Strange thumbnails in Finder

[cocoatronik]

Some photos that I've dragged (or copied) from iPhoto 5.0.4 into another folder display quite differently in 10.5.5 Finder's icon and cover flow views.

In particular, these photos seem to use a different "thumbnail" image. In icon view, these do not display with the dropped shadow border that most photos have. In cover flow view, these display with amazingly poor resolution, as if a tiny image is just enlarged. But these are JPEG files in the neighborhood of 300-500 KB, and they look fine when opened.

Interestingly, these Finder images are not the same as the photo itself. For example, if I crop a photo in iPhoto, then later view the photo in Finder, the icon continues to show the original, uncropped photo.

What is happening here? What is different about these? And how can I get these photos to display in Finder like other photos?


(EDIT: Come to think of it, the photos exhibiting the strange behavior were imported directly into iPhoto from my camera. In the past, I've used Finder to move photos from my camera into a regular folder, and then later imported these into iPhoto. Is there any reason that a direct import into iPhoto could cause this?)

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Sounds like the photos in question have a low-resolution resource fork preview attached, which will cause this issue. Fixing it requires running them through a tool that strips resource forks.

 

[cocoatronik]

Sounds like the photos in question have a low-resolution resource fork preview attached...

Thanks for the reply! That's exactly what I was thinking, although I didn't know the correct terminology.

Would it make sense that iPhoto would create this resource fork during the process of importing directly from my camera, but apparently not when importing from another folder on my system?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thanks for the reply! That's exactly what I was thinking, although I didn't know the correct terminology.

Would it make sense that iPhoto would create this resource fork during the process of importing directly from my camera, but apparently not when importing from another folder on my system?

Yes, that makes perfect sense actually. I'd expect iPhoto to do that when importing from a camera, since (some) cameras normally generate both low- and high-resolution versions of the photos they store. iPhoto merely combines this information for you.

 

[cocoatronik]

Update: That was definitely the cause.

In testing, I found that when I imported directly from my camera into iPhoto, it must have brought in a low-resolution image that stays with the file as a preview image. But when I copied the same photos from my camera into another folder, the low-resolution image apparently did not come with them. From that folder, I could import into iPhoto and edit with no problems, and Finder generates an accurate preview.

(I've also noticed that editing in Photoshop Elements cause images to display differently in Finder. I'm guessing this is also due to a resource fork that's added by Photoshop.)

Thanks again! I'm glad I caught this before importing too many photos directly into iPhoto.