I’ve been using Breezebrowser for years, and it’s been great. It’s always displayed things with extra sharpening applied, and then also allowed me to view the image at 100%, and then zoom in/out. It’s been superb.
But Breezebrowser is Windows only, and so I have been searching long and hard for a Mac-capable alternative.
I’ve used Lyn, and I love the way it lets me zoom in to actual size, then leaves that zoom level and image portion while I move to a different picture - it makes it very easy to look at subtle differences between two similar pictures. It also lets me easily flick back to fit-to-screen, both of which use keyboard shortcuts. I’d like that in any image program. So what Lyn does with ‘zoom to actual size’ is what I’d like. But Lyn’s not ideal for cataloging my stuff.
Tonfotos was the last program I tried, on a whim, and I love the UI - it makes the pictures look great, and adds the face recognition, simple display of the metadata summary, a location map, etc. It’s just a case of adding a few extra features that would make it as close to my ideal as possible.
If I’m not at actual pixels then the bluriness I’m seeing could be due to the zoom level. At actual pixels there’s no debate. Some kind of keyboard shortcut flicking between actual 1:1 pixels and back would be great. Even better if you could leave that zoom level and the same section of the image when you move to the next picture, as per Lyn. Have a look at Lyn to get a feel for the behaviour. If you could at least display the current zoom level then that would help.
But I think that what you are doing with controlling the UI is correct. Once you’ve made a wrong turn, there’s no going back, so you have to be happy with it. So I’ll leave it with you.
Thanks, Andrey!
