FastStone Image Viewer vs Pixea

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.

Pixea is a macOS image editor and media viewer for browsing, changing, and playing files. It opens HEIC, JPEG XL, PSD, RAW, WebP, AVIF, MP4, and MKV. The media browser searches, filters, sorts, and shuffles items in folders and archives, while a metadata viewer is included. Editing tools cover exposure, color, cropping, rotation, resizing, sharpening, denoising, perspective correction, and watermarking. Batch Editor applies global or per-image changes, presets, resizing, and upscaling; the free edition handles three images per batch. Machine-learning tools provide object removal and 2× or 4× upscaling, with object removal requiring macOS 13 or later. Video playback includes audio-track and subtitle selection, resume, repeat, aspect-ratio changes, and speeds from 0.5× to 2×. Pixea requires macOS 11 or later on Apple Silicon or Intel Macs. Pixea Plus adds shortcuts, gestures, broader filters, unlimited batch editing, and 4× upscaling. The maker says normal use collects no personal information and needs no registration. Plans are free, $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year, or $19.99, paid once.