HD Photo Viewer is an interesting Windows Phone 8 photography app that lets you view and share your images at full resolution. When viewing images through your Windows Phone Pictures Hub, image quality is reduced to improve performance when you pan and zoom. HD Photo Viewer presents the images in full resolution for a more quality viewing experience.
HD Photo Viewer was updated today to version 3.4, which includes a dynamic zoom feature and a few other enhancements to improve the app's overall performance.
The manual zoom limits have been removed, replaced by a dynamically determined maximum zoom level based on the picture size and device memory. When you are dealing with larger images, a “deep zoom” feature will kick in. Larger images for Windows Phones with 1GB or more RAM will be images greater than 4000 pixels on either side or greater than 2000 pixels on 512MB Ram devices.
The deep zoom mode can be activated by tapping he shutter symbol in the lower left side of the screen. It will take a few seconds to load the image at a higher resolution but definitely improves the viewing experience with the larger images.
Additional changes coming into play with the version 3.4 update include:
- Page backgrounds have been removed and no longer force dark theme; also removed fade-in fade-out transition.
- Zoom level calculation for 1080p devices have been corrected.
- Search by name functionality has been enhanced.
- App password has been added.
- Option now available on how the screen orientation button behaves.
- Built-in email password is now hidden once it is set.
- Better Cinemagraph playback within the app with the “Play gif” button moved from the center of the screen to the bottom left corner or a better UI experience.
You also have the customary minor bug fixes and performance tweaks included in the version 3.4 update.
If you are looking for a better way to view your high-resolution Windows Phone pictures, HD Photo Viewer is worth checking out. There is a free trial version available with the full version currently running $1.99.
HD Photo Viewer is available for Windows Phone 8 (including the low-memory devices) and you can find it here in the Windows Phone Store.
