vShow
Every picture on the machine, opened at once.
The problem
Somebody sends a scanned invoice as a TIFF, a designer sends a PSD, a photographer sends a folder of NEFs, and Windows shows three broken icons. The usual answer is to install something else for each one, or to convert the file to a format the machine will open — which means making a second copy of everything and hoping it looks the same.
And the viewers that do open them are often quietly wrong. A scan comes out as a negative, a photograph is on its side, a picture with soft edges is too dark around them. Every one of those looks like a picture, which is why nobody notices.
What it does
1It opens what the others refuse
TIFF, Photoshop, Targa and camera raw files, decoded by vShow itself — no plug-in, no converting, no second copy. JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP, icons, SVG and AVIF open straight away, animation and all.
2Scanned paper and faxes
CCITT Group 3 and Group 4, the compression every fax and most scanned documents use, plus LZW, PackBits and deflate — in either byte order, in strips or tiles, and every page of a multi-page scan.
3Camera raw, instantly
CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RW2, RAF and the rest. vShow takes the full-size JPEG the camera itself made and stored inside the file, so it appears at once and needs no codec installed.
4Photographs the right way up
A phone held sideways stores the picture landscape with a note saying "turn this". vShow turns it — once. Applying that note twice is as wrong as ignoring it, and both happen in real viewers.
5A scan that is not a negative
TIFF greyscale comes in two directions and scanners use the one where zero means white. Read it the obvious way and the page is black with white text on it.
6It never trusts the file name
Every file is opened and read. A PNG called .jpg — which is what half the "save image as" menus on the web produce — opens without comment instead of showing a broken icon.
7Through the folder, in order
Arrow keys or the wheel, wrapping round at the end. photo2 comes before photo10, which is not what sorting by name normally does — and when the numbers jump about it looks as though pictures are missing.
8What the picture actually is
The camera, the lens, the exposure, and how the file is stored — its compression, its byte order, how many images are inside it. Useful when something is wrong and you need to know what you have got.
Why it is worth it
vShow cannot delete, move, rename or write over anything, and there is nothing in it that can. Turning a picture turns it on the screen. "Save a copy" writes a new file you named, and refuses to write over the one you are looking at.
vShow adds itself to the "Open with" list and registers properly in Default Apps so you can choose it. It does not make itself the default for twenty extensions behind your back.
A raw file is sensor readings, not a picture, and every converter renders it differently. vShow shows the camera's own JPEG and says so, rather than producing a rendering of its own and letting you assume it is definitive.
No account, no cloud, no update check. A photograph that records where it was taken has its coordinates shown and not looked up — because looking a place up means sending it to somebody.
How you use it
Or right-click a folder and choose "View the pictures in here".
Left and right, or the wheel. Space goes forward, Home and End go to the ends.
The wheel with Ctrl, or + and −, and drag to move around. Double-click switches between fitting the window and actual size.
For what the file actually is — the camera, the exposure, the compression.
What it needs
| Windows | 10 or 11, 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Installs to | Your user profile — no administrator prompt |
| Needs | Nothing else installed first |
| Network | None — vShow never connects to anything |
| Goes with | vShot for taking pictures, vOrg for filing them away |
What it will not do, said plainly
vShow does not edit. There is no crop, no colour correction and no red-eye, and no plan for any: a program that both views and edits is a program that will one day write over the original by accident. Turning a picture turns it on the screen only.
It shows the JPEG a camera stored inside a raw file, not a conversion of the sensor data. That is the camera's own rendering — the right picture for looking at, the wrong one for editing, and the details panel says which you are looking at.
HEIC photos from an iPhone, JPEG XL and DirectDraw surfaces are handed to Windows, which opens them only if the machine has the codec. Where it does not, vShow says which one from the Microsoft Store would add it — rather than showing a broken icon and leaving you to guess.
See vShow on your own machine
A short screen-share is usually enough — we open it on your PC, with your files.
Or write to info@issmart.in.
vTouch
vPress
vPDF
vScreen
vBack
vNote
vFTP
vName
vLog
vLogServer
vSys
vCom
vShot
vCmd
vTag
vAudio
vBooks
vOrg
vSize
vPort
vScan
vCon
vCopy
vAuto
vClean