My Corner Online

 

The Fun Extras - Set Five

90. Viewing PSD Thumbnails (link to comment)

Ther is a video showing how to use the Windows Live Photo Gallery in Course 1, Lesson 4B, to tag digital scrapbooking supplies and photos.

One thing that the Windows Live Photo Gallery does not do is to view .psd files. In addition, .psd files cannot be viewed as a thumbnail on Windows Explorer.

Note. .tiff files do not need anything special to view the thumbnails.

This has never really bothered me as I have never had the use of the thumbnails and have actual grown to like not viewing them as thumbnails. As the below video will show, I like seeing the .psd icon to differentiate between .jpg files and .psd files easily. As long as I always have a .jpg preview of the .psd file, which I almost always do, I actually prefer keeping the .psd file without a thumbnail view. If it were a thumbnail view, it would look the same as my printable .jpg and it would take a little effort to determine which file were which file type. As long as I have the printable .jpg or other file format named the same as the .psd file, they will appear next to each other in my folders.

I know what would happen to me if I would see them both as the same thumbnail. I would accidentally delete one of them thinking that I had duplicate files on my computer! I think for those new to computers, this could be a danger zone.

If I do need to see a quick preview of what the .psd file contains, the Quicktime program which most people have already installed on their computer will give me a quick view. If you do not already have this free program installed, you can download it here: https://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

The reason that you cannot view the .psd thumbnail files is that Adobe has removed the .dll file from its install. You can search on the internet and find that .dll file and instructions for installing the same, but I cannot recommend to you that you do the same because I am not confident that it is not a violation of copyright to do so.

For those that owned older versions of Adobe programs that allowed for viewing the thumbnails, you may be accustomed to seeing them. For those who have never had the ability to see them, we do not miss what we have not known.

There are programs available in which you can view the .psd files as thumbnails. ACDSee is one that promotes this feature. There are others out there too if you search for them. For me, I already have too many programs installed on my computer and do not need to see the thumbnails that badly to install anything else on my computer.
I recorded the below video to help explain how I navigate my computer to view these files. I do hope that it helps you.

For me personally, I do not see why there is so much hype about needing to see .psd file thumbnails. Sometimes I wonder if it is the marketing world that is telling us we need to see them. Maybe some day the Windows Live Photo Gallery will have an upgrade to include .psd files in their program. Maybe I will learn to like and and maybe I won't.