It's not great viewing photos in the Finder, is it?

[janey]

...use column view in the Finder to simply scroll through your folder contents while viewing a perfectly usable preview of each image/sound/pdf/whatever. Easy. Fast. You change the size of the preview by changing the width of the preview pane.

I'd love to see thumbnails of all of the images at one glance, rather than having to individually scroll through possibly hundreds of images looking for the right one - iPhoto style, except in Finder.

I've resorted to selecting all the photos I want to look at, and opening them in Preview so I get thumbnails in the drawer..****** workaround, but it does what I need.

 

[fredsherbet]

I really miss just being able to flick through photos in preview... that should definately be built in. I was much more pleased when i discovered 'slideshow' although it seems a little hidden away, and you still have to select all the pictures, not just the folder it also seems to only be capable of a certain number of pics... too many and they get ignored!

I like the idea of a scroller in finder to quickly set the size of the thumbnails

just my feelings

 

[jdavtz]

Justlooking (http://chipmunkninja.com/article/justlooking25) looks like a decent stand-in until we get Leopard/QuickView

 

[BrandonMatt0718]

I'm one of these people who would rather view some photos in the Finder in their respective folder than faff around with iPhoto, but the only way I can do this is, in every folder with pictures, is to go View->Show View Options, choose "This Window Only" and hike the icon size to the highest setting so as to give me the biggest thumbnail possible.

That's hardly ideal. Windows XP seems to be able to recognise if you have a folder with either exclusively or almost exclusively photos and changes the "folder type" to Photo album so it displays the folder's contents as big thumbnails. Is there a way to do this in Tiger, instead of fiddling around with view options?? Clearly Cover Flow in Leopard is a way forward, but until then.. (and don't mention that I should use iPhoto, I just like to look through some holidays photos sometimes)

I to am new to Macs too and had this problem as well now i dont. I have the solution. select all your photos and right click and send them all to automator then use the automator script for changing types of images then select the jpeg type even if theyre already jpegs let automator redo them and then after its complete if you go back to the pictures folder or where you had taken them from you will now see that the pictures are represented by a mini version of themselves as a icon. It will work with any picture format you choose they dont have to use jpeg. You will also have to do this every time you add a few more pictures but i think its worth it.

 

[msandersen]

In the days of windows 95/98, I was doing a Graphics course with Macs, and frankly I found the preview icons in OS7/8 one of the reasons, simple as it seems, that the Mac was far better for graphics, because having to open up individual files in a folder full of pics to find one yo uneed suck big time. 3rd party utilities was only an annoying patch. WinME changed that, but the instability drove me nuts. I hated ME, but refused to go back to 98 for lack of thumbnails. XP was much better, but still had its issues. Now I have Vista and I'm doing another graphics course where we use OSX 10.4 (on old eMacs atm), and I feel a little let down, in that Vista feels more intuitive when it comes to handling folders full of pics or movies. Explorer has had a much-needed overhaul, and there's much to like, in particularly the handy Views pull-down button at the top, which has Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large Icon views. I'd love to have such an intuitive pull-down button in OSX. Moreover, when the Icon view is changed, the spacing is automatically changed; in OSX, unless you have turned on Autoarrange, as you increase icon size (which is less intuitive and more clicks to get at), the space around the icons and text is not rearranged, and you have to do that as a second step, or have overlaps. The Crumbs menu is also very cool and intuitive, enough that Apple is copying MS for a change (and why not, Vista is otherwise one long list of cloned features).
Leopard is very promising, and if the expected new iMacs prove cool enough, I might get one by year's end. Still iffy on the all-in-one design with no upgrade path except external. They need an affordable minitower or consumer-level "Pro" machine.

 

[cvzyl]

I am a recent switcher and appart from the next three items there is absolutely nothing I miss from the PC or Windows:

1. Thumbnail preview in the file browser (Finder/Explorer/Konqueror), this is also possible in Linux so not a Unix issue.
2. An application similar to ACDSee in which you can view large amounts of pictures and do basic batch tasks like renaming and resizing of images. I know there are applications for the Mac that can do each of these but it requires 3 seperate application, not just one.
3. A decent accounting program for my business. Currently I am force to use Parallels and Quickbooks Premiere as there really is no business accounting application that I have found up to now (maybe somebody can point me in the right direction).

I love my MBP and would not swap it for anything running Windows/Linux. I did find Phoenix Slides on this threat and think it is great, only shortcoming is renaming and resizing. Maybe someday.

Cobus

 

[hdsalinas]

Can Action folders help with this?

