Focus Points: the autofocus record Lightroom throws away

Two stories in every photograph

The README opens with an observation that is the whole reason the plugin exists. Every photograph tells two stories. The first is the image itself. The second is the information the camera recorded while capturing it.

Modern cameras record far more than the final photograph. Alongside the image they record autofocus information, subject detection, focus distance, lens settings, camera orientation and many other details that help explain how the photograph was captured. Lightroom Classic imports only part of this information and displays even less.

Focus Points brings that information together in a single view, which allows you to review each photograph with the information the camera actually recorded. The stated use cases follow from that: seeing where the camera focused, reviewing autofocus areas, detected faces and subjects, inspecting what the camera recorded, searching image metadata, straightening images using recorded roll-angle information, and rating, flagging and labelling photographs while reviewing them.

The audience is a photographer who shoots in a mode where the autofocus system makes the framing decision. A wildlife or sports shooter who has set a zone or a wide-area AF and then wonders which of the many points actually fired gets a direct answer, instead of reading sharpness across the frame and guessing.

The homepage is focuspointslrc.github.io/Focus-Points, and the project is released under the Apache 2.0 licence.

The viewer, and what each marker means

The Focus Point Viewer displays the selected photograph together with the autofocus information recorded by the camera, and what it can draw depends on the camera's support.

The markers are listed explicitly: the active autofocus point, a user-selected autofocus point or autofocus area, inactive autofocus points, detected faces, detected subjects, and crop mode. The exact information available depends on the camera model and the metadata recorded for the image, and the user manual is linked for a complete explanation of what each marker means.

The inactive points are the interesting part of that list. A camera that reports a phase-detect or subject-detection system will record a set of candidate points and which one won, and showing all of them turns a static image into a record of a decision. For a reviewer this is a large improvement over inference, because it separates the questions that sharpness can answer from the one it cannot.

The camera list is wide: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus and OM System, Panasonic, Pentax, Ricoh and Apple. The level of support depends on the information recorded by each camera model, and the documentation points at a compatibility list to check before you expect a particular body to work.

That caveat is the one to take seriously. The plugin reads what the camera wrote, and a body that writes nothing cannot be made to write something by a plugin.

A metadata panel that reads the file instead of the catalogue

The Metadata Viewer is described as integrated, and the key difference from Lightroom's own Metadata panel is where the data comes from. Unlike Lightroom's Metadata panel, the Metadata Viewer reads the information directly from the original image file.

That is a meaningful difference for a photographer, because the catalogue is a database Lightroom maintains and the image file is the record the camera wrote. Manufacturer-specific information is available where the camera provides it, and the feature list includes live search, filtering by tag name or value, metadata group display, and direct access to EXIF, XMP and camera-specific metadata.

The stated use for it is analysis rather than filing. It is described as particularly useful when analysing camera behaviour, comparing photographs, or exploring newly supported camera models, which is the same investigative thread that motivates the focus point viewer.

The repository carries the documentation for all of this. There is a user manual with the complete feature documentation and camera-specific information, a quick setup guide with recommended settings and display modes, a video walkthrough by Olivier Rocq, a FAQ covering installation, supported cameras, performance and everyday usage, a document on messages and warnings for interpreting autofocus analysis results, and links to the release notes and to the discussions area on the repository.

Straightening from the recorded roll angle

The third headline feature uses metadata most cameras already write and most software ignores. Many modern cameras record the camera's roll angle when a photograph is taken, and Focus Points can use that information to automatically straighten one or more selected photographs by applying the corresponding crop angle in Lightroom Classic.

The stated motivation is volume. This is particularly useful when reviewing action, wildlife or sports photography where manually straightening a large number of images would be time-consuming, and that is a real workflow rather than a hypothetical one, because a burst of action frames often has a few degrees of tilt in each of them.

Version 3.4 adds interactive straightening directly from the Focus Point Viewer, which allows you to preview the result immediately and undo the adjustment if required. That is a sensible change in approach, since previewing the crop against the focus overlay is a better test of whether the angle is right than applying it in the Develop module and then looking at the result.

