Don't Have IrfanView? Get it!

Not all of tech writing is writing, of course. You probably have to handle figures, illustrations, logos, symbols, and other graphical elements in your documents. You may have to do screen captures, resize graphics, change formats, crop, or do any of a myriad of other tasks. Do yourself a favor and get IrfanView now.

IrfanView is free. No, really, it's free. Not free for some dumbed-down version. Not free for the first 10 minutes, after which the annoying pop-up ads start. Free.

Besides the price, IrfanView has an amazing array of tools in a small, easy-to-use package. I often use it for screen captures: you can control what part of the screen to capture, whether to include the cursor or not, which hot key to start the capture, and a timer delay to get things set up. You can resize any graphic, crop it, and save it in any of 20 formats (each with many options). You can copy and paste images onto other images. You can remove red eye from photos. You can brighten or darken pictures. There are all kinds of fancy special art effects that I don't use except for fun. And, of course, you can simply use it to look at graphics.

Using IrfanView is very simple. You can get at any command through menus. Most commands have single-letter shortcuts, so you don't have to do the Ctrl-Alt shuffle. The Help is clear, even though apparently written by a non-English speaker.

While I mentioned that IrfanView is free, you, like me, will probably want to make a little donation to the author. You'll feel that grateful for this little gem. There really is a real Irfan, originally from Bosnia, now residing in Austria. And he's produced a graphics toolkit no tech writer should do without.