One great feature of Adobe Photoshop Version 7 was the fact that thumbnails of the PSD files were displayed when browsing Windows folders. This feature is essential is you have hundreds of PSD files in a single folder, as I often do.
Unfortunately, Adobe removed this ability due to issues with the DLL file conflicting with Windows. So what are our options?
Well, we can either use the Adobe Browser that’s included with Photoshop, additionally you could use a third party tool like Irfan View to browse the thumbnails. Personally, I just want to continue utilizing Windows and Photoshop the way that have for the last few years. If that sounds like you, then read on.
Method One
The solution is very simple and takes less than a minute to implement. You don’t need to even reboot Windows. The change is immediate.
- Download the file, photoshop_thumbnails.zip<=(recommended) (62kb) mirror
- Copy psicon.dll to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell – if this folder doesn’t exist create it Run Adobe.reg
- Than click on the Views and Click Thumbnails
- You now can view PSD files in Thumbnails view within Windows Explorer.
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Method Two
This method supports the following image formats: cut, dcx, dds, mdl, mng, pcd, pcx, pic, pix, png, pnm/pbm/pgm/ppm, psd/pdd, psp, pxr, sgi/rgb, tif/tiff, tga/vda/icb/vst, wal and xpm.
This includes PSD files and as you can see, many other file formats, so this is much more practical and maybe preferred method. You can view all of these file formats in Windows Explorer.
All of this can be made possible by using a tiny software called ThumbView Lite (Download here) which does this job easily. This software is less than 0.5 mb. It supports amazing 19 image types. All you need to do is install it, (it’s pretty fast) and enjoy the benefits!