Yes I also want to be able large icons of images but keep the rest of icons (apps and such small)

Could an action folder help here. If there a way to tell finder to view image icons as large previews?

 

[abrooks]

I am a recent switcher and appart from the next three items there is absolutely nothing I miss from the PC or Windows:

1. Thumbnail preview in the file browser (Finder/Explorer/Konqueror), this is also possible in Linux so not a Unix issue.
2. An application similar to ACDSee in which you can view large amounts of pictures and do basic batch tasks like renaming and resizing of images. I know there are applications for the Mac that can do each of these but it requires 3 seperate application, not just one.
3. A decent accounting program for my business. Currently I am force to use Parallels and Quickbooks Premiere as there really is no business accounting application that I have found up to now (maybe somebody can point me in the right direction).

I love my MBP and would not swap it for anything running Windows/Linux. I did find Phoenix Slides on this threat and think it is great, only shortcoming is renaming and resizing. Maybe someday.

Cobus

1. Not sure what you mean, Finder has a perfectly good thumbnail view.
2. Create a workflow in Automator to resize and rename your files.
3. Quicken Mac will do the job nicely

 

[unknownart]

Going back to the original post....First off... I hardly use iPhoto... and I've been on a Mac since 1985.
To sort through a bunch of pictures I use Nikon View. A great program.
I am tempted to suggest Viewit by Hexcat... but you have to pay for it ($20.00)

I am guessing you do not want to view the individual pictures, but prefer to see them as a big thumbnails. Apple's software, Previews, included with the MacOs X can do that, although you have to initiate the Slideshow mode (command-key, shift-key-"f") and then go to "Index Sheet" Feh! You can also select all the files and right-click (option-click) the Slideshow menu and go directly there....

However... to look at the pictures (thumbnails) in a folder...
Just select and open a folder, perhaps a root folder (Macintosh HD), select the icon view (command-key, "1" or, menubar/View/as icons OR the icon at the top of the folder window, underneath the-red-yellow-green round buttons.... that looks like 4 squares... whew! 3 different ways to do the same thing...), Then in Icon View, click the keys "command-key" and "j" and up pops that "folder options" window that you described earlier. Set the icons to maximum (128?) and make sure the box at the top, "all windows" is checked. Now everytime create a new folder or you open a new finder folder, under the icon view heading, it should look like the original big thumbnails of that folder you set... Unless..... you have an old folder with different settings previously set. But any NEW folder with Icon view will have big thumbnails. And I think any NEW folder you create will automatically be set to Icon View with big thumbnails. Yay!
-mike

 

[polycat33]

I to am new to Macs too and had this problem as well now i dont. I have the solution. select all your photos and right click and send them all to automator then use the automator script for changing types of images then select the jpeg type even if theyre already jpegs let automator redo them and then after its complete if you go back to the pictures folder or where you had taken them from you will now see that the pictures are represented by a mini version of themselves as a icon. It will work with any picture format you choose they dont have to use jpeg. You will also have to do this every time you add a few more pictures but i think its worth it.

Thanks so much for sharing this!! While those teeny thumbnails instead of the plain icon aren't really useful for viewing a thumbnail, I was so glad to see that this worked just because I noticed that importing files from my digital camera to my mac made it so the icon was a small version of the picture, but all my pictures transferred from my PC just had the generic icon. While it's a really tiny thing I liked having the tiny version of the picture as the icon so I'm going through and changing all my files back into jpeg to get the icons. So glad that this works, this is the farthest I've gone into Automater, I'm sure it's a really useful program but it just confuses the hell out of me.

 

[natureboyuta]

OMG! people actually prefer explorer for this type of thing. personally, i hate the way it previews images. this feature is very annoying when you are looking at folders with mixed media (i.e. pictures, pdfs, movies, word docs, etc.)...

personally i much prefer the slideshow feature in tiger. what is so hard about it? you just select and right-click. then you have lots of nice options, but you only get them when you actually need/want them. the same is true of the column view method. it is there if you need it, easily accessible, but not in your face, looking stupid when you don't want it.

 

[wngraham]

Adding pictures to iPhoto is not always the best solution. Soon you will have a gazillion photo's in iPhoto that finding the ones you want will be a pain in the backside.

My iPhoto library is hovering right around the gazillion mark, and using keywords makes organization and finding what you want absolutely painless.

 

[Cavemate K]

Will Leopard give us the thumbnail icon types/sizes that people are hoping for in this thread? I've seen the finder leopard finder demo and do think it looks nice, but I'm not sure if those "beautiful icons" apply to jpegs that I store after downloading.

