Adobe Community: Message List - PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 21:24:24 GMT

Trust in the developer of SageThumbs. I don't have time to review his code (don't know C, anyway), so I just have to go with the pedigrees on the home pages. That's why I'm leaning towards the FastPicViewer codec.

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:31:31 GMT

Are you referring to trust in the developer of Adobe, which should be trusted to have offered a solution? Or are you referring to trust in an unknown developer that has created SageThumbs? If the latter, realize that SageThumbs is an open source GPL app. I don't think it is possible to know a developer better than to be able to review their source code and to have license to modify it under the GPL.

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 05:25:36 GMT

Thanks for that link. Looks like a definite contender if Adobe doesn't come through; although as I said before, it comes down to a matter of trust in the developer.

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 05:06:12 GMT

photodrawken wrote:

XnView also can display PSDs and I assume there are other apps that can do so too. Still need the ability to see the thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer...

If you like XNView, you should really look at alfie's suggestion of http://code.google.com/p/sagethumbs/

It is based on XNView's graphic library.

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 22:02:38 GMT

XnView also can display PSDs and I assume there are other apps that can do so too. Still need the ability to see the thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer, which is used in the File...Open dialog of Windows apps.

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:33:16 GMT

PSD’s do show in Picasa 3 - free from Google.

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:25:52 GMT

I won't argue about what business decisions went into not providing the shell DLLs (I certainly don't have access to that information), and I agree that providing the DLLs won't make much more money for Adobe.

My main point is that providing the thumbnail capability is the right thing to do. Call that a moral argument if you will, but that's how I see it. I agree that the business types would like to see some justification, but that's not the issue. It all comes down to deciding what's right, and when "what's right" can't be quantified in a spreadsheet, the business types and executive types have to rely on their own sense of responsibility. I'm saying that they've abandoned that responsibility.

Technical issues of providing the capability are solvable, as is shown by the FastPicViewer codec for which you provided the link. It's just a matter of having the will to do it.

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:41:07 GMT

Adobe wrote a psicons.dll for XP (and earlier, I think), but Windows caused problems because it left the files open after showing the thumbnails so they couldn’t be edited without a reboot. Maybe Adobe doesn't trust Microsoft and since they have Bridge they feel they don't need to provide something else.

The fact MS has a codec API should be enough for Adobe to try again, I'd think, but maybe they don't want to put the PS layer composite engine inside a product that can display full-screen previews in case it proves they can do layer-decoding for non-Maximize-Compatibility-saved PSDs in a preview engine but not put the same thing into LR. Maybe Lightroom on onshore and Photoshop is offshore so it's hard to coordinate. The next thing you know, people would want to see previews of the RAW files as rendered by the Adobe RAW engine so they'd have to embed that into the Windows-compatible codec, too, and someone would figure out how to adjust XMPs or embedded image metadata and re-use the codec to show the image, and then you'd not need ACR, anymore, and therefore Photoshop, anymore.

I'd guess they are having financial strains with the economy and changing media landscape so aren't willing to put ANY resources toward something that they already have provided as part of Photoshop, namely Bridge. Developing a codec pack for Windows doesn't make them any money, directly, so while the engineers might want to do something, Adobe has business types that need to see justifications from their side of things.

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:18:27 GMT

Yes, thanks for that link. I'd come across their product before and I was impressed with their documentation of their work to be compatibile with Win7.

If push comes to shove, that's likely the product I'd purchase. Until I get too frustrated by not having PSD thumbnails in Windows Explorer, I'll stay on my high horse and wait for Adobe to provide the functionality.

Kinda begs the question of why Adobe can't write a DLL when others can, doesn't it....

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:06:53 GMT

XP had a problem with Explorer leaving the files open after the thumbnail was displayed by the Adobe psicons.dll so Adobe discontinued use of it.

I've solved my thumbnail problems on Windows 7 by paying for and installing the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack (not FastPictureViewer, itself, just the codec pack) and now I can see all my thumbnails and full-screen previews in Windows 7 Explorer.

http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/

It has a 15-day free trial so you can test it with your files to make sure it works.

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:49:24 GMT

Yeah, I've heard that too, but I'm not buying that excuse:

It's not MicroSoft's responsibility for making someone's thumbnails work. MS provides the documentation (I assume) for developers to write code for a DLL to display thumbnails in Windows Explorer. It's up to the developer to do it.
Other software programs which use a proprietary image format do supply those DLLs. Three examples that I use on my PC are:
    a. Corel's CorelDraw and PhotoPaint install the appropriate shell DLLs to display their native files as thumbnails.
    b. Xara also provides a 64-bit DLL which, when manually registered, displays their native file format as thumbnails.
    c. The open-source Paint.Net group registers the DLL to display their native format as thumbnails.
God knows that those three, and especially the Paint.Net group, don't have the hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of developers that Adobe does, yet those three chose to do the right thing and provide what I consider to be an essential feature.
Apparently this has been going on for a long time -- certainly long enough for Adobe to write the darned code, if only Adobe had the will to do it.

PSE9 is the only Adobe product I currently have purchased and this issue just sticks in my craw. Other than that, I've got nothing but praise for the program.

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:17:51 GMT

Yes it is a bit frustrating and both photoshop and photoshop elements used to

generate thumbnails for psd files, but it's my understanding that it was causing

so many problems on windows machines, that since neither microsoft or adobe

could come up with an acceptable solution, they just dropped it rather than hearing

about all the other problems it was causing.

MTSTUNER

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:01:10 GMT

Thanks for the info. I'm real hesitant about installing code from developers whose track record I don't know that well, so I'll just suffer along on this one....

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:57:25 GMT

Hi 99jon,

Thanks for the heads up, but I don't shoot in RAW so the new codec won't do me any good. (If it's automatically installed by Windows Update, then I guess I might already have it, tho....)

<rant> I still think it's inexcusable for Adobe not to provide a shell DLL so its proprietary image formats would display in Windows Explorer, which is why I left that angry message on the photoshop.com forum. </rant>

Ken

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:34:14 GMT

Hi Ken

In case you didn't know, Microsoft have also recently released codecs for a range of major camera models to enable raw files to show up in explorer. Available for Vista and w7 64 bit systems and 32 bit (x86.msi)

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26829

Re: PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:56:29 GMT

try searching for sagethumbs ! worked for me , is free,, supports 32 n 64 bit windows 7,, i finally see all my thumbnails as xp used to, shame on adobe and microsucks for never making this work!

PSE9: No thumbnail images of PSD files in Windows Explorer

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:32:36 GMT

Win7 x64 SP1

PSE 9.0.3

When using Windows Explorer to view a directory, *.psd files are shown with a generic PSE icon rather than as thumbnail images. PSE9 is set as the default program for *.psd files.

Is there any way to get thumbnail images to display in Explorer?

Ken