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Thumbnails for OS X image icons - automatic generation?

L

lord_flash

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 6, 2003
166
0
Brighton, England
One of the great things about the mac is that it's always been possible for a thumbnail of any image to be included in a flie and displayed by the operating system when using the finder (which, frankly, I still prefer to Spotlight since 99% of my image files have no useful metadata).

OS X - and even Tiger's Automator - don't seem to offer me any way of converting a batch of TIFFs/JPEGs etc. to including this information? (Automator will make seperate files, but it's hardly and elegant or successful solution.)

Does anyone know of way to do this, please, please?
(That won't cost me anything.)
 
Applespider said:
Try Pinki

I know it does jpgs not sure about other image formats
Click to expand...
OMG! This is the one feature that I missed from Windows XP. Now my switch is perfect. Thanks for the link. It does support a lot of image formats. Just click the link.
 
Eidorian said:
OMG! This is the one feature that I missed from Windows XP. Now my switch is perfect.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I've often wondered why OS X didn't do this already. I was expecting it to appear in Tiger. Best of all, no "thumbs.db" file!

Of course, now that I use iPhoto for most of my images, I guess it's moot, but still, great link.
 
Why don't you use the built in preview icon feature in OS X?

Just type Command-J to bring up the view options, then pick the "Show icon preview".
 
Snowy_River said:
Why don't you use the built in preview icon feature in OS X?

Just type Command-J to bring up the view options, then pick the "Show icon preview".
Click to expand...

Because this feature only works IF THE FILE ALREADY HAS A THUMBNAIL IN IT. Most Apple software will generate this when the file is saved, but not if you work in a mixed machine environment. Otherwise the icon will remain resoloutely thumbnail-less. Win XP generates them on the fly when you open folders, but this wouldn't work on Mac since it'd embed extra data into the file, which wouldn't be any use if you wanted to put them on the web.

Thanks for the <A HREF="http://www.mkd.cc/pinki/">Pinki</A> link though - that's the solution.
 
Applespider said:
It does work for the most part if you work in icon view in the Finder. Since I prefer working in column view and find thumbnails useful in open/save dialogues, I hunted down Pinki. Glad it was useful to others.
Click to expand...

You're right, my apologies, plus Pinky does save the 128x128 OS X icons so making the finder as good as (and much faster than) most thumbnaily programs. Never will I need to wait the 16 hours or so Adobe Bridge seems to take to load on my employer's archaic eMac!

Spotlight never really helps with pics because of my laziness regarding metadata (not to mention files from supplies, authors, etc.). They'll still be there when I pass them on to the next dept too.

So "Woo Hoo!" from me. :D
 
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