Windows Photo Viewer

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer for Windows XP. Wallpaper of cat by http://www.wapers.com/ Windows Picture and Fax Viewer for Windows XP. Wallpaper of cat by http://www.wapers.com/
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Operating system	Windows XP
Type	image viewer
Website	Windows Picture and Fax Viewer Overview

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is an image viewer. It is a part of the Windows XP and Windows 2003 operating systems. It is capable of viewing JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, WMF and TIF format files, but these formats must be associated with it. If these formats have not been associated with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer they may open with another program. An image showing a portion of the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is shown here.

Apart from its rudimentary image rotating tool, the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer only views, and does not edit images. It is a colour-managed application which recognizes embeded ICC colour profiles in JPG and TIFF files. Windows XP contains other programs that are capable of elementary image editing.

Viewer capabilities

The viewer is capabable of displaying all images listed above. If an image is larger than screen resolution, it is made to fit the screen. The viewer has an option to view the image full size, but scrolling is necessary to see all areas of the image. Shown below is a screenshot of the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer’s toolbar.

File:WindowsPictureFaxtoolbar.png

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer toolbar

Available features

The following features are available by selecting the applicable toolbar icon:

• Successive viewing of all images in current folder.
• Zoom in or out on the image being viewed.
• Allow a large image to be viewed full size by scrolling.
• Management of files: delete, save, copy, print.
• Print a contact/index sheet of selected photos with picture titles.
• View a slide show of all, or selected images in the folder.
• Rotate images right or left by 90 degrees.
• Close viewer and open image the image in the default image editor registered for that image type (generally Microsoft Paint).

Special handling of TIFF files

If a TIFF formatted file is opened in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, a new toolbar will appear at the bottom of the screen. This toolbar has icons that allow other operations to be performed. Lines can be drawn on the image and text added to it. Areas of the image can be selected and concealed.

Convenience of use

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is very convenient for viewing all images associated with it. The user can view each image in the selected image folder in rapid succession, forward, or backward (slower) utilizing the arrow icons on the toolbar. Whilst an image is being viewed, two very useful options are available by right clicking inside the window.

• Any image can be edited by selecting the “Open With” option from the menu which pops up.
• Any image can be e-mailed by selecting the “Send To” option. Further options allow the image to be mailed full size, or in pixel dimensions of: 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768.

Criticism

The viewer is known to at times not render PNG images correctly. Even at a 100% zoom level, it sometimes causes entire lines to not be rendered, which can be very confusing when examining critical image data.

A buffer overflow vulnerability has been found in the underlying graphics rendering engine that the viewer uses, which could allow an attacker to execute code remotely by getting the user to view a specially crafted WMF file. Microsoft released a patch for this vulnerability in January 2006; their bulletin also states that a valid workaround is to disable the viewer via the registry. See Windows Metafile vulnerability.

The viewer is the default viewer for many file types in Windows XP, and there appears to be no interface to choose a different viewer program for these file types. The only workaround appears to be to disable the viewer entirely, if a user wanted to make a different viewer the default for these file types. [1]

Means of disabling

Because the viewer is part of the Windows operating system, it cannot easily be completely removed. However, Microsoft has provided instructions for disabling it, as a possible workaround for a security issue.

Unregister the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (Shimgvw.dll) on Windows XP Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2; Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1

Microsoft has tested the following workaround. While this workaround will not correct the underlying vulnerability, it helps block known attack vectors. When a workaround reduces functionality, it is identified in the following section.

Note This workaround is intended to help protect against Web based exploit vectors and is not effective against exploits that have Windows Metafile images embedded in Word documents and other similar attack vectors.

Note The following steps require Administrative privileges. We recommend that you restart the computer after you apply this workaround. Alternatively, you can log out and log back in after you apply the workaround. However, we do recommend that you restart the computer.

To un-register Shimgvw.dll, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type "regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll" (without the quotation marks), and then click OK.

2. When a dialog box appears that confirms that the process has been successful, click OK.

Impact of Workaround: The Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will no longer start when users click a link to an image type that is associated with the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

To undo this workaround after the security update has been deployed, reregister Shimgvw.dll. To do this, use this same procedure, but replace the text in step 1 with “regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll” (without the quotation marks).

See also

• Comparison of image viewers

External links

• Changing graphic file associations
• Windows Picture and Fax Viewer Overview
• Related Microsoft Security Bulletin (See the "Vulnerability Details" section)