⚡ QuickView

The High-Performance Image Viewer for Windows.

Built for Speed. Engineered for Geeks.

Direct2D Native • Modern C++23 • Quantum Stream Architecture • Portable

📥 Download Latest Release • 📸 Screenshots • 🐛 Report Bug

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🚀 Introduction

QuickView is currently one of the fastest image viewers available on the Windows platform. We focus purely on delivering the ultimate viewing experience—leave the heavy editing to professional tools like Photoshop.

Rewritten from scratch using Direct2D and C++23, QuickView abandons legacy GDI rendering for a game-grade visual architecture. With a startup speed and rendering performance that rivals or exceeds closed-source commercial software, it is designed to handle everything from tiny icons to massive 8K RAW photos with zero latency.

📂 Supported Formats

QuickView supports almost all modern and professional image formats:

• Classic: JPG, JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIF, TIFF, ICO
• Web/Modern: WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF, SVG, SVGZ, JXL
• Pro/HDR: EXR, HDR, PIC, PSD, TGA, PCX, QOI, WBMP, PAM, PBM, PGM, PPM, WDP, HDP
• RAW (LibRaw): ARW, CR2, CR3, DNG, NEF, ORF, RAF, RW2, SRW, X3F, MRW, MOS, KDC, DCR, SR2, PEF, ERF, 3FR, MEF, NRW, RAW

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QuickView v3.0.4 - The Quantum Flow Update

Release Date: 2026-01-16

⚡ Core Architecture: "Quantum Flow"

• Unified Scheduling & Decoding (Quantum Flow): Introduced a "Fast/Slow Dual-Channel" architecture (FastLane + HeavyLanePool) that isolates instant interactions from heavy decoding tasks.
• N+1 Hot-Spare Architecture: Implemented a "Capped N+1" threading model where standby threads are kept warm for immediate response, maximizing CPU throughput without over-subscription.
• Deep Cancellation: Granular "On-Demand" cancellation logic allowed for heavy formats (JXL/RAW/WebP), ensuring stale tasks (e.g., during rapid scrolling) are instantly terminated to save power.
• Direct D2D Passthrough: Established a "Zero-Copy" pipeline where decoded RawImageFrame buffers are uploaded directly to GPU memory, bypassing GDI/GDI+ entirely.

🎨 Visual & Rendering Refactor

• DirectComposition (Game-Grade Rendering): Completely abandoned the legacy SwapChain/GDI model in favor of a DirectComposition Visual tree.
  • Visual Ping-Pong: Implemented a double-buffered Visual architecture for tear-free, artifact-free crossfades.
  • IDCompositionScaleTransform: Hardware-accelerated high-precision zooming and panning.
• Native SVG Engine: Replaced nanosvg with Direct2D Native SVG rendering.
  • Capabilities: Supports complex SVG filters, gradients, and CSS transparency.
  • 2-Stage Lossless Scaling: Vector-based re-rasterization during deep zoom for infinite sharpness.
  • (Requirement: Windows 10 Creators Update 1703 or later).

💾 Memory & Resource Management

• Arena Dynamic Allocation: Switched to a TripleArena strategy using Polymorphic Memory Resources (PMR). Memory is pre-allocated and recycled (Bucket Strategy) to eliminate heap fragmentation.
• Smart Directional Prefetch:
  • Auto-Tuning: Automatically selects Eco, Balanced, or Performance prefetch strategies based on detected system RAM.
  • Manual Override: Full user control over cache behavior.
  • Smart Skip: Prevents "OOM" in Eco mode by intelligently skipping tasks that exceed the cache budget.

🧩 Infrastructure & Metadata

• Metadata Architecture Refactor: Decoupled "Fast Header Peeking" (for instant layout) from "Async Rich Metadata" parsing (Exif/IPTC/XMP), solving UI blocking issues.
• Debug HUD: Added a real-time "Matrix" overlay (F12) visualizing the topology of the cache, worker lane status, and frame timings.

