| Blog Summary :We have listed the best apps for viewing images on Mac. If you want to view, edit, and organize your photos then you will have to use an app other than “Preview” like Pixea, Picturama, or Movavi, etc. |
Mac’s built-in “Preview” app can handle basic image viewing. But, what if you are working with hundreds of photos on a regular basis? You might want a Mac picture viewer that has more navigation features, editing tools, and multiple viewing modes.
We’ve done the hard work for you and have curated a list of some of the best photo viewers for Mac. Many of these also double up as photo editors with which you can bulk photo editing, or deal with various image types.
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Also Read:- Best Slideshow Maker For Mac
Here are the 10 Best Image Viewer Software For Mac:
List of Contents
1. Movavi’s Photo Editor
| Price:-$49.95 1-year license / 1 Mac Compatibility: macOS X 10.15 and higher USP: Designed To Work For Photographers Of All Skill Levels and Is Powered by AI |
For photographers who value speed, efficiency, and productivity, Movavi’s Photo Viewer is a fantastic solution. You can rapidly search for and locate photographs shot in a given area or with a specified tag and images taken on a specific date. This batch picture editing tool is multilingual and has an intuitive user interface with 100+ filters and effects.
Features:
- Supports 60 + image types.
- Supports both RAW camera images and compressed forms like JPG and PNG.
- AI-Powered auto enhancement, and restoration of old photos.
- Removes digital noise from low-light images
- Swift image background removal.
2. XnView MP
| Price:$34.69 Compatibility: Windows/MacOS/Linux USP: Free For Personal and Educational Purposes |
XnView MP is one of the most popular photo viewers for Mac. It comes packed with various editing capabilities and works with a broad range of file formats, including DNG, HEIC, and OpenEXR. It can read over 500 different picture files and export photos in over 70 different file types. This image software for Mac also allows viewing images, including Thumbnail View, Fullscreen View, and Filmstrip View. Let’s take a look at other features:
For example, you may look at thumbnails to make a quick decision, or you can compare two images to determine which one to put in your gallery or portfolio.
Features:
- View EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata using XnView.
- Trim photos without losing quality.
- Resize, rotate, crop, and adjust brightness, contrast, and more.
- Add filters, tweak colors, and apply effects
- Allows you to modify color depth & palette.
Moreover, if you want to work on many photographs simultaneously, XnView comes in handy. It has 80 distinct actions that you may use to batch-edit an entire photo collection.
3. Pixea
| Price: Free trial available. Pricing starts at $9.99 for Pixea Plus Compatibility: macOS 10.12 or later USP: Minimal interface with decent photo processing capabilities. |
It is one of the highest-rated image viewers for Mac. While it is primarily a picture viewer that sports a minimal yet modern interface, it also lets you play videos across all common formats such as MP4, AVI, FLV, WMV, MPEG, and MKV. Still, if the need arises, you can always convert video of one format into another using some of the best video converters for Mac.
Pixea allows you to flip and rotate images, check image EXIF information, and offers a host of other image processing tools. It also lets you show images inside archives without the need to extract them.
Features:
- Support for all major image and video formats (both for import and export purposes).
- Integrates well with trackpad gestures and keyboard shortcuts.
- Image editing tools like crop, rotate, change color temperature, contrast, hue, saturation, etc.
- Upscale image resolution using a machine learning algorithm.
4. Picturama
| Price: $0 (Free & Open-Source) Compatibility: Windows/MacOS/Linux USP: View & Organize Images For Free. |
Picturama is one of the best image viewer applications for Mac. It supports different types of image formats like JPEG, PNG, TIF, WebP, HEIC, and HEIF. It also contains LibRaw libraries that allow users to open RAW images from cameras that support LibRaw. You can also view the XMP metadata, EXIF and IPTC for each image. Images can also be rotated, tagged or cropped if required.
Features:
- The original images are not deleted from your system.
- Supports RAW image viewing.
- Allows users to sort and view images based on Date.
- Users can view the EXIF information of an image.
- Supports rotate, crop and tilt of images.
5. Apollo One
| Price: Free trial available. Pricing starts at $11.99/ year for Standard Subscription Compatibility: macOS 10.12 or later USP: Filter files using GPS distance or altitude |
Anogeissus Limited’s Apollo One is an image viewer for Mac with an easy-to-use toolbar that allows you to conduct quick tweaks and edits. It lets you access RAW photos in a hassle-free manner. This image viewer for Mac allows you to see EXIF details and grade photos on a scale of one to five.
Features:
- Simple interface with HUD display to maximize the image viewing area.
