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DOS Image Viewers [18!]

Summary: When you think of viewing GIF, JPG, PNG and other image files in the DOS environment, you may think that there are not a whole lot of image viewer choices. After all, DOS itself tops out at 16-color, 640x480 VGA, which does not sound particularly promising for viewing images. However, you would suprised at the multitude of choices you have (18 viewers are included in this post!), and the resolutions, color depths and image rendering quality that they make available. Read on for all the details.

Post Body: MS-DOS made its debut in 1981, as the operating system for the the original IBM PC. Powered by a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088, the IBM PC was significantly more powerful than its contemporaries, but it was NOT powerful enough for complex image decoding. This was not an issue when the IBM PC launched however: the GIF standard would not be minted until 1987 and the JPEG standard years later, in 1992.

Various forms of DOS remained the primary OS for PCs from the PC's launch in 1981 until Windows 3.1 was released in 1993. By then, IBM PC (and clone) CPUs had evolved from their humble beginnings to the more powerful 80286 chips (1982), then the 80386 (1986) and then the 80486 (1989).

GIF was well established shortly after the arrival of the 386-class machines and JPG followed soon thereafter. Windows 3.1 was still years away, but powered by the explosive growth of the internet and the web, GIF and JPEG images began to proliferate quickly. The need for DOS-based image viewers quickly became pressing and software authors jumped into the breach to meet the need.

Graphics Formats

There were complications, of course. DOS had no integrated graphics support other than VGA, which supported a maximum of 640x480 and 16 colors, and so the authors of DOS image viewers had to develop and include unique plugins for each video card they supported (and there were no small number of those!). There was the promise and the further complexity of VESA, which could allow DOS to display a huge number of larger resolutions and deeper color densities, but again, VESA support was unique per video card. The need for card-specific plugins led to a degree of complexity in the setup of these viewers that was often beyond the capability of less computer-literate users (and there was no small number of those either!).

Complications or not however, prior to the arrival of Windows 3.1, DOS was king, and the king needed a way to view image files. What were the king's options? After considering this question for a time, and with a little prodding/help from my newfound compatriot PhG, I put together a list of DOS image viewers fielded by the intrepid software authors mentioned above. Taken as a group, these viewers nicely supported the machines of the mid 1980s and into the early 1990s, covering the range from 286-based machines all the way up to Pentium/586-based machines. Viewers for 8086/88 machines were omitted from consideration (if they existed at all); they simply did not have the "umphh" to do decompression of complex image formats like GIF and JPG.

Below is the list, which by no means claims to be comprehensive; it is just the best that could be unearthed in 2025, nearly 30 years after the fact. If you are aware of more and/or better DOS image viewers, please leave a comment to this post and we will update it to include your input, assuming that the viewers in question can be found, downloaded and tested.

A quick note that will be more fully expounded upon in a later post: the DOS viewers we tested were head-and-shoulders faster at rendering JPEG images in particular than their Windows-based peers, making them the better choice in the early days of GIF and JPG. Many of these early DOS image viewers featured hand-coded x86 assembly language JPEG image decoders, giving them a significant performance advantage over their slower high level language based peers.

OK, with no further ado, here is the list, presented in alphabetic order to ensure no favoritism creeps in (note that all of the image viewers on the list are available for download from the DOS archive of this site):

