Finder's Gallery view lets you curl through folders of photos on your Mac with an enhanced preview pane and rich metadata. Preview works fine equally a basic photo viewer for Mac, but it lacks navigation controls, superior viewing feel, and other features.

You don't need an app like Apple Photos, Adobe Lightroom, or i that supports databases to update and organize your collection while displaying images. We'll show you some of the best photo viewer apps with unique features for Mac and how yous can use them.

1. XnView MP

XnView MP image viewer and organizer for Mac

XnView MP is a photo viewer, managing director, and resizer for Mac. The built-in tools let y'all organize images in multiple ways and procedure them with an arsenal of editing tools. It has a built-in batch conversion module and supports WebP, Animated WebP, TIFF, PlayStation TIM, and numerous image formats.

When you launch the app, you'll come across 3 panels.

The left sidebar is the Finder file system, with section tabs—Folders, Favorites, and Categories Filter. Information technology consists of pre-configured categories to amass and characterization your images.

The heart panel shows a thumbnail preview of each photograph. Navigate to View > View As and select Thumbnails + Labels to evidence the details. You tin can sort images by name, file size, EXIF date taken or modified, or fifty-fifty filter them by rating, comments, or tags.

On the right side, you'll run across a preview console. Info lets yous see file properties, histograms, and EXIF data. Switch to the Preview console to cheque out the image.

Unique Features of XnView MP:

  • Support for erstwhile, non-standard, Photoshop, Corel, Autodesk, and HEIF paradigm formats. Click Create to separate or join images and create multipage image files.
  • Information technology tin handle RAW file photos and uses the GPU to improve functioning, caching, and processing. It also supports a full internal bit depth picture of viii, 16, or 32 bits per component.
  • Customize the layout of the app as per your needs. Navigate to View > Layout, or select Free to create a custom layout.
  • Integrates with XnConvert to convert images, resize batches of images, and apply adjustments like rotation, watermarks, filters, fancy effects, and more.
  • Create custom slideshows with parameters for setting upward a timer (or keyboard printing), screen size, transition effects, and groundwork music.

Download: XnView MP (Free)

two. ApolloOne

Apollo One image viewer app for Mac

ApolloOne is an image viewer app for Mac to view and organize photos. The built-in camera RAW decoder can generate a preview of an image directly from the RAW file. With the built-in Lanczos filter, information technology can scale your image back to its original quality.

To admission your photos, choose Tools > Browser in the toolbar. Click the plus (+) push button and and then the Folder menu detail. Select the folder you want to add to Places. You tin can group related folders by adding a separator. Now simply navigate to the folder (check the Include Subfolders setting to include subfolders) and click to load your photos.

And then press the left or right pointer keys to come across your photos. With merely few keystrokes you can navigate beyond many photos, like on a Windows PC. Thumbnails are generated on the fly using a multi-core processing engine. For Macs with a GPU, the app can further speed up the display of images and quality.

Head to Preferences > Advanced and turn on the High quality image scaling selection. Y'all can zoom in or out of the photograph. Press the Control key to instantly zoom to a detail magnification.

The Inspector panel shows you detailed information from a camera JPEG or RAW file. To inspect whatsoever epitome, click the Inspector button in the toolbar. On a supported camera, the info folio can reveal the serial number, shutter count, and other specifications.

Unique Features of ApolloOne:

  • Information technology provides a glance view of images at the height of the viewer—like a movie strip (Tools > Evidence Filmstrip).
  • Set the source of the metadata and support both macOS extended attributes (used by Finder searches) and XMP. Turn on Spotlight indexing to search images by different EXIF parameters.
  • There's a built-in adjustment panel to assistance with the assessment of a RAW image. This includes exposure compensation, highlights and shadows aligning, and an Auto Tone curve.
  • Contact sheet way (View > Contact Sheet) displays the thumbnails in a grid style. With information technology, y'all tin perform file operations in majority.
  • Add together a Smart Binder created past Finder to access your photos. It even supports Finder tags and lets you use a combination of tags for farther filtering. Here's how to use smart folders on a Mac.

Download: ApolloOne (Gratis, premium version available)

three. qView

qView minimal photo viewer app for Mac

qView is a cross-platform, minimal paradigm viewer app for Mac. On launch, you'll run into a black window. Navigate to File > Open up and cull a folder to display its contents. And so, press the left or right arrow keys to navigate between the photos seamlessly, but like on a Windows PC.

Curlicue to zoom in or out and Control-click any flick to access more options. You tin can rotate images, flip images, or switch to the original size and view them in detail.

