FlashView

Browse 100,000 photos. At the speed of thought.

A fast, lightweight photo viewer for Windows — built for photographers who want to see and cull huge archives at speed.

Website & Download → flashview.net

This repo is the issue tracker only. Source code is not public (yet).

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What it does

Open a folder with thousands of photos. Scroll through them at full speed. Rate your keepers with a single keystroke, flag the rejects, filter down to what matters, and export ratings as standard XMP — ready for Lightroom, Bridge, or Capture One.

FlashView is the fast first-pass tool between copying your card and opening your editor.

What Sets It Apart

Built for massive folders. Virtualized grid, streaming thumbnails, no pre-indexing wait — stays responsive at 100,000+ images in a single folder.

Browse at the speed of thought. Cursor keys, mouse wheel, scroll — every input shows the next image with sub-50 ms latency, even on 45-megapixel JPEGs. That's the Flash in the name.

Native Windows Explorer workflow. Right-click any image → Open with FlashView → you're in Loupe in under a second, with the entire folder already loaded. Ctrl+C copies the image, arrow keys browse neighbors.

Features

• XMP metadata, shared with every major tool. Ratings, color labels, and pick/reject flags are written as standard XMP — embedded inside the JPEG, or as a sidecar next to your RAW. Any XMP-aware program reads them back: Lightroom, Bridge, Capture One, and anything else that speaks XMP.
• Batch-rate hundreds at a time. Select 200, 1,000, or more files — press 3, done. Stars, color labels, pick/reject all writable in a single keystroke, across JPEGs and XMP sidecars alike. Ctrl+Z undoes the last batch.
• Filter on the fly. Filter by rating (at-least, exact, at-most), by color label, by picked, by rejected, or hide RAW files entirely. Cull down to exactly what you're reviewing.
• Sort and group. Name or date, ascending or descending. Group a parent folder by shoot, with configurable depth.
• Five color labels. Red (6), yellow (7), green (8), blue (9), purple (V) — written as standard XMP, read back everywhere.
• Keyboard-first. ←→ navigate, 0–5 rate, P pick, X reject, U clear flags, G/L Grid/Loupe, F fullscreen, F11 second-monitor Loupe, I EXIF, S slideshow, Ctrl+F search, Del trash, Ctrl+Z undo, Ctrl+A select all, Ctrl+O open folder, R recursive, F1 shows the full list.
• Jump to any file. Quick-open search (Ctrl+F) finds a folder or image by name across the whole tree.
• Slideshow. Auto-advance through the current folder or selection at a configurable interval (S).
• Second-monitor Loupe. F11 opens a full-size Loupe on your second screen while you browse and cull on the main one.
• Cloud-aware. For OneDrive / Nextcloud / Dropbox folders, choose how online-only files are handled: fully sync (download all), ignore (no download), or preview just the first N images on demand — so a huge cloud folder opens without pulling everything down.
• Drill up, drill down. Open a parent folder and see shoots grouped. Zoom into any subfolder, or browse them all at once recursively.
• Recent roots. Your last opened folders, one click away.
• Dark UI, DE/EN. Follows your system language automatically.
• Zoom and inspect. 1:1 pixel view, fit-to-screen, pan.
• EXIF panel. Camera, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter, ISO, date, pixel size, artist, copyright — toggle in the Loupe with I.

Supported formats

• Images: JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .jfif), PNG, HEIC / HEIF (.heic, .heif, .hif), TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
• RAW — best-effort via embedded preview JPEG, no external RAW engine:
  • Canon CR3, CR2
  • Nikon NEF / NRW
  • Sony ARW / SR2
  • Fujifilm RAF
  • Adobe DNG (Leica M8 falls back to EXIF only)
  • Hasselblad 3FR / FFF
  • Samsung SRW
  • Pentax PEF
  • Olympus ORF (modern bodies; old compacts show only camera thumbnails)
  • Panasonic RW2

What It's Not

• Not a developing tool — no exposure, crop, or white balance.
• Not color-managed — sRGB by design.
• Not a library or catalog — folders are your catalog, no import step.

Where it fits in

Most photo browsers promise speed. Most are fine at a few hundred images, fall behind at 10,000, and give up at 100,000. FlashView is built for that high end — the folders real photographers actually accumulate.

Lightroom is editor-first; its Library isn't built for rapid culling. FlashView complements it — your fast first pass before Lightroom, not a replacement: fast enough for a fifty-thousand-image shoot, lean enough to live on every machine you own.

Read more

• ACDSee alternative: back to the fast, lean image viewer — why a dedicated fast viewer beats a heavy catalog for the first pass.
• Your camera packs a second image into the RAW. Here's why that changes everything. — the embedded preview JPEG that makes instant RAW browsing possible.

Ecosystem

FlashView works hand-in-hand with StarRate — a Nextcloud plugin for guest and model ratings. The full workflow: shoot → FlashView for your own first pass → upload to Nextcloud → StarRate collects external ratings → back in FlashView you see your own and the guest ratings consolidated, all in standard XMP.

Feedback

Bug or feature idea? Open an issue. This repo is issue-only — no pull requests accepted, but bug reports, workflow critiques, and screenshots are very welcome.

Background

Born out of my own Canon workflow (20D through R6 Mk III). Lightroom is excellent for developing, but the step before — clicking through 800 frames and marking the keepers — always felt sluggish. FlashView makes that step fast.

If your workflow looks similar, it might speed yours up too.

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© Mathias Mischler. Provided "as is", no warranty.