Several years ago I discovered the best little viewer I had ever seen or used.  The creator of this little viewer has continued to add new features to it.  Now I can hear you asking me......I have PSP, what would I want with an image viewer?  Well let me count the ways.

There are many times I am in a folder and just want a quick look at a file.  So I have the Iview setup to automatically open certain file types.  And of course I've got jpg and gif in there!  But that's not all it can open with a quick view.....it can open animations and show them as animations!  Why does this excite me?  Because if I just browse a folder in psp, I'm not going to know for sure that a particular gif is animated or not.  And sometimes I save files on the web and later wonder if they were just an image or were they animated?  So it has proven valuable as a quick check on files.

Another feature is that Iview will tell you if a file has the wrong extension.  This has saved much head scratching when images were not working on a page.  I would double click on the image just to peek at it, and there would come the message, incorrect file extension.  Well.....that saved me some headaches.

Iview also has some great options like color exchange, batch conversion, editing features and more.  All in a tiny little program that doesn't even get installed to your system.  Huh?

Installation:  You simply unzip the Iview into a folder on your hard drive.  Right click on the i_view32.exe and create a shortcut to either your start menu or your desktop.  It's a stand alone program that needs no installation, so it doesn't hog system resources.  And that's another big plus in using the little guy.

So, let me show you some features, how to setup your file associations, and then you can download it and give it a try.  I'd ask you only to send a nice email to the creator of the program and tell him how much you enjoy it.  And you can either download it from his site, or download it here.  The zip is 427kb.

I noticed in the newest version that the file extensions to assiociate with Iview came pretty much how I use them.  Now what you can have a problem with is with other programs that might be controlling the file extensions.  I do have other graphic programs other than PSP, so I usually make sure they are not associated with any file types other than ones that are particular to that program.  So my main problem would be with PSP.

Here's what I do.  In PSP, I go to File, Preferences, File Format Associations.  I choose remove all.  Then I open Iview, go to Options, Properties, Extensions.  I click on Clear All, then Select All.  Then I uncheck all the ones in the last right hand column.  Close Iview and go back to PSP.

Go to File, Preferences and File Format Associations again.  This time I choose Select Unused.  This way I've cleared Iview to automatically open common files types by me just double clicking on the file.  PSP will be able to open anything left over that Iview cannot.

Of course this is just how I setup my associations.  You might have some other ideas in mind.  I've highlighted the things I've talked about with red on the images below.  The only other thing to bring up is the Set Icon button.  Click on that and you can choose another image than what I call the "roadkill" image.