Photon

A minimal, fast image viewer written in C. No Electron. No Python. No nonsense.

Built on SDL2 with a focus on speed, simplicity, and staying out of your way.

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Install

Windows — Photon-Windows.zip

Extract anywhere, double-click photon.exe. No installation, no registry, no admin rights.

Linux — Photon-x86_64.AppImage

chmod +x Photon-x86_64.AppImage && ./Photon-x86_64.AppImage

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Features

• Browses entire folders — open one image, navigate the rest with arrow keys
• Thumbnail strip with lazy loading and LRU cache
• Info panel: filename, format, dimensions, aspect ratio, file size, date, zoom, rotation
• Rotate, zoom, pan — no menus, just keys
• Native file open dialog on Windows, Linux (zenity/kdialog), and macOS
• Drag & drop support
• Clipboard copy — pastes as actual image data on Windows
• Delete with confirmation
• SDL_ttf text rendering — real fonts, not rectangles
• Compiled with -fstack-protector, -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2, -fPIE, -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now
• No console window on Windows (-mwindows)

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Controls

Input	Action
O	Open file dialog
← →	Previous / next image
+ -	Zoom in / out
Scroll	Zoom
F	Fit to window
1	100% zoom
R	Rotate 90° clockwise
Shift+R	Rotate 90° counter-clockwise
I	Toggle info panel
T	Toggle thumbnail strip
Ctrl+C	Copy to clipboard
Del	Delete image (with confirmation)
Drag	Pan
Drop	Open dropped file
ESC	Quit

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Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/abhaypratap08/ImageViewer_UsingC.git
cd ImageViewer_UsingC

Dependencies

Ubuntu / Debian

make install-deps
# or: sudo apt install build-essential libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev make

Arch / Manjaro

sudo pacman -S gcc sdl2 sdl2_image sdl2_ttf make

Fedora

sudo dnf install gcc SDL2-devel SDL2_image-devel SDL2_ttf-devel make

openSUSE

sudo zypper install gcc libSDL2-devel libSDL2_image-devel libSDL2_ttf-devel make

macOS

make install-deps-mac
# or: brew install sdl2 sdl2_image sdl2_ttf

Windows (MSYS2 MINGW64)

pacman -Syu
make install-deps-windows

Compile

make          # optimized build
make debug    # AddressSanitizer + UBSan
make release  # stripped, -O3
make clean    # remove artifacts

Run

./photon image.jpg       # Linux / macOS
./photon.exe image.jpg   # Windows
./photon                 # opens file dialog

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Build Targets

Target	Description
make	Default — optimized, security-hardened
make debug	Debug build with ASan + UBSan
make release	Stripped, -O3 release build
make clean	Remove object files and binary
make run	Build and run with test_image.png
make install-deps	Install SDL2 deps (Ubuntu/Debian)
make install-deps-mac	Install SDL2 deps (Homebrew)
make install-deps-windows	Install SDL2 deps (MSYS2)
make format	Run clang-format on source

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Troubleshooting

gcc not found — install GCC via your package manager.

SDL2 not found — run the appropriate make install-deps* for your platform.

Build fails

make clean && make
make debug  # sanitizers give better error output

Binary not found after build

ls -la photon       # Linux / macOS
ls -la photon.exe   # Windows
make                # rebuild

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Project Structure

ImageViewer_UsingC/
├── src/
│   ├── main.c          # everything
│   └── photon.rc       # Windows resource file (icon + version metadata)
├── assets/
│   └── icon.ico        # application icon
├── installer/
│   └── windows/
│       └── photon.nsi  # NSIS installer script
├── Makefile
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── build.yml   # CI: builds Linux AppImage + Windows EXE on every push
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

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Stack

• Language: C99
• Graphics: SDL2, SDL2_image, SDL2_ttf
• Build: GCC + Make
• CI: GitHub Actions — builds and publishes releases automatically
• Packaging: AppImage (Linux), portable zip (Windows)

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License

MIT — do whatever you want with it.