FocusOn is a likeable image viewer
FocusOn Image Viewer is a stylish and straightforward image viewer, easy to use but with one or two unexpected bonus features.
This all starts with the interface. There are no stupid gimmicks, no attempts to do things differently for no reason at all. Instead FocusOn Image Viewer starts with the look and feel of Explorer, and adds just a little more.
There’s an Explorer-like folder tree on the left, for instance, thumbnails on the right, double-clicking something opens it full-screen, right-clicking displays more options -- you’ll feel at home right away.
Don’t be fooled. The interface may seem very standard, but the engine is already giving you lots of benefits, including support for a range of file formats including PSDs and multiple RAW file types.
The browser can be switched to a "Details" view with a sensible set of fields: name, size, EXIF shooting time and modified time. You can sort the list by any of these, filter your pictures by a text keyword, and optionally switch the view to include images only, images and documents, or all files.
Right-clicking any file displays various options -- Cut, Copy, Paste, Move, Delete, Rename -- and some of these deliver more than you might expect. Right-clicking one file and choosing Rename works just like Explorer, but right-clicking a group of files displays an excellent Batch Rename dialog. This enables automatically renaming files using number sequences, dates, times, sizes and more, and a bunch of included templates gets you started right away.
FocusOn Image Editor has various simple editing tools. You can click and drag to select an area of the image you’re viewing and copy it to the clipboard. You can flip, rotate or resize one or more images in a single operation, and revert back to the originals later.
A built-in editor has cropping; color, brightness and contrast tweaks; simple filters ranging from the corrective (sharpen, auto adjust) to the artistic (painting, vignetting); a basic frame tool, text captioning and more.
Sharing options include tools to upload images to Twitter or Facebook, or post them on a blog (only MetaWebLog is supported but that may be enough to get the image posted on WordPress blogs).
A custom Print dialog goes beyond the basics by enabling printing of multiple selected images per page.
Right-clicking images or checking the menus reveals smaller bonus features, including simple slideshows, image archiving, basic file format conversions and more.
There’s plenty of room for improvement here. Metadata support is limited to EXIF, for instance. Tags are displayed in the editor only, not the main viewer. You can display the EXIF shooting time in the Details view, but there’s no ability to add other tags that might interest you, and the interface as a whole isn’t as configurable as we’d like.
Despite that, FocusOn Image Viewer remains a likeable app with a good mix of functionality and ease of use. Give it a try.