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Thumbnails of pictures in folder - is it hard for mac?

cool11

cool11

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 3, 2006
1,840
227
I migrated to mac recently.
One thing I missed since I gave up windows, was the built-in capability to display thumbnails of pictures a folder contain.

I want to do the same on mac.
I do not want to import my photos to an application or something like that.
I just want an application to look at specific folder and show me thumbnails of the pictures.

Windows has this option almost a decade and built-in the os.
Mac as far as I know does not give me such an option in mac os x.

I hope there is a single application in the whole world to display me thumbnails right away.
Am I asking too much from the mac platform?
 
I want all images to be displayed in thumbnail preview at once.
Not one by one.
I hate click to every single image to see its preview.
 
If you follow my instructions, the icon of each file will become a thumbnail of the image.

However, if you want to open all the pictures in preview at once, simply press Apple+A to select all and then Apple+O to open preview, all your pictures will then be displayed in preview
 
cool11 said:
I want all images to be displayed in thumbnail preview at once.
Not one by one.
I hate click to every single image to see its preview.
Click to expand...

Or click the "Icon View" button in the Finder toolbar:
 

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The icon view just show me icons! Not thumbnails!
I want to see a small picture for every picture a folder contains.
What we mean when we say thumbnail?
 
I thought the OP was talking about the ability in windows for the folder to display a sample of the thumbnails in that folder, like the attached...... or maybe I'm mistaken..... but can you do this is OS X ?
 

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beige matchbox thank you! This is what I wanted!

One more question: is there a setting to do this to every folder with pictures?
In windows there is an option '...aply to all folders..'
What about mac os x? Do I have to do these steps every time I need to see thumbnails?
 
If you don't change it to "this window only" it will make those settings apply to all folders... but only in icon view so if you usually browse your folders in list view it won't affect your view of those folders unless you click icon view. Otherwise you'd have to do it to every folder you want it to be like that, and then select this window only.
 
I had to admit that windows way is smarter.

With your help I can now see thumbnails of pictures.
But these are not 'real' thumbnails. They are icons thumbnails.
So I have two options:
- 'this windows only' for manually tell mac os x to display thumbnails to specific folders
- 'all folders' option(I am not behind a mac at this moment), which affects all folders. What a surprise. Application icons in folders look big! As big as the thumbnails!

What a mess.
If I choose to see normal(big enough to see them) thumbnails the way it is told above, I have to select to do it manually to every pictures' folder or seeing all my icons(not only pictures' icons) in extra large size which is awful.

In windows the operating system seem to 'understand' if view option is about pictures. It is all about picture viewing options, not icon viewing option that affects all icons in mac os x.
 
Leopard will have the Coverflow version of the finder, with the preview option available.

You won't get a thumbnail view of the contents of 20 folders at once though.

Though you will get a real good thumbnail preview of all documents in a folder.

Don't know the preview size, almost seems to be bigger than the 128x128 icon preview, hard to tell though

finder_gallery_coverflow20070611.jpg
 
cool11 said:
I had to admit that windows way is smarter.
Click to expand...

I had the exact same problem, and I thought so too for a while.
But I did not spend time at my PC anymore so I had to deal with it...
Here´s how I did it.

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.

I also created one to show all icons as small as possible with the text to the right, as to arrange them the way xp´s "view as list" works.

Hope this helps.
 
cool11 said:
Windows has this option almost a decade and built-in the os.
Mac as far as I know does not give me such an option in mac os x.

I hope there is a single application in the whole world to display me thumbnails right away.
Am I asking too much from the mac platform?
Click to expand...

I hate how switchers when they can't do something on a mac like they did on windows say like "how hard it would be for mac to do this?". some things aren't done on macs because apple chose not to, not because it would be too hard or something. it's a different OS, just deal with it, that's how it's supposed to be.
 
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cool11 said:
I had to admit that windows way is smarter.

With your help I can now see thumbnails of pictures.
But these are not 'real' thumbnails. They are icons thumbnails.
So I have two options:
- 'this windows only' for manually tell mac os x to display thumbnails to specific folders
- 'all folders' option(I am not behind a mac at this moment), which affects all folders. What a surprise. Application icons in folders look big! As big as the thumbnails!

