FastPreview: adds extensive image info to file/properties; previews images in the context menu

Most image files today contain a large amount of information, from tagging and geo info to EXIF data stored by digital cameras at the moment that the pictures were taken, to run of the mill color and resolution and date taken info, etc. But this information is not very accessible from within the normal Windows explorer environment normally; which is where this software can be a huge help.

FastPreview is an Windows extension that does two things; firstly, it adds an extra tab in the file/properties that contains extensive information about your image, including EXIF info, tagging info, and just about any detail you could think of (XMP, EXIF, and IPTC media info). Secondly, FastPreview adds image preview functionality to your windows context menu entry.

Some additional notes:

• Displays the following info: Adobe eXtensible Metadata Language (XMP) information, Exif Camera/Image information, and IPTC Media information. Note that the information displayed in the file/properties/Fastpreview tab will vary a lot from image to image, depending on how much information the file contains (many files will contain hardly any info beyond resolution, etc.)
• You can right click on individual field to copy the info contained within it, or copy everything all at once.
• Clicking on the preview in the context menu will open the image in a FastPreview’s nice windowed viewer (see screenshot)
• You can set the thumbnail resolution in the context menu.

The verdict: overall this is a great addition to Windows. I’m a firm believer that right clicking properties should deliver all the information that your files contains (which is why I like this program and this one).

If I had one wish, however, it would be the possibility of disabling or uninstalling the context menu preview function, simply because there are other freeware tools out there that do this better, in my opinion (namely XNView shell extension).

Version tested: 3.1

Compatibility: Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7. 32 bit and 64-bit versions available. Requires SSE3 capable CPU.

Go to the program home page to download the latest version