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This article overviews five image viewers available for Ubuntu and also includes at the end a list of another five which either are no longer maintained or are based on older libraries (KDE3 for example). Update: Two more viewers have been added, PhotoQt and Berry, increasing the number of viewers to 12.

Gwenview
In my opinion this is probably the best image viewer available at the moment. Built for KDE4, Gwenview comes with support for virtually all image formats out there, tools to do basic editing, tree-like file browser, support for tags, thumbnail previews, cropping, image rating system, slideshow, fullscreen mode, support for plugins and two view modes (Browse and View). An overview is available here.

sudo apt-get install gwenview

Eye of GNOME
Eye of GNOME is the default image viewer that comes with the GNOME desktop environment, with support for a lot of formats (including JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, SVG, TGA, TIFF or XPM), with a simple interface and features like slideshow, zooming, fullscreen mode, thumbnail previews, automatic orientation and support for plugins.

sudo apt-get install eog

gThumb
Another GTK viewer, gThumb has some cool features, most of which come as extensions which can be enabled or disabled on demand. Notable features are importing from Picasa or Flickr and exporting to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucker, Picasa or local folder, thumbnails preview, slideshow support, tree file browser, bookmarks, filters, support for extensions.

sudo apt-get install gthumb

Viewnior
This is a minimalist image viewer written in GTK+ with basic features such as image rotating/resizing, fullscreen mode, save as JPG or PNG, image properties, slideshow and cropping images.

sudo apt-get install viewnior

gPicView
gPicView is the default image viewer in LXDE, with a compact interface (the toolbar is located at the bottom of the window, menubar is nonexistent and all the functions are available by right-clicking the image space). gPicView features fullscreen mode, rotating/flipping, and saving images as JPG, TIFF, BMP, PNG and ICO.

sudo apt-get install gpicview

Addition: PhotoQt
PhotoQt is an image viewer written in Qt 5 with a very basic interface, a decent number of options and the somehow different approach in that it comes with a fullscreen mode by default. An overview is available here.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:samrog131/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install photoqt

photoqt03

Addition: Berry
Berry is a minimal image viewer written in Qt (it blends well in GNOME too, besides KDE), with a modern interface and a few configuration options. The official homepage provides RUN installers and DEB packages for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, as well as a PPA. An overview is available here.

sudo dpkg -i berry_1.0.0-1-amd64.deb

berry04

5 More

I also have to mention here some image viewers which don’t seem to be maintained anymore (some had their latest release years ago, some are only available for KDE3 etc). Included here are:

KSquirrel – This is a KDE3 feature-rich image viewer with support for thumbnails, a tree-view file browser, support for KIPI Plugins and usual functions for rotating or zooming images.

QIV – Or the Quick Image Viewer, this one has a basic interface and comes with features like image zooming and scaling, gamma, contrast and brightness correction and slideshow.

GImageView – Although this has not been updated since 2004, GImageView uses GTK+ and can still be used as a decent viewer. It comes with file browser, thumbnail previews, tab support, rotating/zooming images, being highly configurable in the same time.

GQview – Yet another GTK+ image viewer, GQview has a clean interface and includes a file browser and decent features.

KuickShow – This is KDE3-based, and comes with a file manager, basic image manipulation functions and a handful of configuration options.

Name (required) says:

GQview wins hands down.

DoRight says:

Amen to GQView

jpkotta says:

GQView is apparently unmaintained, but has been forked as Geeqie.

Craciun Dan says:

Didn’t know about this one, thanks. However, according to the SourceForge page there was no release in one year already.

IDon'tLikeBASH says:

Hello, it would be GREAT if you added an apt link to the right of the sudo command so that people can install the programs *without* using a terminal command. For example:

apt://gpicview
apt://gthumb
apt://viewnior

etc..

Craciun Dan says:

Noted for next articles, it’s a good idea. I’ll find a way to include it somehow, maybe with an installation icon or something. Fact is, on other systems (like Debian for example) this protocol is not recognized by default, so I still need to include the full installation command (or to explain how to enable it in Firefox and other browsers, which is not such an easy task).

Name says:

How about “Top 5 Image viewers for GNU/Linux”. Who cares about bumtu/kbumtu. Making articles for one clan like group of linux users doesn’t help Linux, FOSS, or the rest of the linux user community.

hotdiggettydog says:

You missed Fotoxx. Fotoxx is the only viewer I have found with a resize and email feature other than Picasa.
Lots of nice tools for editing photos too.

http://kornelix.squarespace.com/fotoxx/

Craciun Dan says:

This one looks very promising too, thanks for pointing it out. I’ll give it a try soon and maybe it’ll make into a separate review.

Personally I am a big fan of the light weight Mirage and/or the EFL based ePhoto

gPicView is a good third though :)

~Jeff Hoogland

Name2 says:

If u have lot of images inside sub folders to view then no one can beat Mirage

sxe says:

KuickShow is NOT kde3 based. Its still available in KDE4 and one of the best image viewer if you just need a short look.

Abe says:

Good article but, I suggest re-writing it to include the missing applications mentioned by some.

More important, instead of few snapshots, I suggest creating a complete matrix format listing all applications in one column, and all the features in top row. The other matrix elements would be filled with a “Yes” or “No” indicating whether that specific application has or supports a particular feature. This would make it very clear which application is best and very easy to pick the preferred one by the users.

Warper says:

Interesting list. The matrix is a good idea to finish the article. One thing I have found is not easily available in these viewers is the image info, more precisely the info about resolution in dpi and the printed size. I know this is mostly used with photos but this is a feature I miss from IrfanView and I don’t like to use GIMP or F-Spot. I will have to check if viewnior has it.

Abdul Kj says:

Please Help,
I can not find an application that will view tiff files in Ubuntu.
I saved the filles on my hard disk but neither the Documents viewer nor the Image viewer managed to show the file correctly. They both show a blank page instead of showing the contents (I checked the file on a Windows machine and it opens without a problem).

Name says:

Okular in Ubuntu can view multipage tiff files nicely

student says:

THE BEST one XNVIEW MP is missing. It is something like faststone image viewer for Windows. 26 mb size, lot’s of options, and you can convert formats as well!
It is not in software center, but you can download it from official site and open it with software center. Easy

Riteus says:

Agree. XNVIEW MP is the VERY BEST. Lots of options + simple GUI.

micsu says:

+1 for XNVIEW MP

Brian says:

Many thanks for this useful list. I will try a few.

I used KrojamSoft PhotoViewerPro, for photo retouching editing etc.

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