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General
purpose
File viewers for document & raster image formats
Note Third-party applications are
listed as a convenience, but the listing is not necessarily
an endorsement of the supplier or product. We do not receive
compensation for any listing, have not tested these products, nor do we provide support for any product
listed. We would appreciate learning of any additions or corrections to
make this list more useful. By the way, we're certain that many of the
product names on these pages are trademarks of other companies, and we
make no claim to any of them.
There are a number of software companies that provide two versions of
their applications: "creating" and "viewing" applications. The most
common one is Adobe Acrobat, where anyone can read
PDFs, but Abode wants you to purchase Acrobat software to create a PDF file.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
However, you can create PDF files through free 3rd party applications that
emulate a printer, such as PrimoPDF and doPDF:
http://www.primopdf.com
http://www.dopdf.com
Many Microsoft applications have similar free viewers, separate from the
Office suite. For example, you can create an Excel spreadsheet, and
other users can view it on their computers without Excel. Readers
include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and
Visio. These viewers can be
updated to read Office 2007 formats (see the Knowledge Base article):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/HA010449811033.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925180
Google offers Picasa for common image formats (JPG, PNG, PSD,
TIF) as well as many camera RAW formats:
http://picasa.google.com/features/index.html
Many other raster graphics formats can be handled by
the quite affordable Irfanview:
http://www.irfanview.com
There are a number of viewers with a very limited variety of supported
file formats, such as Informative Graphics Corporation's Brava! Reader:
http://www.bravaviewer.com/reader.htm
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