FastStone Image Viewer vs jAlbum

FastStone Image Viewer is a Windows image browser, converter, and editor for individual images and collections. Editing tools include resizing, rotation, cropping, color adjustment, sharpening, blur, Clone Stamp, and Healing Brush. It supports major graphic formats and popular camera RAW formats, including HEIC, WEBP, PDF, SVG, and JPEG XL. The Compare Images feature displays up to four pictures side by side, while batch tools convert and rename collections. Slideshows offer more than 150 transition effects and music. The program can acquire images from scanners and batch scan to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, or PNG. Users can launch external editors from within Image Viewer, and a portable version can run from removable storage. FastStone lists personal and educational use as free and a commercial lifetime license at $34.95 as a one-time purchase, with upgrades free. Another plan listing gives a price of $34.95 a month, so the commercial license terms should be confirmed before purchase. The product is listed for Windows, and FastStone provides technical support by email.

jAlbum is desktop software for building photo and video gallery websites from local media, then publishing them to a personal site or a jalbum.net account. Its editor supports cropping, sharpening, level adjustments, automatic correction, watermarks, and batch processing. The organizer can arrange photos by date and location, remove duplicates, and add tags. Users can choose among hundreds of customizable album templates, called skins. An included FTP client uploads galleries to web hosting. jAlbum says generated albums do not rely on server-side scripting. The free license allows galleries of at most 24 objects; the page says gallery size may otherwise depend on computer memory. Listed platforms are Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows, though desktop is the primary platform. Standard and Pro licenses include one year of priority email support, with replies within 24 hours on business days. The maker identifies photographers, artists, businesses, organizations, and families as potential users. jAlbum supports RAW photos, face recognition, and metadata tools, but does not offer cloud sync.