CShow/CSHOW2000: CompuServe Show (remember CompuServe? :-) ) versions 9.0.4 and 2000 are both excellent and very capable image viewers. In both cases, CShow supports the JPEG format and just about every other common image format of the day. CShow runs nicely on 286 and later machines. It is not as fast as some of the others, but it is very capable. Unlike all of the above, it does an amazing job of dithering colors on EGA graphics hardware, even for JPEG images, producing a remarkably good rendering of the image despite the limitations of EGA. This makes CShow an outstanding choice for 286-class machines. We tested two versions of CSHOW, v9.0.4 and CSHOW 2000. Presumably the "2000" version is newer, but aside from user interface differences, there were no obvious advantages, one to the other
DOSView: DOSView 1.5 requires a 386 or better. It supports all the common image formats of the day, including JPEG. It is fairly speedy and does a nice job of rendering images seamlessly - no configuration necessary. DOSView auto-magically determines the graphics capabilities of the machine it is running on and configures itself accordingly. However, it does let users list the video modes that it has determined are available and allows the selection of a mode other than the default to be used. DOSView can both scale and convert the format of the images it shows, allowing users to write out the result. This makes it a lightweight image editor as well as an image viewer.
GWS (Graphics Workshop): GWS 6.1 is a solid choice for almost any machine from the 286 onwards, but it does NOT support JPEG. It DOES support GIF, BMP, RLE, TIFF, PCX and more. For 256 color GIF images (and that is most of them these days) it will dither the colors into grayscale on EGA and CGA machines. Unlike most of the programs on this list, GWS is more than just a viewer; it is an image editor as well (as the word "workshop" in the title might suggest). It will view, scale, convert, dither, rotate, mirror, crop and more. For image formats other than JPEG, GWS is a great choice. It is not as fast as the rest, but it is fast enough. Note that GWS is one of those rare programs that supports the Windows 4-bit RLE format, for anyone who might be interested in changing the Windows splash screen! Another post covering the "how to" of this task will be published at a later time.
JView (JPEG Viewer): JView16 0.95 is a JPEG-only image viewer. Two versions are included in the distribution ZIP file, a 16-bit version and a 32-bit version. The 32-bit version fails to execute, confusingly claiming that the real-mode 486DX2/66 that it was being tested on needed to be placed into real mode (vs. virtual x86 mode)! Despite this oddity, the 16-bit version, JVIEW16, runs nicely and gets the job done, but for JPEG files only.
LWhiz: LWhiz 1.32 describes itself as a little viewer for big files. It has unique support built in to allow even very large files (very large for its day!) such as 2000x3000 to be effectively viewed on a DOS PC. LWhiz is written in 100% x86 assembler, which is reflected in its speed of operation - LWhiz is fast! Many of the viewers on this list are menu driven - users have to navigate to the directory of interst and then graphically select the file of interest; not so for LWhiz, which can be used in command line mode to load specific files, one at a time, for example, "lwhiz filename.jpg".
LxPIC: LxPic 7.3 bills itself as a "small, fast image viewer" and it lives up to that billing. LxPIC will run on a 286 or later machine, but if that machine is equipped with EGA or CGA graphics, like CSHOW it will drop to grayscale and dither the colors, at which it does a reasonable job. Like PV and PictView (both detailed below), LxPIC automatically determines the video capabilities of the machine it is running on and configures itself accordingly. Like many of the programs on this list, LxPIC supports most of the common image formats of the era. Despite the fact that ANY form of image rendering on a 286 is not fast, LxPIC gets the job done, making it a good choice (along with CShow and PV) for such a machine. On a faster and more capable CPU than a 286, LxPIC is a great choice.
Ombra: Ombra 7.17 is a small, multi-format image viewer for DOS. It supports GIF, TGA and PCX, but sadly not JPEG. Ombra requires VGA at a minimum, and SVGA or VESA to display anything at resolutions above 320x200.
PixView: PixView 2.3 supports most common image formats. It has a very nice GUI interface, which must be used to navigate the directory structure to the file(s) of interest. PixView requires a 386 or better and is a 32-bit DPMI application. PixView's clean interface and fast image rendering make it a personal favorite here at retro-computing.com.
PV (Picture Viewer): PV 2.78 works well on 286 machines but it should be noted that most 286-based machines came with CGA or EGA graphics, which heavily restrict the colors that can be rendered. PV supports most common image formats and renders images very quickly. It too auto-magically determines the video card and thus the support needed, which makes use of PV somewhat seamless - "no muss, no fuss". PV has quickly become a new favorite - it runs on almost all the machines in the retro-computing.com lab, renders images very quickly and supports most formats. All in all, PV is a very good choice.
PictView: Perhaps confusingly similar naming to PV, but also very similar operation. However, unlike PV, PictView requires a 386 or better. It too supports most common image formats, and also auto-magically determines the video card in use, configuring itself to take maximum advantage of it. All in all, PictView is a very good choice if you have a 386 or better.
Pixel: Pixel 4.8.1 is nothing less than a tour-de-force, a DOS image viewer and editor that has been called the Photoshop of the DOS world. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Pixel is a highly capable image editor. The user interface looks remarkably similar to Photoshop's (see the screenshot immediately below), and the capability set interfaced by that GUI is incredibly far reaching. Pixel is without question the most powerful DOS image editing program reviewed in this list.

This is great BUT all that capability comes at a cost - Pixel 4.8.1 is heavy and slow on all but the most powerful DOS machines. Even on retro-computing.com's 486DX2/66 with 16 MB of RAM and buckets of free disk space (a generously equipped box for DOS/Win-era machines), Pixel really struggled. Pixel is a 32-bit application that needs DPMI, but with that in place, it can take advantage of all of the RAM on the machine. Even so, getting it to open even a moderately sized image file caused minutes of disk thrashing, to the extent that it appeared for a time that the application had wandered off into free space ("gone for a spacewalk" :-) ). Finally however it came back to earth and displayed the image. After that, but with a whole lot more thrashing, it was possible to cleanly quit the application.

Pixel places the display into a graphics mode before loading up, and specifically those modes must be VESA modes. It failed to run at all until the video card's VESA driver was loaded. Then Pixel took off. Unlike many of the others, Pixel does not automatically determine the video mode to use, and so its first user interaction is a rather sparse prompt asking for the mode to use. There is no ability to list the available modes and select one from this prompt, and any input other than a valid mode number causes Pixel to take an exception and crash. Happily, a program called TESTPX.EXE is included in the distribution directory. TESTPX.EXE, when ran, lists all the available modes. Mode 278 corresponded to 1024x768x64K colors on the 486DX2/66 and after that was selected, Pixel thrashed the hard drive a whole lot more and finally presented its beautiful full screen GUI (with its own window manager of course).

