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. Ratings, color labels, picks — all written as standard XMP.
What FlashView is
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, Photo Mechanic, or digiKam.
FlashView fills the gap between copying your card and opening your editor: fast enough for fifty-thousand-image shoots, lean enough to live on every machine you own.
What sets it apart
Built for the half of your archive that other viewers give up on.
Built for massive folders
Virtualized grid, streaming thumbnails, no pre-indexing wait — stays responsive at 100,000+ images in a single folder.
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 workflow
Right-click any image → Open with FlashView → you're in Loupe in under a second, with the entire folder already loaded.
Features
XMP metadata
Stars, color labels and flags written as standard XMP — readable in Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, digiKam.
Batch-rate hundreds
Select 1,000+ files, press 3, done. Ctrl+Z undoes the last batch.
Live filtering
By rating, color label, pick, reject, or hide RAW entirely.
Keyboard-first
0–5 rate, P pick, X reject, G/L grid/loupe, F fullscreen, I EXIF. F1 shows the full list.
Sort and group
Name or date, ascending/descending. Group a parent folder by shoot with configurable depth.
Five color labels
Red, yellow, green, blue, purple — written as standard XMP.
Wide RAW support
Canon (CR3, CR2), Nikon (NEF, NRW), Sony (ARW, SR2), Adobe DNG. CR3 has a dedicated fast-path; others are best-effort but fully viewable. RAF, RW2, ORF, PEF on the roadmap.
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.
Open metadata
We write standard XMP. No lock-in, no proprietary format.
Stars, color labels and picks are embedded directly in JPEGs or written as XMP sidecars next to RAW files — as standard XMP, the way Adobe defined it. Any program that reads XMP shows your ratings: Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, digiKam — and everything else that speaks XMP.
Works with StarRate
FlashView works hand-in-hand with StarRate. 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.
Ready for the Beta?
FlashView is in closed beta. Write to hello@flashview.net if you want to test, report a bug, or suggest a feature.