How to do this in Mac OS X? (pictures and thumbnails)

[ahoegh]

I've converted from PC to Mac (at least at home) less than a week ago and have some questions that Google can hardly answer for me.

I lost a lot of data from my harddrive, when I tried to partition it and overlooked the "you will loose all your data"-part in Mac OS X, which I am not completely familiar with yet. Anyway, I managed to restore alot of the data using a recovery-application. This application indexed the restored files after file types, like this:

Before:

something.jpg
file.jpg
hmm.doc

After:

JPG-folder
1.jpg
2.jpg

DOC-folder
1.doc

It didn't change the names exactly like that, but kind of. The problem is that now I have no idea which files contain what. The file names are lost.

I have some huge icon packs for webdesigning, alot of personal fotos and so on - and what I need, is to sort of drag and drop them in to their respective new folders. Actually I just need to be able to sort them. There are about 9.000 images, so I cannot do it manually. For example there is a folder named JPG which contains all the restored JPG's, another called GIF and yet another called PNG.

Anyway - in Windows, i'd be able to view them all as thumbnails in Explorer and simply drag and drop. What can I do in Mac OS X? I've tried CocoViewX, but it keeps crashing. Finder doesn't show thumbnails.

Help would be appreciated :)

- btw, I've used the demo version of Yep! to sort my lost PDF-files.

[Eidorian]

Finder -> View -> Show View Options ->Enable "Show Icon Preview"

[psychofreak]

Unfportunately the best thing for this will come in around 2 weeks with Leopard...for now, Tiger has a view. Go to View->View Options, then click 'show icon previews', and use the first view :)

[ahoegh]

Great! Thanks.. They've hidden that feature well :)

[danysl]

Create an automator workflow and save it as a finder plugin.
In the work flow, select finder as the app then set the View options to icon and the size you want the thumbnails, and enable the preview.

Then you will be able to right click on any folder and use your View as Thumbnail plugin.

You might need to create another plugin for when you want to switch back.

[QuarterSwede]

Create an automator workflow and save it as a finder plugin.
In the work flow, select finder as the app then set the View options to icon and the size you want the thumbnails, and enable the preview.

Then you will be able to right click on any folder and use your View as Thumbnail plugin.

You might need to create another plugin for when you want to switch back.
Using Automator is a great idea. Quite powerful and could probably help you sort a lot faster with a little creativity.