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✨ Key Features

1. 🏎️ Extreme Performance

"Speed is a feature."

QuickView leverages Multi-Threaded Decoding for modern formats like JXL and AVIF, delivering up to 6x faster load times on 8-core CPUs compared to standard viewers.

• Zero-Latency Preview: Smart extraction for massive RAW (ARW, CR2) and PSD files.
• Debug HUD: Press F12 to see real-time performance metrics (Decode time, Render time, Memory usage).

2. 🎛️ Visual Control Center

No more manual .ini editing.

A fully hardware-accelerated Settings Dashboard.

• Granular Control: Tweak mouse behaviors (Pan vs. Drag), zoom sensitivity, and loop rules.
• Visual Personalization: Adjust UI transparency and background grid in real-time.
• Portable Mode: One-click toggle to switch config storage between AppData (System) and Program Folder (USB Stick).

3. 📊 Geek Visualization

Don't just view the image; understand the data.

• Real-time RGB Histogram: Translucent waveform overlay.
• Refactored Metadata Architecture: Faster and more accurate EXIF/Metadata parsing.
• HUD Photo Wall: Press T to summon a high-performance gallery overlay capable of virtualizing 10,000+ images.
• Smart Extension Fix: Automatically detect and repair incorrect file headers (e.g., PNG saved as JPG).
• Instant RAW Dev: One-click toggle between "Fast Preview" and "Full Quality" decoding for RAW files.
• Deep Color Analysis: Real-time display of Color Space (sRGB/P3/Rec.2020), Color Mode (YCC/RGB), and Quality Factor.

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⚙️ The Engine Room

We don't use generic codecs. We use the State-of-the-Art libraries for each format.

Format	Backend Engine	Why it rocks (Architecture)
JPEG	libjpeg-turbo v3	AVX2 SIMD. The absolute king of decompression speed.
PNG / QOI	Google Wuffs	Memory-safe. Outperforms libpng, handles massive dimensions.
JXL	libjxl + threads	Parallelized. Instant decoding for high-res JPEG XL.
AVIF	dav1d + threads	Assembly-optimized AV1 decoding.
SVG	Direct2D Native	Hardware Accelerated. Infinite lossless scaling.
RAW	LibRaw	Optimized for "Instant Preview" extraction.
EXR	TinyEXR	Lightweight, industrial-grade OpenEXR support.
HEIC / TIFF	Windows WIC	Hardware accelerated (Requires system extensions).

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⌨️ Shortcuts

Master these to navigate at the speed of thought:

Category	Key	Action
Navigation	Space / PgDn	Next Image
	Bksp / PgUp	Previous Image
	T	Photo Wall (HUD)
View	1 / Z	100% Actual Size
	0 / F	Fit to Screen
	Enter	Fullscreen
Info	I	Toggle Info/Histogram
	D	Toggle Debug HUD
Control	Ctrl + P	Settings Panel
	Ctrl + T	Toggle "Always on Top"
Edit	R	Rotate
	Del	Delete File

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🗺️ Roadmap We are constantly evolving. Here is what's currently in development:

• Animation Support: Full playback for GIF/WebP/APNG.
• Frame Inspector: Pause and analyze animations frame-by-frame.
• Color Management (CMS): ICC Profile support.
• Dual-View Compare: Side-by-side image comparison.
• Smart Background: Auto-dimming / Acrylic effect.

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📥 Installation

QuickView is 100% Portable.

1. Go to Releases.
2. Download QuickView.zip.
3. Unzip anywhere and run QuickView.exe.
4. (Optional) Use the in-app Settings to register as default viewer.

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⚖️ Credits

QuickView stands on the shoulders of giants. Licensed under GPL-3.0. Special thanks to David Kleiner (original JPEGView) and the maintainers of LibRaw, Google Wuffs, dav1d, and libjxl.