In most cases, you'll find that image programs are not as lightweight as the Windows photo viewer. You can try to Google 'replacement for windows photo viewer' and you'll see a number of possible alternatives, and can compare the features. But I wouldn't want to make it the default app to open in image file. Lightroom can only open a Lightroom catalog directly, you can't open a JPG or other image file straight into LR without going through the import process.Īdobe Bridge, which comes with Photoshop, is a good file browser in and of itself, and it is a good replacement for Windows Explorer when you're browsing folders of images. Lightroom is not an option at all - you import your images with Lightroom's internal database, and manage the images there. Trying to use it as a viewer would be like driving a truck to get from one side of the room to the other.

Photoshop is a very heavyweight editor, takes awhile to load, and is designed for editing, not fast viewing. No, I don't think you'd want to use either of these programs to be your default image viewer.

Image viewer best