 

[chatfan]

No, thats not it.. I've learned how to use the Mac since my first 8500AV.. I still think that element sucks, and WinXP handles casual photo viewing more intuitively and much faster...

Don't get me started on iPhoto bugs and difficult UI issues either - I have several typewritten pages of them (I track all my Mac bugs and submit them to Apples bug reporter).

Gotta be open minded. The evil empire still has some tricks worth learning from

iPhoto is horrible, it was my main reason to buy a new PC after i got my G5 a couple of years ago. Well iPhoto and the finder, the fat those two apps are worse then anything i could find on Windows at the time made me want my pc back. Now I just want ACDSee on my new Mac Pro, no matter what mac people think are clever tricks nothing beats ACDSee and Explorer for ME personally.

I hate the finder, i have hated it ever since I stated using macs in 1985 and never stopped hating it. And believe me I know all the shortcuts you mentioned: I hate those stupid shortcuts because on windows i never needed any of them.

As one very funny get a mac spoof commercial said "we buy pc's because we think macs are horrible"

Not everybody likes blondes or blue cars, why is it so hard to get this is not a one mans rant but MANY people don't love OSX as some.

One of my bigest dislikes of any computer platform is ussers who are trying to tell you "you don't get it" because you don't like their way or working. funny enought so far its been the mac users who can't stand any critisism.

80% of my work is on macs and in 22 years I never learned to like them, in 10 years of using windows NT / 2000 / XP I really liked my Pc's. Nothing to explain here: it just fits my way of thinking more then mac's do.

 

[-::ubermann::-]

I dont like the finder's inability to display a thumbnail when i select an image in list view, like winxp, i have to switch to columns view, but then it can't sort files by name/date/size/kind, thats so annoying, is it so difficult to program a right click and then "sort by" option? in that area XP's crappy explorer kicks finder's ass, and I didn't mention konqueror...

 

[Ninden]

I must say, when I was a Window's only user, I never liked the built in sideshow for pictures that explorer had... I always preferred regular thumbnail view.
I do see how those that did like it would be annoyed at it's absence though.
On the one hand, Coverflow in Leopard seems like it will fill that void quite nicely. I doubt it will be that bogged down, as it's always seemed pretty smooth in iTunes. To each their own hardware I guess.

In the meanwhile, I do use a program called Milky Way.
http://www.lny.mine.nu/Pages/MilkyWay/MilkyWay.html

It's been around for a long time and was featured in a Macworld article,http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2006/02/milkyway/index.php
which also has some good pictures of it in use.

Basically when you click on an image an instant, large sized preview appears above all other programs of the image. Then when you click on whitespace or another window or desktop, etc, the preview disappears.

It's quite handy, and gives just that extra little push from small thumbnail I can't quite make out to preview without having to open the picture in an external program like preview, iphoto, etc.

It has some cute config options for doing the 'mac style' black stage, floor reflection, and angle skew. You can double click the preview image to full screen it.
It's free too, so no unhappy wallets. I'd say give it a try and see if it does what you want.

I will mention the one snafu that I've seen from it though. If you're sorting pictures and it's actively previewing; if the last picture you previewed is deleted to the trash bin, and then you empty the trash, it will complain that the image is still in use. Most likely due to a caching issue by milkyway. It's easily fixed by just previewing another image that you aren't deleting. Still though, it can be an annoyance >.>

 

[Dogger]

The option I like is to select the photos in the folder, right click select slideshow and then select "Index sheet"

 

[Ludaru]

Is this problem your talking about? I lack thumbnails, but a friend of mine said he got thumbs of pictures in command + 2. What has he done?

 

[solvs]

Is this problem your talking about? I lack thumbnails, but a friend of mine said he got thumbs of pictures in command + 2. What has he done?

Command 1. Then go into Show View Options. Under View, or right (or Control) click, or Command J. Then click on Show icon preview. You can adjust icon size from there too.

 

[A Pittarelli]

cool! i was always wondering how to add the preview

 

[Ludaru]

Command 1. Then go into Show View Options. Under View, or right (or Control) click, or Command J. Then click on Show icon preview. You can adjust icon size from there too.

Bah, of course. Thank you.

I'm still not getting thumbnails in the iphoto and the print screen folder, but the rest is fine. I assume it's done to actually use iphoto?

 

[jamerson9]

Tried Footagehead?

For people who've gotten used to the windows explorer photo viewing habit give Footagehead a try.

 

[nissan.gtp]

Try Xee.

thanks that's cool