Viewing and organizing photos is a common thing people do on their computer. Recently, I received a mail from a reader John. He wrote that he is searching for an alternative to Photos App and what are the best image viewers for Mac.
Hello Saurabh,
I have been using Mac for years, and I store and manage all my photos on my Mac Mini. I know that I can press spacebar to get a preview of the selected photo on the finder. But I don’t like Mac’s built-in photo editing and viewing options and I don’t want to spend money on Adobe’s Image Management apps.
Can you recommend me some of the best image viewers for Mac?
Thanks
John
You can also submit your questions here.
One thing that I don’t like with finder’s image preview is that to navigate all photos through arrow keys on keyboards, you need to select them with Command-A.
On Windows 10, Microsoft has a good photo viewing app called Photos where you can view photos and start a slideshow. Let’s take a look at some of the best image viewing apps on Mac.
Best Image Viewers for Mac
Sequential
Sequential is a slick and good looking image viewer for Mac OS X. It supports all common image formats including jpg, PNG, GIF. Additionally, Sequential can open files in ZIP, RAR and PDF format. One of the unique features of Sequential is that it can open CBZ and CBR formats that are used for digital comics. With Sequential, you can easily open a folder containing images and then view them in the correct order. At the time of writing, the app is completely free.
Sequential for Mac is a good image viewing software
Its lightweight too, making sure that it will run well even on your aging Mac Mini or MacBook Air.
Xee
While Xee costs $4 on the Mac app store. The streamlined user interface and good functionality. Xee can open all photos inside a folder and compressed archives. After launching Xee, you can see an image and its metadata.
The image viewer of Xee is fairly minimalistic and it hides al unnecessary info when you are inside a preview. Just like Sequential, Xee can also open CBR and CBZ files making it good for reading comics. One of the strong points of Xee is its good support of gestures. You can zoom and rotate images with your touchpad. If all you want is a minimal and strong image viewer for Mac, Xee is worth a look.
Xee on Mac OS
XnView
XnView is a popular image viewer. The developer claims that XnView has support for almost 500 different formats. In my testing, it did open most types of image formats that I had. As a cherry on top, XnView can also convert images to another format should you need to.
XnView’s features don’t stop there. It has built-in options for applying basic fixes and filters. Also, it can create slideshows for you. In image management departments, XnView has great support for batch renaming, metadata management, and a duplicate file finder.
XnView is one of the best image viewers for Mac
XnView makes it a great replacement for built-in photo preview in finder if you deal with tons of image formats every day or you want some extra control with your pictures. It is free for personal use and does not include any adware or spyware.
Google Picasa
Picasa is probably one of the most polished image viewers for Mac OS. Sure, Google Killed off Picasa recently, but the photo viewer app is still polished enough for most people. The Picasa Photo Viewer is fast, stable and still looks and performs as good as most other photo viewers for Mac.
Rather than looking like an image viewer in Android’s Gallery app, the Photo Viewer for Mac has a similar feeling to a media player. You can press Enter key on your keyboard to see any image in the fullscreen mode, and if you need, with just one click, you can start a slideshow.
Now that Google has shut down Picasa’s web service, the image upload feature will not be supported. Still, the app should run fine, and you can always use other services to upload photos to the cloud.
Even if you don’t want advanced image editing that Picasa offers, you should give Picasa a try. I have been using it on all my computers, and it has never let me down.
GIMP
If you have been editing photos for some time, you must have heard about GIMP. It’s a powerful image edition program that has been around for decades. It is an open source application that supports not only viewing but it also has airbrushing, fixing, penciling and a ton of other features. GIMP for Mac UI opens with a folder and file directly tree on is left pace. Next to it is a set of thumbnail images and there are buttons with a set of commands surrounding these panes.
GIMP is a powerful image editor
GIMP has a slight learning curve if you have never used professional image editing applications. But. GIMP is the most powerful free image editing and viewing too around.
Which one is your favorite?
Among all the app in this post, which ones do you think is the best image viewers for Mac and why? Share with others in the comments below.
