Open an image with the Windows default editor in C#

Question

In my C# application, I would like to launch the default image editor to edit an image.

When I'm using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\\image.png") it opens the image file using the Windows Photo Viewer.

When I right-click on the image file in Windows Explorer, there is a "Edit" menu item which launches Microsoft Paint (by default). I would like to do the same in my application (i.e. open the file using the default image editor).

I don't want to hardcode MS Paint by doing Process.Start("mspaint.exe C:\\image.png"). I would prefer to use the default image editor program set by the user (which can be different from MS Paint).

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks Frank

Answer 1

You can try starting a process with a verb edit.

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("C:\\image.png");
startInfo.Verb="edit";

Process.Start(startInfo);