Hi.
Is there a way to have Photoshop thumbnails show a preview of the file image when listed in a Windows Explorer window? JPEG’s always show a preview in the thumbnail but PSD’s only ever show that CS2 ‘feather’.
Thanks!
~S.~
You could try Koshigaya’s ThumbnailSupport or XnView (standalone or explorer addon). Sadly I have not yet tested these in Vista.
Hi, TVeyes.
Wow, that Koshigawa thing works great. However, when I go to view (for example) ZeroDean’s alpha pack of elephant textures, the thumbnails display alright, but they all have bands of static noise through them. Some are completely static and you can’t tell what the texture is. Also, when I click on a thumbnail in Windows Explorer, there still is no larger preview. You still have to open Photoshop to preview a large image of a PSD. But, all in all, it is better than what I had, so …
Thanks!
~S.~
Found an old bookmark to CGTalk discussing useful tools like this. But beware, you can flush all your productivity down the toilet by reading about and trying out everything available 
Nifty Desktop Tools you can’t live without.
Edit: I have not tried XnView but perhaps that performs better?
this should work for you, adobe stopped it from working once cs2 came out, i havent tried the particular files from this site but had used some from a site that no longer exists.
http://www.aeonity.com/david/adobe-photoshop-cs2-thumbnails-psd-file-in-windows-explorer
Thanks, guys.
I deleted the ‘Koshigawa’ from my Programs Folder and installed the .dll Registry Change files (suggested by SpaceBoy) instead. There was no ‘Shell’ folder under ‘Common Files > Adobe’ so I made one. When I double-clicked the files I got a message confirming that the data had been added to the registry but when I checked the thumbnails they had reverted back to the CS2 feather. Also, I tried David’s files and method through your link but got no result.
TVeyes, I restored my system to its original state so I could try XnView but when I went to the website there were many, many versions of it and I couldn’t tell which one would be most appropriate for my situation (XP Home). Any thoughts?
~S.~
SNARK
This might be helpful if you are using a pc - I do not know if there is one for the mac. And you have to have windows net 2.0. It is a stand alone program.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/abrviewer/
hme page here
http://abrviewer.sourceforge.net/
You can open - qoute
“The need
There are lots of wonderful brush sets for photoshop in the web… too many to install them all just to see what they look like! now you can have the preview of a set without having to install it… without having to run photoshop! You can even adjust thumbnails size and you can have the preview of the actual size of the brush… you can also try it out!
people who publish brush sets on their personal websites need to provide users with previews. This software is able to generate images for every single brush and can also generate the general image from the panel of the thumbnails you have visualised”
SNARK, I was thinking of the XnView Shell Extension Setup (for windows explorer). I tried it a long time ago but it seemed to work fine back then. You might also need some format plugins.