What a mess.
If I choose to see normal(big enough to see them) thumbnails the way it is told above, I have to select to do it manually to every pictures' folder or seeing all my icons(not only pictures' icons) in extra large size which is awful.

In windows the operating system seem to 'understand' if view option is about pictures. It is all about picture viewing options, not icon viewing option that affects all icons in mac os x.
Click to expand...

Ok, here is what I do when I first set up an account.

In my Applications folder I hit Apple+J to bring up the View Options.

I set all my icons to 36*36 pixels, show icon preview on, size 10 font, show info, right side, white background, and arrange by kind. I then check the apply to all windows bubble at the top.

Then, in just my pictures folder, I make sure 'This window only' is checked, and up the icon size to 128*128. No, they are not true thumbnails in the Windows sense... but how is this an issue? You have a 128*128 preview of the image, it is the whole image, not a cropped section or anything... so they sort of are thumbnails.

I'm sorry that you will have to do it in all your picture folders... but honestly, that is what iPhoto is for, viewing your all your images.
 
stop dissing the helpers doood!

anjinhamarota said:
I hate how switchers when they can't do something on a mac like they did on windows say like "how hard it would be for mac to do this?". some things aren't done on macs because apple chose not to, not because it would be too hard or something. it's a different OS, just deal with it, that's how it's supposed to be.
Click to expand...
Agreed.

I also hate how disagreeable they are in general.

The OP here posts some vaguely worded question about how to do "X" in Mac, and they get four or five people trying to help them. Then they just complain and poop all over everybody who is trying to help! WTF? :confused: The last post is then always...

"I still like the way Windows does "X" better." :mad:

Well, wah! Go back to Windows if you like it so much.

At least read a dummies book before you start complaining to everyone on the forum. All this icon preview stuff is right in the built-in help system, and located chapter one of every book on OS-X published for the last few years.
 
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TheStu said:
I'm sorry that you will have to do it in all your picture folders... but honestly, that is what iPhoto is for, viewing your all your images.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's the purpose of iPhoto, although I don't think it's a fair tradeoff: iPhoto is slow, takes up huge amounts of space, & re-organizes your photos it's way, instead of your way.

I work with images, so I created a separate folder just for those, and I set its icon view large to give me a decent overview of the images. I'd rather have a very fast thumbnail browser like irfanview.

It's a shame there's nothing like irfanview for the Mac -- that program is fast, handy and useful. One of the few things I still miss from Windows is irfanview.

BTW, you can change the view in your folder with a keytroke. CMD-1 switches to icon view, while 2 gets you list view and 3 gets you column view. I find it really quick to make that switch via the keyboard.
 
cool11 said:
In windows the operating system seem to 'understand' if view option is about pictures. It is all about picture viewing options, not icon viewing option that affects all icons in mac os x.
Click to expand...
How do you change the icon and thumbnail size in Windows XP? Oh, and how do you change it just for pictures?
 
Try FileBrowse :)

After reading this thread I thought of an app I purchased the day it came out. It's called FileBrowse - try FileBrowse - I have stopped using it though, but it was a good app for looking through my pictures, mainly desktop pictures and the like.
 
How to get a preview of enclosed photos without opening folder.

sreedy said:
I thought the OP was talking about the ability in windows for the folder to display a sample of the thumbnails in that folder, like the attached...... or maybe I'm mistaken..... but can you do this is OS X ?
Click to expand...

this is what i want to do on my mac. Is it possible? I have over 150 different folders labelled generically by camera dates. e.g. 2010_05_27 or 2007_09_01, etc. I want to quickly see what's in each folder without having to open up the folder. Is it in any way possible to put a preview on the folder like the picture folder does on Windows? That and flash not crashing are the only two things I miss about windows at the moment.

Cheers everyone!
 
MAC OS X w/ Snow leopard/showing thumbnails

i have the same problem as the original poster. I read through all of the replies and tried the various suggestions. Nada. Maybe the instructions are different on SNOW LEOPARD.?? I'm also new to MAC. I have to 'attach' photos all the time in posts, replies, e-mails, etc and I really need to have them all open up as thumbnails so that I know which ones to grab. Any advise would be greatly appreciated.:)
 
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