Download

vSpect is a free, fast, and well-designed image viewing and inspection tool. It works on all versions of Windows from XP onward (including Windows 7). You can download it here:

Download

(6 MB)

And if for whatever reason you don't like it, don't worry, vSpect comes with a uninstaller that fully removes the application from your computer. We built vSpect because we wanted it in our own work and we are making it available for others because an app like this is long overdue.

It is free, so needless to say, we offer no warranties, promises of support, or promises of any kind (see the End User License Agreement for all the legal details). But we do love feedback, so if you have something to say, email us at the address listed at the bottom of the page.

Features

vSpect has been designed to be easy and fast to use. Here are some of its interesting features:

• Pan: At all times, the left mouse button pans the image (like the hand tool in Acrobat).
• Zoom: At all times, the rolling the mouse wheel zooms the image, and pressing down on the mouse wheel (or middle button) and sliding the mouse forward or backward smoothly zooms the image. Try out this second mode. It is really slick. All zooming is centered on wherever the mouse cursor is located.
• Select: At all times, the right mouse button draws or modifies the rectangular marquee selection.
• Measure: The selection marquee is also really useful for measuring things (e.g., in a screenshot of a web page you are designing). The exact position and size of the marquee are reported both in the title bar (along with the image dimensions) and right above the marquee in the image (which is visually more conveniently located).
• Zoom To Fit: Double click to zoom to fit. Inside a selection, it zooms to the selection; outside a selection, it zooms to fit the entire image.
• Copy, Paste, Crop: Full clipboard support while preserving transparency (unlike Irfanview), and if you start vSpect without giving it an image to load and there is one on the clipboard, we start out by loading that up. This is really useful in combination with Alt+Print-Screen, which takes a screenshot of whatever window is currently active. So just hit Alt+Print-Screen and then start vSpect and you've got yourself a screenshot that you can inspect, and crop as you wish.

• Transparency: The checkerboard background makes it easy to see what is transparent in your images. Copy, paste, and crop all preserve transparency.
• Shell Integration: Stealing file associations is annoying, so we don't do it. Instead, right click any file and find "View in vSpect" in the Windows context menu. You can always add file associations under the "Open With" context sub-menu.
• Hardware Acceleration: Modern graphics cards are insanely fast if you play by their rules. vSpect uses OpenGL for all rendering, so it is silky smooth on any computer built in the last four years that is properly configured. For older computers or computers with badly configured graphics drivers, all bets are off.
• Eye dropper: Super-convenient and customizable eye dropper. The current hover-over color is always shown and any mouse click grabs that color as the currently selected color. The currently selected color can be copied to the clipboard as a formatted string by clicking on the copy color button (which also shows the text that will be copied). There are preset options for how to express the color as a text string (e.g., the html hex style and the CSS rgb() style), but you can also enter a custom formatter to match whatever other programs you are working with.
• File Formats: Most useful file formats are supported (e.g., PNG, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and BMP).

Screenshots

Below are a few screenshots illustrating some key features of vSpect.

Transparency: The checkerboard background makes transparency easy to see. A thin frame indicates the outer boundary of the image.

Selection: The area outside of the selection is darkened and the size and position of the selection are shown at the top left of the selection and in the title bar. You can zoom to fit the selection by double clicking on it.

Eye dropper: Here, the orange color in the left mouse button of this icon has been selected. This is shown in the right hand side of the eye dropper component in the toolbar (on the right side of the toolbar). Clicking the button to the right of the color swatch copies the color to the clipboard. The formatting of the color can be customized in the menu to the right of that button.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Open (Ctrl+O), save (Ctrl+S), save as (Ctrl+Shift+S), copy (Ctrl+C), paste (Ctrl+V), crop (Enter), zoom to fit image (Home), zoom to fit selection (Space), reset zoom (Back Space), copy color to clipboard (Ctrl+D), select all (Ctrl+A), and dismiss selection (Escape).

Team

vSpect was created by James Diebel and Jacob Norda (bios). If you like vSpect you may also like:

• Vector Magic - Easily convert bitmap images to vector images.
• WeatherSpark - Cool, interactive weather charts.
• YoHDR - Easily create great HDR photos online.
• AskGeo - Latitude and Longitude to Time Zone Conversion.

Contact

Please email us any feedback you might have to: feedback@awesomevspect.com