Unique Features of qView:

  • qView supports GIFs, allowing you lot to increase or decrease the speed or save a specific frame equally a PNG or JPEG.
  • View photos in slideshow mode by going to Tools > Start Slideshow. You tin can customize the slideshow management, timer, and preload settings.
  • It offers shortcuts to navigate and access unlike options and usability. Check the Shortcuts tab in preferences.
  • Past default, the championship bar shows the file name. Head to Preferences > Windows and check the Verbose option under the title bar text to testify you more details.

Download: qView (Gratuitous)

4. Picturama

picturama photo viewer app for Mac

Picturama is a modern-looking, electron-based, flick-viewing Mac app that lets you quickly view images. The app supports JPEG, PNG, TIF, WebP, HEIC, and HEIF. It besides reads the RAW file format for a bunch of cameras through the LibRaw libraries built into the app.

To get started, click the Settings button and choose a binder.

You can browse the photos by engagement using the stylish progress bar on the right. Cull a yr and month and directly navigate to your photos.

Press the i push button to run across the data and EXIF data of an image. Click the flag button to add that epitome to your favorites.

Unique Features of Picturama:

  • Comprehensive EXIF, IPTC, MakerNotes, and XMP information for each image.
  • Y'all can add a tag, but information technology has no relation with the Finder.
  • Rotate and crop your photos. You can zoom in or out with the slider in the toolbar or mouse wheel.
  • Export photos in formats similar JPEG, PNG, or WebP. When doing this, y'all can set the quality and size, and remove EXIF information.

Download: Picturama (Costless)

v. Lyn

lyn photo organizer and viewer app for Mac

Lyn is a Mac photo viewer and organizer. Information technology supports TIFF, HEIF, TGA, WebP, GIF, and many non-standard, former, and RAW image formats. With the built-in support of camera models and multi-threading, it can progressively calibration high-resolution images.

The left sidebar displays all your folders (including Smart Folders), photo libraries, devices, and mounted volumes.

The viewer displays the paradigm and has view options similar Icon, Strip, List, and Map mode. The map layout mode uses Apple Maps with GPS data to provide visual location information. The list view way shows the epitome thumbnail, detailed data, and metadata. And the strip view mode shows a tiny strip of thumbnails on the top with a viewer surface area.

At the right, you'll run into the Inspector panel. It displays data like blazon, color space, EXIF, MakerNote, IPTC, GPS, and more.

Scan your photos either using strip view style or past double-clicking a picture and using the left or right arrow keys. Y'all can apply dissimilar zoom methods and use shortcuts to magnify the prototype at the cursor level.

Lyn can also sort photos in many means, like by proper noun, date, color characterization, tags, and rating. Or it tin filter them past proper name, extension, and tags in the search field.

Unique Features of Lyn:

  • This app uses ColorSync color management technology, from source to printing. It can detect the color profile (through ICC) of the image, embedded profile, EXIF, or camera MakerNote.
  • You can rate, assign keywords, or add together tags to your photos. It's besides possible to create a smart binder with tags, and so you lot can easily discover files. Nether the Search For tag, you'll find all your Smart Folders.
  • When you connect a camera, expand the Devices section and start importing your photos. Information technology can even import from a carte du jour reader, hard disk, or NAS.
  • Lyn includes a not-destructive filtering engine to adjust color, exposure, contrast, enhance the shadows, employ a sepia filter, catechumen to black and white, and more. You can fifty-fifty straighten or crop an image and later revert it.
  • Publish your photos direct to Flickr, Dropbox, and SmugMug.

Download: Lyn ($29.99, gratis trial bachelor)

Gratis and Paid Image Editors

Although viewing images seems like a unproblematic operation, many people take unlike needs from their photo viewing app. The apps discussed in this article encompass a wide range of options for different professionals and edge cases. Try out these apps yourself to run across which i fits your needs best.

If you're looking to edit your images, then you require an image editor. All these paradigm viewers have the option to Open with an image editor of your pick. If this interests you, accept a expect at the best gratuitous and paid image editors for Mac to detect the best selection.

The 8 Best Free and Paid Image Editors for Mac

Read Next

About The Writer

Rahul Saigal (179 Manufactures Published)

With his One thousand.Optom Degree in Center Intendance Speciality, Rahul worked equally a lecturer for many years in the college. Writing and teaching others is always his passion. He at present writes near technology and make information technology digestible for readers who don't understand it well.

More From Rahul Saigal