMP) and much more. With its easy-to-use explorer-like interface, XnView MP allow you to quickly view your images and photos, but also to make image management. You have features like batch rename, batch converter, duplicate image finder, image compare, but you can also create contact sheets, slideshow.

Comments and Exif information browsing and editing. Supported Metadata formats Exif, IPTC and XMP. Fast preview for many raw image formats and many other supported. Geeqie has great defaults but also offers lots of customization options. Check Preferences menu. Easy integration with other software: open images with your favourite editor.

Gwenview is a fast and easy to use image viewer created by KDE, ideal for browsing and displaying a collection of images. Allows simple image manipulations: rotate, mirror, invert, and resize. It allows basic file management actions, such as copy, move and delete, among others. It works as a stand-alone application or as a viewer integrated into the Konqueror web browser.

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them. Having developers that are also avid photographers as part of the target audience is good for understanding the real world problems, challenges, and workflows. darktable edits your images non-destructively all the way through its pipeline. Your original image is never modified! Professional color management features ensure fidelity all the way to print and GPU accelerated processing means you can speed up your workflow using your video card. You do not need to write code to be involved in the darktable community! You can help other users by providing your input on the mailing list or the forum. If you'd like to show others what darktable is capable of, contribute to the Flickr page.

Shotwell supports JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, WebP and RAW photo files. Shotwell's RAW format support is currently limited. When you view a RAW photo, you are actually viewing a JPEG derived from the RAW photo, not the RAW image itself. Additionally, the RAW editing pipeline is not fully 16-bit - you can only export edited photos as 8-bit files. Most supported formats can be used for export (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP). The Basic Information pane appears at the bottom of the sidebar, and displays a brief summary of the photos you've selected. If no photos are selected, it displays a summary of the entire collection. You can toggle the display of this pane using the information command. The map pane appears at the bottom of the sidebar as part of the basic Information pane, and displays an overview map the photos you've selected. If no photos are selected, it displays an overview of the entire collection.

Eye of GNOME is an image viewer. With it you can view images of almost any type. You can manage large collections of images and can display a slideshow. You can also make basic changes to photos like rotating or flipping them, or converting them to a different file format. The images should automatically open in the Image Viewer when you double-click an image file in the file browser. If this is not the case, you should make Image Viewer the default application for viewing images. You can zoom in and out to show more or less of an image on the screen. It is useful if you want to see a large image completely or if you want to inspect the details of an image. The Image Viewer tries to guess the file format to save the image in based on the file extension you choose. If you don't recognize the file extension you type, or if you don't know which one to use, click Supported Image Files in the Save Image window. This will allow you to choose a file type from the drop down box.

feh is an X11 image viewer aimed mostly at console users. Unlike most other viewers, it does not have a fancy GUI, but simply displays images. It is controlled via command line arguments and configurable key/mouse actions. Slideshow: Show all files in or below a directory, change slides with your keyboard or automatically after a delay. feh is also shipped by many Linux/BSD distributions, including Arch Linux, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Ubuntu.

If you have hundreds or even thousands of images on your hard drive, it becomes impossible to remember the story behind every single image or the names of the persons photographed. KPhotoAlbum was created to help you describe your images and then search the big pile of pictures quickly and efficiently. With KPhotoAlbum it is possible to find any image in less than 5 seconds based on a powerful tag system, let that be an image with a special person, an image from a special place, or even both. Adding tags is easy with KPhotoAlbum— it is highly optimised for tagging images. You can tag hundreds of images quickly with just a bit of practice.