[Eug Wanker]

It's been mentioned before, but I've never seen a good answer.

In icon view with auto thumbnail generation from images, it takes forever on a G4 1 GHz TiBook with 768 MB RAM. It holds up my work it's so damn slow.

It generates 5 or 6 thumbnails (slowly), then takes a coffee break, and then generates 3 more, then takes another coffee break. Etc.

WTF? Do I need a G5 2.6 to generate thumbnails???

[Developer]

It has to read those images from the hard drive and that takes its time if they are larger. If that holds up your work use an app like GraphicConverter that can create permanent custom icons for these files which can be read much faster by the Finder.

[Cipher13]

XP does it VERY quickly.

[Love Calm Quiet]

I don't experience preview-drawing as "slow" (Tibook 667), but...
Question about another aspect of this issue: how does Finder determine whether to display a preview. It seems always to do so with TIFFs, sometimes with JPGs, and never with TextEdit docs, and occasionally with Appleworks docs (showing first few works for SOME docs; standard icon for others.

{ and no, whether Finder draws preview or not is NOT always predictable by whether the doc's icon is generic one for its app or whether the doc's icon is a mini-preview itself }

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
XP does it VERY quickly.

I believe XP caches the images so the first time you view thumbnails in the explorer its slow. I haven't noticed a large difference between my PB and my work laptop for viewing thumbnails at least the first time after that xp is somewhat quicker.

Mike

[Eug]

Originally posted by Maflynn:
I believe XP caches the images so the first time you view thumbnails in the explorer its slow. I haven't noticed a large difference between my PB and my work laptop for viewing thumbnails at least the first time after that xp is somewhat quicker.

Mike

I have turned off caching for XP so it still has to generate the images from scratch. Two things:

1) Thumbnail generation is still faster on a per picture basis in XP.
2) There are no pauses in XP. OS X pauses for many seconds a lot of the time, after generating a few thumbnails. Just what is the Finder doing? Is it out of memory?

This is my number 1 issue with the Finder. It's gotten so bad that sometimes I prefer to organize my image directories on XP, which is pain for other reasons.

[KP*]

I don't mean to turn this into an XP love-fest, but another related thing that bothers me about the Finder vs. Windows Explorer is that there's no easy way to view a slideshow or preview of a folder of images. What I mean is, if you have a folder full of JPEGs and want to quickly look at all of them, but even at the maximum icon size (128x128) you can't quite see what you need to see, the finder itself doesn't have a way to look through them quickly in a larger size. If I'm searching for the right file, I don't want to have to keep opening photos in a separate app and then close them just to find the one I'm looking for.

It's not so much that I like XP, it's just that with all the other ways Apple prides itself on ease of use and GUI advances, I can't believe M$ was the one to introduce this kind of feature first (along with video previews, too) and that was years ago and Apple still hasn't added this capability.

OK, my flame-retardant suit is on.

[eevyl]

Originally posted by KP*:
I don't mean to turn this into an XP love-fest, but another related thing that bothers me about the Finder vs. Windows Explorer is that there's no easy way to view a slideshow or preview of a folder of images. What I mean is, if you have a folder full of JPEGs and want to quickly look at all of them, but even at the maximum icon size (128x128) you can't quite see what you need to see, the finder itself doesn't have a way to look through them quickly in a larger size. If I'm searching for the right file, I don't want to have to keep opening photos in a separate app and then close them just to find the one I'm looking for.

Maybe the key point is to look at how to do it in OS X, rather than "it doesn't do it as XP". So follow the white rabbit:

1. Select a bunch of image files.
2. Open all of them with Preview.
3. Select "Full Screen" from "View" menu.
4. Navigate through all the images in full screen glory with the arrow keys.

[eevyl]

Let me add something, Windows Explorer is another "bloatware" that tries to do everything. Finder is for managing files, that's it. If you want to preview and view image files... use Preview. If you want to manage your music, use iTunes. Etc etc.

But the sluggish speed at creating thumbnails is really a pain, true, but I don't see the point of jumping and say "XP does it better"... so what??? Does that help any Mac user?

[Thor]

....no easy way to view a slideshow or preview of a folder of images.