- Comes with built-in transitions to make slideshows
- Import photos from SD card, batch resize, rename and export, image format conversion.
- File filter option to search for particular images.
- Can play animated GIFs
- Built-in transitions to make slideshow
6. ACDSee
| Price: Free trial available, pricing starts at $59.95 Compatibility:Compatible with all the latest macOS versions. USP: ACDSee offers great product support and does a decent job as an image organizer |
ACDSee is a proprietary picture viewer and editor with unique capabilities, including facial recognition.
ACDSee Photo Studio organizes your photographs for you. You can use filters, categories, tags, color labels, location data, and more to sort and search photographs with fast access without having to import them.
Features:
- Comes with Powerful editing tools such as clone, heal, and more
- Has Dehaze tool to restore detail, contrast, and lost color
- Comes with a ‘Skin Tune’ tool to smoothen away blemishes and flaws.
- Easy navigation and customizable Indexer
- Sort, rate, and add color labels and tags to organize your photos.
7. qView
| Price: Freeware Compatibility: Compatible with all major macOS versions USP: Fast & Responsive, uses fewer system resources |
qView is one of the most popular free and open-source photo viewers for Mac. This macOS image viewer comes without any bells and whistles, and features just your image & the qView toolbar, allowing you to focus totally on it. This image viewer software for Mac is fast and allows you to access and switch between photos
Features:
- Animated GIFs controls
- Multithreaded preloading, file history, rotation, and mirroring
- Support popular image formats, including bmp, gif, jpg, png, tiff, and webp.
- Minimalistic interface
8. Lyn
| Price: Fully featured 15-day free trial. After that, pricing starts at $29.99 Compatibility:macOS High Sierra (10.3.4) or later USP: Minimalistic and uncluttered interface provides more space efficiency |
Lyn is another excellent photo viewer for macOS. It is intended to replace the built-in picture viewer with a quick, efficient, and visually beautiful alternative for photographers, web designers, and graphic artists using macOS. Lyn’s support for non-destructive editing could pique your curiosity. This allows you to alter and improve an image while keeping the original intact. Let’s take a look at the features:
Features:
- Supports all popular file types, as well as raw and HDR photographs,
- Export or share your photos directly to sites like Flickr, Dropbox, etc.
- Allows you to view photographs and modify brightness, contrast, and other settings.
- Can check EXIF information for every image and drag and drop to change the geolocation on Map.
- Comes with editing features to adjust exposure, color temperature, brightness, highlight, and more.
9. Phiewer
| Price: Free version (Phiewer(lite)) available. Pricing for Phiewer PRO starts at $4.99 Compatibility: macOS 10.13.0 or later USP: Convenient and quick method to see your photos, videos, and even audio files. |
Phiewer is an excellent folder-based picture reader for Mac that supports a wide range of file types, including TIFF, HEIC, and HEIF. Any image’s EXIF metadata may be seen, and you can use one of the several shortcuts to rotate or transition to a full-screen display.
Apart from viewing photos, you can also access videos across all common formats such as m4a, mp4, mov, m4u, and webm.
Features:
- Allows you to make slideshows with transition effects and music
- Supports popular camera models and reads RAW images
- Comes with a basic control panel with tons of shortcuts for browsing, rotating, playing/pausing, toggling Fullscreen, the info panel, and much more.
- Supports PNG, GIF, SVG, TIFF, RAW, CRW, NRW, JPG, and more
- Comes with a feature to browse your folders and play your media files
10. Photo Mechanic
| Price: $139 per user Compatibility: Windows/ macOS USP: Greater and better picture caching |
Photo Mechanic is one of the best tools for seeing many photographs rapidly on Mac. You’ll appreciate how much it streamlines your process as a photographer. PM quickly retrieves images from your memory card, allowing you to save time. You may start removing rejections and picking the finest photographs from a session right away. Let’s take a look at the features:
Features:
- Add the city, state, & country metadata to your photographs using GPS data
- It works with cloud-based sharing services such as Flickr and Photo Shelter
- Batch edit and add information to several photographs
- You can also apply watermarks
- Retrieves photographs from many memory cards, making the editing and selection process go faster.
Conclusion:-
That concludes our list of the best image viewer software for Mac. If you ask us, then we recommend Picturama or qView because both of them are free software. You should try these apps first and check they fit your requirements to replace the default “Preview” app.
If you want something better on the lines of a viewer and editor then you could go for Movavi’s Photo Editor. The ultimate choice will be yours depending on what you require and how well you like/adjust to the app interface.
In the end, we recommend that you spend a day checking out the free apps first, followed by those apps that provide a trial version. With practical experience you will be able to make the right choice for yourself.