IrfanView tutorials.

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP. It is available for download at http://www.irfanview.com/.

IrfanView Class 2

Zooming in and out

To zoom in and have a closer look at a picture, either use the icons on the task bar of the magnifying glasses with the + and – signs, or use the shortcut keys of + and – on the numeric keyboard (at the far right of the keyboard).

To zoom in on a specific part of the image, select it with the curser by clicking and dragging, and then click inside the rectangle you created.

Use the horizontal and vertical scroll bars to move around the image when you are zoomed in.

To zoom back out to see the whole image, press F. (Press it again to see the original size of the picture).

Red eye reduction

There are many different ways of fixing red eyes in photos, which mainly depends on which program you use. Some give automated options (such as IrfanView), other more complex programs (such as Adobe Photoshop) allow you to do more detailed selective adjustments of colours.

To remove red eyes using IrfanView, firstly open the problem file. Then zoom right in so that you can see the eyes very clearly.

Now select just the red part of the eye (it doesn’t matter if you select some of the coloured part of the eye, as only the red-part will be adjusted):

Go to the Image menu and select “Red Eye Reduction (Selection)”.

Now do the other eye in the same way.

Zoom back out so that you can see the whole picture (F is the shortcut), and see whether you think it did a good job or not!

Save as a different file format

Pictures are required in different formats for different purposes. For example Web pages use either Gif (for logos) or JPEG (for photos). When sending files to commercial printers for books, magazines and newspapers, usually TIFF or EPS file formats are used. And then there’s PDFs, which are a different kettle of fish altogether!

JPEG is usually the smallest file format, which is important for fast loading web sites. It’s also great for emailing photos to people. However, it results in some loss of quality, the amount of which varies depending on what compression amount you chose when saving it.

Comparing JPEG sizes

To see the difference in file size and quality with different JPEG compression rates (and compare to the original TIFF size), open a TIFF file you already have on your computer that's about 1.5MB. Click the shortcut letter I on the keyboard to bring up the information screen to see the disk size. Click the OK button to get rid of that screen.

File 1.

Click on the File menu and select Save As (or click the shortcut – S)

Click in the “Save as type” field, and a number of options will come up:

Select JPG – JPEG Files.

Now a dialogue box will come up on the right, giving you options for JPEG compression:

Move the slider up so that it is at 100%. (Leave all the other options)

Change the file name to “File 1” and click the Save button.

As we used the Save As option before, we’re back to our original TIFF file, and File 1 has been safely filed away.

File 2.

Select Save As again, but this time select 50% quality in the compression slider.

Change the file name to “File 2” and click the Save button.

File 3.

Select Save As again, but this time select 1% quality in the compression slider.

Change the file name to “File 3” and click the Save button.

Now, using the thumbnail browser, open up each of the files one at a time, and click I to get their disk size.

Write down the file sizes for comparison:

Original file size: ___________________

File 1: ___________________

File 2: ___________________

File 3: ___________________

Have a look at the difference in quality between the pictures, and zoom in on a specific area to see whether it’s more pronounced when you look at it in more detail.

Try following this procedure on a different picture, and experiment with different compression rates to see how small you can get the file size without losing too much quality.

EFFECTS

IrfanView has a number of in-built effects.

Black and white (grey scale)

Open a colour image. Select from the Image menu “Convert to Greyscale”.

This is a great option for portrait shots, and can make them look more classy and sophisticated.

To undo the change, go to the Edit menu and select Undo (or use the shortcut control-z).

Sharpen

Go to the Image menu and select Sharpen.

This is a very simple sharpen with only one value. To be more selective about how much sharpening you apply to the picture, first undo that change (control-z).

Go to Image menu and select Effects, and then Effects Browser (or just use the shortcut control-e).

Select Sharpen under the “Effects” heading, and then experiment with putting different numbers in the Value box. You’ll see the effect immediately, under the “New Image” preview box.

To see how it would look on the larger image, click on the “Apply to original image” button at the bottom left.

When you’re happy with the amount of sharpening click the OK button.

Other effects

Now explore the other effects which are available, varying their values in the Filter settings to see how they affect the picture.

There are also some more effects in the Image menu you can try, such as negative, decrease colour depth and vertical/horizontal flip.

Enhance colours

Scanned photos and digital photos are often too dark or too light, or have “colour casts”, particularly due to different lighting conditions. These can all be adjusted by going to the image menu and selecting “Enhance colours” (or use the shortcut shift-g):

Play around with the different sliders to see what each one does. You’ll see the effect immediately, under the “New Image” preview box.

To see how it would look on the larger image, click on the “Apply to original image” button.

When you’re happy with how it looks click the OK button.

Challenge – can you make a sepia photo out of a colour photo? (Hint – it’s easier if you convert it to greyscale first).

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Shortcuts: If the instructions give you a shortcut which is a letter (eg F), it is referring to that key on the keyboard, not something on the screen.

Slide show: If you are using the slide show feature under the View menu (short cut: shift A), to get out of the slide show, hit shift A again.

Red eye reduction: When selecting the eye for red eye reduction, it’s easier to select just the part you want by zooming right in on it. And do one eye at a time, not both together.

Adjusting selections: Remember that when you’ve made a selection, you can adjust your selection before you zoom into it or crop it by clicking on an edge of the box and moving it.

Image information: If you want some basic information about an image, while in the thumbnail browser hover the mouse over a picture, and after about a half a second a box will pop up, giving you information such as the number of pixels and the disk size of the image.

Refresh thumbnails: If you have been making changes to the contents of a directory and they’re not showing up (eg additional files), press F5 on the keyboard to refresh the directory contents.

Effects: if you make a selection before you go to the effects menu, the effects you choose will apply only to the selected area.

Switching between the viewer and the thumbnails: If you are finding that you have to click on T more than once to get back to thumbnails, or you double click on a thumbnail and it doesn’t come up the first time, it may be because that view is already open, but is in the background behind what you are looking at. Have a look at the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and click on the appropriate icon to move to that view.