Going through all the available menu selections, the comments about Pixel being the Photoshop of the DOS world seem well justified. Pixel looks to be extraordinarily powerful.

Pixel is extremely powerful, but as mentioned above, it is also extremely heavy and extremely slow on all but the most powerful of DOS boxes. We recommend a 486DX4/100 or faster machine, with 32 MB of RAM or more and lots of free disk space as the minimum baseline for running Pixel. Anything less will leave you frustrated in the extreme as Pixel thrashes and thrashes and thrashes.
QPEG: QPEG 1.5e requires a 386 or better and supports most common image formats. A complex and detailed .cfg file MUST be correctly configured for the machine's video card in order for image rendering to operate correctly, BUT a large number of preconfigured CFG files for the most common video cards of the day are included, easing this task. QPEG features a nice and fairly fast thumbnail capability, although it shows only one image at a time vs. a directory catalog type approach. QPEG delivers fairly fast image rendering, powered by an x86 assembly language implementation. All in all, it is a good viewer, and was in fact the only one I used for DOS from the delivery of my first PC in 1993 until just recently.
QPV: QPV 1.7e is the successor to QPEG. It too requires a 386 or better, supports most common image formats and has a nearly identical look and feel to QPEG, sharing all the same strengths and weaknesses. If you are going to try QPEG, try QPV instead. It is essentially the later, better version of QPEG.
QView: QView 1.03B is a 286 or better, real-mode DOS image viewer. It has a more capable sibling, QViewPro, which can take advantage of 386 protected mode capabilities. QView supports all common image formats except JPEG, has a clean simple GUI and is amazingly fast at rendering images. Its one drawback is that it requires VGA - CGA and EGA are not supported. QView is a good choice for any VGA-equipped machine, and it is a particularly good choice for lower powered machines (think 286 and low-speed 386SX boxes!).
QViewPro: QView's more capable sibling, QViewPro requires a 386 or better AND a hefty amount of XMS in order to run at all. QViewPro refused to run on our 8 MB 386 machine, claiming that there was not enough memory! On our 16 MB 486DX2/66, it ran well however. As you may have guessed, QViewPro is a 32-bit application that requires DPMI in order to display anything. Loading the application itself takes some time, but once it is loaded, QViewPro feels quite snappy when rendering images. QViewPro supports all common image formats and has a wide range of image options that can be invoked after the program is loaded and running. If you have a generously equipped 386 or better, QViewPro could be a very good choice.
SEA: SEA 1.3 bills itself as the world's fastest DOS image viewer, and largely it lives up to this billing. Given its small footprint, it has a more limited capability set than many of its peers mentioned here in this post, but it is well worth the effort to check it out. You may be surprised by what such a small package can do, and how quickly it can do it! SEA does feature a truly annoying nagware screen that appears both when the application is started and again when it is exited, and so SEA is less than a favored application here at retro-computing.com.
ShowJPG: ShowJPEG 2.81 is an exceptionally fast DOS JPEG viewer. As the name suggests, ShowJPEG supports only the JPEG image format. Unlike many of the viewers on this list, it can be used in command line mode, for example: "showjpg filename.jpg".
VPic: VPic 4.1 supports all machines from 286 and up. Despite this billing, and while it runs on a 286-class machine without crashing, it does not seem to be able to render images on such machines, and so it is not a good choice for this class of PCs. VPic also does NOT support the JPEG format, and so if you want to view JPEG files, it is not a good choice either. Finally, in our testing, VPic did a very poor job of rendering almost anything on our 386-class machine and an even worse job on our 486-class machine. As a result, we cannot recommend VPic for any image viewing use.

That brings us to the end of this list of DOS image viewers. As mentioned at the outset, this list is almost certainly not comprehensive, but it does represent the best set of viewers still available for download and test in 2025! Other image viewers not on this list were evaluated but not included due to (a) significant bugs, (b) lack of general applicability (for example, PCXView ONLY supports the PCX format) or (c) unavailability... several promising sounding viewers ended in dead links and no other sources that could be found.

Per the comment above, if you know of other viewers that are still available, useful and of interest, please leave a comment on this post and after download and test, we will update this list.

In the end, the viewer or viewers you may choose to focus on will depend heavily on the class of machine you have, the amount of RAM you have, the type of images you wish to view and of course the graphics capabilities of your machine. As a general recommendation, if you have a 286-class machine, CShow is likely your best choice, followed by PV. If you have a 386 or better machine, you are spoiled for choice - try several (or all) of these viewers and decide which one you like best.

Enjoy image viewing the DOS way!