The 5 Best Free GIF Viewers
The Graphic Interchange Format or GIF is an image file format that supports both the animated as well as the static images. GIFs are nowadays very commonly used especially in our online communications. A large number of GIFs are available out there for conveying your emotions and expressions. You will find these GIFs on almost every social networking and communication platform. GIFs are so extensively used because they seem to be more appealing than the simple static emoticons.
The thing that we need to understand here is that GIF is a special file format and that is exactly why we cannot view GIF files with the help of an ordinary file viewer. In order to view the GIF files, we need dedicated GIF viewers. Therefore, we have gathered for you a list of The 5 Best Free GIF Viewers. Let us learn the specific features of these GIF viewers one by one.
1. GIF Viewer
GIF Viewer is a free GIF viewer which is compatible with the Windows operating system. It makes you capable of viewing GIF files very conveniently. It has a very user-friendly interface. It has the ability of saving your animations as individual frames. There is also no limitation on the Size of the GIF file that you want to view. The GIF Reader Tool of GIF Viewer allows you to view all the details of your GIF files. The biggest advantage of GIF Viewer is that it occupies a very little size on your disk. Moreover, it also lets you extract images from your GIF files and then save them separately in various formats including PNG, TIFF, JPEG etc.
2. FastStone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer is not a dedicated GIF viewer rather its a general free image viewer with support for viewing GIF files. It has a very simple and easy to use interface which is perfect for viewing any sort of image files. Apart from viewing the GIF files, it also allows you to perform some basic editing on them. You can add various Effects to your GIF files, Crop, Colorize or Resize your GIF files. Moreover, it also allows you to save the frames of your GIF files as independent files in the formats including BMP, TIFF, JPG, etc.
3. JPEGView
JPEGView is a free image viewer and editor that provides full support for viewing and editing GIF files in real-time. You can easily adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, etc of your GIF files. You can even Resize or Rotate your GIF files. It allows you to define customized commands and keyboard shortcuts for editing your image files. The most exciting feature of this software is that you can Print your GIFs directly as images from JPEGView.
4. Giphy
Giphy is a free online website solely dedicated for creating and viewing GIF files. You can view GIF files simply by uploading them on Giphy. You will also find a lot of GIFs created by other users on Giphy that you can easily download and use. Once you upload your GIF over there, then it becomes available for the general public and they can conveniently access it. It also provides you with a lot of built-in tools and features with the help of which you can create high-quality GIFs within no time. All you need to have is a good Internet connection and you can make use of this amazing website any time you want.
5. IrfanView
IrfanView is a free digital photo software with the help of which you can easily view your animated GIFs. This allows you to Play, Pause, Stop or Resume your GIF animations very conveniently. You can also Convert, Crop, Resize, Colorize or Rename your GIFs and that too just within a few steps by making use of the Batch Processing features of this software. You can customize the layout of this application by modifying the Settings of IrfanView. The biggest flexibility that this software offers is that you can add various third-party plugins to it in order to make it more powerful. Moreover, IrfanView supports a wide range of image file formats including GIF, BMP, JPG, TIFF, etc.