Feature Request: Add focus point as option for culling for sharpness

Submitted by swmurray on Fri, 12/17/2021 - 15:17

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New versions: Beta and Release Candidates

Hi:
I would appreciate an toggle option to see the focus point on photos when culling for sharpness. I find myself spending too much time trying to pick out the "sharpest" photo from a multi-shot burst of a moving target. Sony's ImageEdge rawviewer software shows this info and I will go there to filter out the off-target shots and narrow down my review in FRV (i.e. Prefer to discard photos where the focus point was on the bird's wing tip rather than the eye/face before zooming to check edge and detail sharpness.)

It would be nice to include this step from within FRV. EXIFTool shows this data in the Maker's section so I presume the data is readily available.
I am already familiar with the P toggle currently available to see edge and detail contrast to check for sharpness.
Thank you!

LibRaw

Fri, 12/17/2021 - 16:24

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Focus point information is

Focus point information is not available, it is guessed.

With raw formats, we are able to verify each format that we support, but it's a different story with focus points.

Here are some reasons why we don't display focus points:

- focus-related tags are aplenty, and they are not openly documented;

- tags need to be verified with each new camera model and firmware upgrade - thus staying current is a problem;

- there is no systematic 3rd-party research, accompanied by the necessary experimental data and / or raw files to verify it available; basically everyone (except the manufacturers themselves) copies the work done in ExifTool, and that work is far from being complete or even fully verified for those parts that are decoded, we’ve seen errors in the results - we've made two approaches to decoding focus points based on ExifTool information, in 2017 and this year, and we wasn't satisfied with the completeness and accuracy of the results;

- tags need to be verified for all focus modes and focus points, and that's impossible for us, we can't possibly check every camera model, not to mention firmware version;

- we don't want to confuse our customers by offering them guesswork which may lead them to make wrong decisions with regards to their focusing skills and can cast unfounded doubts as to the quality of the equipment they use;

- focus information becomes very misleading if the subject or camera is moved (focus and recompose).

In short, we can't ensure the functionality of such a feature, and that's the reason why we don't include it in FastrawViewer.