On my computer, Paint Shop Pro is the program associated with JPG and GIF files (and most other images). It only loads images if you right-click the graphic and choose Open. There are other choices available under the Open With menu, of course.

Preview is still the default action for graphics files. This is the case for all Windows XP computers. Try it yourself.

The challenge is to see whether anyone has figured out a way to defeat the default behavior, that when you double-click on an image (or single-click if that's your preference for opening items), it always opens in Preview mode, even if the graphic is associated with an image-editing program.