What Is FastStone.org and What Software Does It Offer?

Updated

FastStone.org is the official software site for FastStone's Windows image tools: an image viewer/editor, a screen capture and recording tool, a lightweight viewer for images inside archives, and a batch photo resizer. All four products are listed on the site with details and download links, and each targets a different job — browsing and editing photos, capturing the screen, opening images in compressed archives, or processing many images at once. The site's stated design goal is speed, simplicity, and reliability.

The four products on the site

Product Version listed What it does Pricing signal on site
FastStone Image Viewer 8.5 Image browser, converter, and editor supporting BMP, JPEG, HEIC, WEBP, GIF, PNG, PCX, PDF, PSD, TIFF, WMF, ICO, TGA, and camera raw files; includes viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, and musical slideshow Free for personal use
FastStone Capture 11.3 Screen capture tool for windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular and freehand regions, plus scrolling windows and web pages; can record screen activity, sound, and webcam to MP4 One-time purchase
FastStone MaxView 3.5 Fast, compact image viewer supporting major graphic formats; opens images inside password-protected ZIP, RAR, and 7-Zip archives instantly; supports viewing, rotating, resizing, cropping, annotating, and printing One-time purchase
FastStone Photo Resizer 4.5 Image converter and renaming tool for batch converting, renaming, resizing, cropping, rotating, changing color depth, and adding text and watermarks Free for personal use

How to choose between them

The products overlap in that they all handle images, so the deciding factor is the task:

  • Managing and editing a photo library → FastStone Image Viewer. It is the broadest tool: browsing, comparison, color adjustments, red-eye removal, and slideshows in one program.
  • Capturing or recording what's on screen → FastStone Capture. This is the only product in the list built for screen capture, scrolling capture, and MP4 recording of screen activity, sound, and webcam.
  • Opening images locked inside archives → FastStone MaxView. Its distinguishing feature is reading images directly from password-protected ZIP, RAR, and 7-Zip files without extracting them first.
  • Processing many images at once → FastStone Photo Resizer. It works in batch mode for converting, renaming, resizing, cropping, rotating, changing color depth, and adding text or watermarks.

If you only need one tool for occasional photo viewing and light editing, Image Viewer covers the most ground. If your work is repetitive batch conversion, Photo Resizer is the narrower, purpose-built choice.

Platform and licensing notes

The site describes these as Windows tools — FastStone Capture is explicitly described as "for windows." The pricing signals on the product list distinguish two models: Image Viewer and Photo Resizer are marked "Free for personal use," while Capture and MaxView are marked "One-time purchase." That means commercial or non-personal use of the free products, and any use of the paid products, may require a license; check the individual product pages for the exact terms before relying on them at work.

Where to get details and downloads

Each product entry on the homepage links to a "Read more" page and a "Download" link, so the site itself is the entry point for both documentation and installation files. Version numbers and dates are listed alongside each product (for example, Image Viewer 8.5 dated 2026-06-24 and Capture 11.3 dated 2026-07-29), which makes it easy to confirm you are looking at the current release before downloading.