HawkView vs Pictureflect Photo Viewer

HawkView is a Windows image viewer for viewing, editing, converting, and presenting images. It supports around 40 formats, including HEIC, AVIF, JPEG XL, camera RAW, PSD, SVG, and animated formats. Its GPU-accelerated viewer streams visible areas of images up to 64 megapixels using 512-pixel tiling. Editing includes cropping, straightening, flipping, and lossless 90-degree JPEG rotation, with changes held in memory until saved or discarded. Slideshows provide 36 transitions, background music, and MP4 export at 720p, 1080p, or 4K. The app reads and edits more than 40 EXIF, IPTC, and XMP fields and displays geotagged photos on OpenStreetMap; locations can open in Google Maps. Images, edits, and settings remain on the computer, with no accounts, sign-up, ads, or tracking. Update checks and anonymous crash reports are optional network uses. HawkView supports 64-bit x64 Windows 10 and 11 and is distributed through the Microsoft Store, direct installer, or portable ZIP. Personal use is free; professional or commercial use requires a paid license.

Pictureflect Photo Viewer is a Windows 10/11 app for viewing and editing images, with an optional Pro upgrade. It supports fullscreen viewing, zoom controls, slideshows and multiple windows. Its formats include JPEG, PNG, GIF, HEIC, WebP, BMP, TIFF, AVIF, JPEG XL, JPEG-XR, DDS, ICO, CUR, RAW formats including DNG, and SVG. Some HEIC, AVIF and other formats may require Microsoft Store packages; JPEG XL requires Windows 11 24H2 or later. Image tools include cropping, resizing, conversion, rotation, flipping, copying, moving and printing, including in bulk. The app displays image metadata and can edit fields such as title, date taken and location. The free version includes contrast and exposure effects. Pro adds saturation, levels, curves and texture blending, plus thumbnail view, transition effects, video playback and export, file search, saved sessions and slideshow music. Pro costs 4.99 USD once, and the 48-hour trial is available in-app. A Pro license covers up to 10 devices owned or shared by the purchaser. The maker recommends 2GB RAM or higher.