FastStone Image Viewer vs Pineapple Pictures

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.

Pineapple Pictures is an image viewer for opening common image formats on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its listed formats include JPEG, PNG, GIF, SVG, PSD, KRA, XCF, TGA, HDR, and AVIF. A Stay-on-Top setting can keep a reference image visible above other software while you work. The project also lists RAW support and a metadata viewer; optional libexiv2 support is recommended for showing more image metadata.

The viewer is free, and Pineapple Pictures as a whole is licensed under MIT, though individual files may have other compatible licenses. Downloads are linked through GitHub Releases, SourceForge, Arch Linux AUR, itch.io, and FlatHub. Format availability depends on Qt imageformats plugins, which users may need to obtain from their distribution or build themselves on Windows. Release 1.6.0 lists Linux with Qt 6.4 or later and a stacking window manager, Windows x64, and macOS ARM. The maintainer says the project will remain in maintenance mode for the foreseeable future while continuing to receive updates. An itch.io purchase supports development and provides experimental additional format support.