WinDjView 2.1

Though DjVu files have proved to be a type of digital document that provides a high level of performance thanks to its advanced compression technology, they never enjoyed the attention they deserved. Viewing DjVu files is not an easy task with standard image file viewers, and there is where WinDjView can be of great help. It not only displays these files in all their glory, but can also convert them into “more conventional” image file formats, such as JPG, BMP, PNG, or TIFF.

Its tabbed interface allows you to have various DjVu documents active at the same time. On a side panel, the program displays all pages of the document as thumbnails for easy and fast navigation, together with whatever bookmarks you add to it. The document can be displayed in a continuous or a single-page layout, as well as two pages facing each other. You can zoom any page in and out, and you can make use of the program’s magnifying glass to take a closer look to specific details. The program also offers you the possibility of displaying either the foreground or the background of a document, provided that the various layers have been correctly arranged. This option works fine with text-only documents, but you may face some disappointing results with those with complex images.

WinDjView comes also with interesting – yet basic – editing features. You can rotate a page or the entire document, as well as adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma of the file. Bookmarks and annotations will let you add navigation markers along the document and add reminders or to-do instructions for fellow workers. When the DjVu document includes a text layer (i.e., when the text is not part of the image, as it happens with most scanned PDFs), you can use the program’s search engine to locate specific text strings.

As well as the DjVu image file format itself, WinDjView is an open-source development that will cost you nothing and will help you display and manage DjVu image files in a straightforward and intuitive way.