14 DAY TRIAL // In general, programs that attempt to do several different things at the same time end up doing none of them well and being less efficient than three specialized programs. Of course, while this may be true for the vast majority of such programs, there will always be exceptions that perform remarkably well, such as ImagePlus.
What it does
ImagePlus is a multimedia viewer, that lets you browse, view and listen to movies, images and sounds. And all this from within the same interface, so it does not matter what kind of media you are after, because it can process everything. Besides the most common media file types, it also has support for PSD, PDF, and EPS documents, which can be viewed from within. Furthermore, while it is primarily designed to view and listen to media, it can also be used to organize such media easily.
Interface
ImagePlus uses one single window layout for everything, from images to sounds. There are three main areas; the file list which is situated on the left, the preview area witch is on the right and the current folder contents which are below the preview. Many other similar programs have employed this interface, and there is nothing special or different in the way ImagePlus adopts it.
However, beyond the layout itself, things are less standard. The window has a decidedly OS X feel to it, with the brushed metal background and the other OS X interface elements; however, the interface buttons look distinctively different, the ones in the toolbar looking like those in other applications, while the ones above the preview have a white square framing. This discrepancy in visual elements goes even further, with the controls in the image full screen mode being deep blue with a transparent background and looking totally different from any other button in the rest of the program. However, when you go to a movie file, the controls change once again, and when you watch a movie in full screen, the controls also change, although this time they are quite similar to the standard movie controls.
Complete
ImagePlus is rather feature complete for a hybrid program. It can do everything that other traditionally separate applications do, including converting images and support for subtitles, when it comes to movies. For the movies, it has a rather robust control system, with many shortcuts available for everything you need during playback.
It even has some very nice options that are not often seen in similar programs. For movies, you have the option to continue playback from where it was stopped last time. While not a lifesaving feature, this is undeniably great for those who often watch movies between other tasks.
For all kinds of media, there is a very nice organizing option. Below the file list is a list of 'Collections.' The contents of this list can be modified to suit your liking and it represents a list of target locations for media. Each one of the collections in that list has an associated number to it, and this can be changed through drag and drop. Once you have your collections set up, you can automatically copy any selected file to any one of them by simply hitting the corresponding key number. Unfortunately, there is no option to specify whether you want to copy or move the files, so this is not as functional as it is in other applications.
Quirks and bad choices
Despite this program being quite solid - though a little unpolished - there are some things that are simply broken or very badly implemented.
The first of these is the custom icon of any folder. Normally, this is hidden by the Finder and other applications, but in ImagePlus it does show up. This itself is not that much of a problem, however, when you are in a list view, the icon for the hidden icon file is many times bigger than all of the other icons and overlaps with the item above and below it. While it does not obstruct the items above and below it, it breaks the flow of the list and draws constant unnecessary attention to it.
Another very bad choice is how the names of folders are blue while those of all other files are black. I can see that the developer might have wanted to differentiate between the two somehow, but the blue text on white background is much more difficult to read, and since the big list on the left only shows folders is constantly blue, making it tiring to work with. In the current folder list that is below the preview, things are a little different. Here we have an alternation of black and blue, which could be nice for some, however, selecting any item here, will give it a blue background. In the case of files, which have black text, normally, when selected, the text turns white, which leaves them quite readable as white on blue. However, for folders, when selected the text remains blue, for a very nice blue on blue reading experience.
The good
Quite a nice integral media viewer that supports a large variety of media and file types. It has everything you could need form a viewer application.
The bad
The interface is a bit unpolished with many different looking buttons and some very bad color choices and display bugs.
The truth
If you want a single application to view all your media on, give this one a try, it's still a bit rough, but quite serviceable.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