Not exactly what you're looking for, but:

Launch Preview
File: Open...
Navigate to the folder containing images
Select All (cmd-a)
Click "Open"

or:
Navigate to images folder in finder
Select all images
Right click and choose "Open with..." Preview.

One browser will open with thumbnails of all the images in the drawer.

A huge number of images may take a minute to load-- I just did it with 500 images, and it loaded fairly quickly.

(Panther & Preview 2.1.0 only)

GraphicConverter (included with "Pro" Macs) also has Slideshow/Image browser built in. Drag&Drop a folder full of images on GC icon. Speed is about the same as Preview, but seems faster cuz you can start browsing images immediately while the thumbnails are being generated.

[mindwaves]

No problems here w/ a dual 847 MDD 768 MB RAM 10.3.2.

[bradoesch]

It frustrates me too, but I expect things to be slow on my iMac DV (400 Mhz G3).

BTW, the title of this thread is a little confusing. I'm sure Eug means 10.3.2, but when I read it the first time, it actually says 10.2 Panther. Unless the X is meant to stand for 10.3, in which case that makes sense too.

[natan]

Pic2Icon them!

[phantomo]

bradoesch, thanks for the pointer.

This is a much prefered solution until OSX incorporate this function automatically.

I prefer to use this over GraphicConverter because once you use GC to create the icon for the picture file, the default application to open the file becomes GC, which I do not want.

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by phantomo:
bradoesch, thanks for the pointer.

This is a much prefered solution until OSX incorporate this function automatically.

I prefer to use this over GraphicConverter because once you use GC to create the icon for the picture file, the default application to open the file becomes GC, which I do not want.

You can set GC to creat a resource fork on save and to use a different file creator such as Preview. Check the save preferences.

You can also set the finder to open files of a specific type such as .jpg or .tiff with specific apps regardless of creator in the Get Info box.

[movabi]

Pic2Icon is very stubborn... sometimes it works, the majority of the time it stalls for me. It hasn't been updated in quite some time.

Also, working with large amounts of files really doesn't work well for me.

one thing about icon creation... why is it an option to turn on icon preview? and why is it that that seems to be a bug in panther, so you have to unclick that option? There is a thread on that here somewhere.

When i download images of of safari, no icon is created, yet when I download images from explorer, i get icons... what's the deal?

[RayX]

Originally posted by KP*:
It's not so much that I like XP, it's just that with all the other ways Apple prides itself on ease of use and GUI advances, I can't believe M$ was the one to introduce this kind of feature first (along with video previews, too) and that was years ago and Apple still hasn't added this capability.

Beleive it, because only Microsoft would do something that dumb.

This is something we do not want in the Finder, its bloat, plain and simple.

The Finder can preview individual files though, including Video previews, when in the Column view.

[mycatsnameis]

I agree about the speed issue but at least once it's done you can have Panther (never tried it in Jag) cache the images only in folders you choose so that when you come back later and look at the folder (in icon view mode only) then the thumbs will still be there and load more or less instantaneously.

I know that most of you are aware of this but, for the benefit of those who don't know, when you're faced with a folder of thumb-less icons, go to Show View Options in the View menu and then toggle on Show Icon Preview along with Only In This Folder. This will only work if you are in Icon view.

Then the weirdness begins. I found that the finder very promptly creates the thumbs but only for those files visible within the window. You have to scroll all the way down to the "bottom" of the window in order to force it to create thumbs for the rest of the images. Note, dragging the slider down to the bottom will not do the job, you must "page down" over and over (not that big a deal to click near the bottom and hold it, really) in order to force the Finder to do it's job on _all_ of the images. It does seem to take a longer time (conversion that is) for larger images.

Once this process is done, however, when you re-open that folder (again, only in icon view), all the previous thumbs will be available without requiring the Finder to re-create them (no way to turn off this caching I believe). Also, if you have added more images to the folder in the interim, you will have to bring those into the folder window (in icon view) in order for the Finder to now make thumbs of these new images and add them to the cache.

[Developer]

Originally posted by movabi:
When i download images of of safari, no icon is created, yet when I download images from explorer, i get icons... what's the deal?

That is because Internet Explorer creates custom icons for those files and Safari does not.