Availability depends on camera support for roll-angle metadata, and the documentation has a compatibility section for the camera models that support straightening.

The version constraints are also version-specific. LR5.7 does not support tagging photos within the plugin interface, and does not support straightening images by applying compensation for camera roll angle, because the required functionality is not supported by Lightroom SDK 5.x. So a user on an older perpetual licence loses two of the features, and the plugin tells them why rather than failing silently.

Installing it, and the version channels to be careful about

There is no package manager route here. The plugin is distributed as a Lightroom plugin, and the repository holds the plugin directory focuspoints.lrplugin/ alongside the docs and a Version.txt file, with a build/ directory for the assembled output. Installation therefore comes from the release assets rather than from a command, and the README points at the user manual and the quick setup guide for the actual steps.

What the README does state at length is which version to take. The current stable release is V3.4.2, updated August 5, 2026, and the preview is V4 PRE 4, also dated August 5, 2026, described as The Next Level. The release tags are v3.4.2, v4_pre4 and v3.4.1 from July 28, 2026.

There is also a critical update notice at the very top of the README, and it is worth reading before anything else. The issue is that the update check fails to detect available updates in V3.4 and V4 PRE 1, which is a specific defect in specific builds. The stable line has since moved to V3.4.2 and the preview to V4 PRE 4, so the affected builds are not the current ones, but the failure mode is worth understanding, because a plugin that cannot see an update is a plugin that will not tell you it needs one.

The two channels have different names and different expectations, V3 for the stable line and V4 PRE for the preview, and a user who installs the preview and later wants the stable release has to move between them deliberately.

Where Focus Points is the wrong tool

The first limitation is the platform, and it is not negotiable. Focus Points is compatible with Lightroom Classic, LR5.7 and LR6 perpetual licences and LrC subscriptions, and it is not compatible with Lightroom Desktop or Camera RAW, because it is based on the Lightroom SDK, which is only available in Lightroom Classic. A photographer who has moved to a subscription-free Lightroom Desktop workflow has no way to run it at all.

The second limitation is the camera, and it is the one most likely to disappoint. The level of support depends on the information recorded by each camera model, so a body that records a focus point gives you a focus point and a body that does not gives you nothing. The compatibility list is the document to read, and the plugin cannot invent metadata that the camera never wrote. The same applies to roll-angle straightening, which needs cameras that record the roll angle at all.

The third is that this is a review tool, not an editing tool. Rating, flagging and labelling work, but the plugin does not change how the photograph looks beyond the roll-angle crop, and it does not replace Lightroom's own filters or develop controls. If your workflow problem is organising rather than understanding, the catalogue and the develop module already do that.

The alternative worth comparing is reading the raw metadata yourself, with a metadata viewer that shows the same EXIF and maker note fields. The difference in approach is that Focus Points interprets them, marking which focus point was active and which were inactive and what the camera detected as a face or a subject, while a general metadata tool shows you the fields and leaves the interpretation to you. For a photographer who wants to know which AF point fired, the interpretation is the product. For a technical user who wants the raw maker notes, the general tool gives more, and there is no plugin licence or version channel to keep up with.

Editorial conclusion

Focus Points fits a photographer who shoots in autofocus modes where the focus point decides the frame, and who wants to see which of the camera's focus points was active rather than infer it from sharpness, since the plugin shows the recorded point, the inactive points, detected faces and subjects side by side with the picture. It is the wrong tool if you edit in Lightroom Desktop, since the plugin is built on the Lightroom SDK that only Lightroom Classic exposes, and it is the wrong tool if your camera does not write focus metadata. Before installing, check the compatibility list for your camera body, read the release notes for the version you pick, and note that the current stable release and the preview are on separate update channels, with a documented update-detection failure in some builds.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. FocusPointsLrC/Focus-Points on GitHub
2. License: Apache-2.0
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases