Gallery HD: Smart Alternative for Windows 8 Default Photo Viewer App

Windows Default applications were never known for providing user with advanced features. Though Windows 8 apps are having better interface than the previous versions still they do not provide any advanced features. So users who need to perform tasks beyond capability of default app have to rely on third party apps.

Today, we are talking about the Windows 8 default Photo viewer app. Its very obvious that most of the people Use Picasa as primary photo viewer. Now let’s see what is the lack in Windows 8 default photo viewer.

What Windows 8 Default Photo Viewer Lacks?

windows 8 photo viewer features

First and foremost, if you are using a HD camera to snap photos then it will be disappointing for you to find out that they aren’t even displayed in full screen. There is nothing much to do in the default photo viewer you can rotate, delete and set photos as wallpapers. Pretty basic operations.

Bottom line: Only use default photo viewer when you have nothing installed on your system for the purpose. If you have further editing tasks download a third-party Image editing software like Picasa, Irfan view etc.

Gallery HD: A Smart Photo Viewer

With Gallery HD, you can set folders as Album locations. All images in the folder are displayed as thumbnail. You can either click on a particular photo or set a slideshow to view all of them in sequence. Now lets see what’s good in Gallery HD.

Windows 8 HD Photo Viewer

What you can do from the home screen is adding pictures to favorite, set up a slide show and perform some basic settings for use. The various settings that you can opt for are toggling full screen on/off, slideshow picture change duration, repeating or looping images and turning on zoom.

If you want to make the Favorite star appear on photos even on Thumbnails then try Picasa with Picasaext Plugin.

[alert-note] View Picasa favorites as Starred Thumbnail on Windows[/alert-note]

Except the full screen photo display there are few other features that are handy.You can right click on the image and check properties of the image that really gives detailed information including time stamp, resolution and camera details.

If you want to show permanent time stamp on photos in every photo viewer then you can also add time stamp on bulk images manually.

windows 8 hd photo viewer

Presently, you can directly share multiple photos with Mail and Skydrive. I would like to see addition of more social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc.

[alert-note] Upload Photos to Facebook Album from Right click Context Menu [/alert-note]

With the modern Metro UI, you are going to love the presentation of your HD images sorting it by dates and other criteria. Though efficient in its task Gallery HD has some downsides also.

Downside

  • No continuous zooming.
  • No basic image editing, not even delete and rotate.
  • Social Networking photo sharing not present. ( Scheduled to be added in future versions)
  • Other Image viewing options like Panoramic Image Viewer.

Gallery HD is not totally free. You can use it for prolonged time as its ad supported in free version. There is no loss in photo viewing experience as the ad only appears on app Home Screen. Its too early to rate this app as its in its early phase of development and a lot more is expected to come. You must give it a try if you are dealing with HD images.

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Download: Gallery HD

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 4 comments
Frozen Volcano - December 13, 2012

Thanks for reviewing or app.

Just one small correction:

You can zoom-in beyond 2X. Just double tap the image (or use Zoom button from bottom bar) to get 2X view and then use pinch-zoom to deep zoom-in.

We are constantly collecting ideas and suggestions, so if you have any, please send us to info@frozenvolcano.com.

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    Sourojit Nandi - December 13, 2012

    Its really a nice app and I am really excited to see future versions. Regarding the zoom, I really missed the point! I have rechecked it and found its working but zooming using clicks is difficult. Can you implement continuous zooming like in Picasa?

    Reply
Alejandro - December 17, 2012

Well my main problem with the photo app is that I can’t choose which pictures go to the start screen. I used to love the photos widget on my windows 7 since it allowed me to run through my whole picture gallery. The photos app just shows 7 o so pictures from a randomly selected folder, or at least it looks like it. There are no other apps that have this functionality that I have found.
pity.

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DiD@ - December 20, 2012

It is not free. Free version has advert trash to brain wash

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