Photoshop PSD files [ thumbnail view ]

[b33z]

View Photoshop PSD thumbnails in Vista and Windows 7

ok guys.. i came here looking for just this.. and sadly, it wasnt here.. so i went on the hunt (via google lol) and i found it... and i did the heavy lifting already and attached the needed redist pkg and dll file so no need to go dl the links mentioned.. unless you want to i guess.. lol... nJoy!

UPDATED! [26July2010]

• Confirmed, does not work with 64bit. Sorry for the late response on this one.
• Make sure you use quotes in step three of Codec Installation!

View Photoshop PSD thumbnails in Vista and Windows 7

Windows introduced a new imaging stack, called Windows Imaging Component (WIC), and uses it in Windows Explorer to create thumbnails for most image file formats. 3rd parties can write their own WIC codec to support proprietary image formats such as Nikon NEF or Canon CR2 raw files and Explorer is able to show thumbnails for those files when the corresponding codec is installed. Microsoft maintain a page containing links to existing codecs. Sadly, there is no publicly available codec for the Photoshop PSD format but the newly released Microsoft Expression Blend 3 design tool (which, by the way, is nothing short of amazing for WPF and Silverlight design) includes such a codec so installing Blend 3 automatically installs the PSD codec. For those who don’t have a need for Blend and don’t want to install it, here is a little hacking guide to extract the codec (a 256KB dll) and use it separately:
Get the codec and its dependencies:

• 1. Download Microsoft Expression Blend 3.0 (3.0.1927.0 7/20/2009) Trial: Link
• 2. Using 7-Zip, open ‘Blend_Trial_en.exe’ from step (1) and in the ‘Setup’ subfolder, open ‘BlImp.cab’ then extract ‘PSDCodec.dll’
• 3. Download the Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86): Link

Codec Installation:

• 1. Install the VC++ Runtime by running vcredist_x86.exe from step (3) above.
• 2. Copy PSDCodec.dll from step (2) to some location on the harddisk, e.g. “C:\Program Files\PSDCodec”
• 3. Register the codec from an administrator’s command prompt by running the following command, (provided C: is the drive you installed Win to) exactly:
  regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\PSDCodec\PSDCodec.dll"
  (remember, quotes!)

That’s it, Windows Vista Explorer should soon begin to display thumbnails for all PSD files that were saved from Photoshop with the “Maximum Compatibility” option. As a side effect, WIC-aware image viewers such as FastPictureViewer Professional (Fast Picture Viewer | A Fast 32 and 64-bit Image Viewer for Windows 7, Vista & XP.) automatically benefit from the codec installation and uses it to open and display the same PSD files with full fidelity.


files i attached:
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86).exe
AND
PSDCodec.dll.zip

 

[jafergusonuk]

PSD Files

I feel your pain. In the end I bought a viewer from Ardfry (Ardfry Imaging, LLC) It works extremely well and solves my problem of viewing thumbnails etc. Frankly I dont think we should have to buy this software as Adobe should have produced these codecs for Win 7. I am disappointed with how slow Adobe is to do this.

Howdy! new here..... :sa:

guys, im curious if it is possible to make a thumbnail view for PSD files? like in windows XP....



also one more thing.... is desktop.ini not applicable in win7? cause my USB has a background image and it wont' show up in win7.... ?



-thanks!

 

[genex]

ok guys.. i came here looking for just this.. and sadly, it wasnt here.. so i went on the hunt (via google lol) and i found it... and i did the heavy lifting already and attached the needed redist pkg and dll file so no need to go dl the links mentioned.. unless you want to i guess.. lol... nJoy!



I just registered to say thank you,for ending my long time frustration with this.

I had tried MSFT's forums and got the standard pscicon.dll fix (didn't render thumbs on my external drive) and the Arfry's psicodec program. I installed that. The downside is while it does render excellent psd thumbs, it somehow won't cache them on my large PSD folder in my external drive. That means they have to be redrawn every time I plug in the drive. Not good if ya have several hundred.

This psd codec keeps the thumbs crisp even in large view and once rendered,stay rendered,even in other programs dialog boxes. Thanks for one great find and including the files and clear easy to follow instructions! Of all things Microsoft had it sitting there! Perhaps there's some legality or fee structure that prevents use in Windows.

If you happen to see small icons on the corner of the thumbs,uncheck "Display file icon on thumbnails"in Windows Explorer;s Tools menu > Folder Options > View Tab.


I had spoken with Adobe who had explained to me that MSFT had the psd spec and could do this themselves. On an MSFT forum I asked why they didn't implement this and got no answer on this issue other than third party suggestions.

Except for this forum and its' sharp members

Genex

Windows 7 on a Toshiba laptop.

 

[dragotron]

Thumbnails of "Documents" makes absolutely no sense to me.
That just compounds my problem of not being able to see what file types I'm working with.

There's another post here somewhere ..
Where they are complaining about the fact that Adobe has fixed the W7 problem (confusion) and is providing Icons now.

I'll have to try to remember this

If only I could show Icons on my Desktop .. I might be able to use W7

for images its very handy... especially large images that you don't want to have to open photoshop to view. But for me its small images... i use my library of alpha images (small icons) in zbrush and I want to browse them without having to open them, just look and open the file.

you should have SHOW FILE TYPES on to show you what your file types are. This is important cause .EXE files can change the icon to whatever it wants. Someone could create a virus change the icon to a photoshop icon for example, put it on your computer or convince people to download the file somehow (they have their ways) you open it and have a virus. Not only that, MANY filetypes share icons.

 

[dragotron]

I finally got this working with mysticthumbs, had to reboot a couple times. and it doesn't change the icons on your desktop.. only in explorer

 

[noyb]

My extensions are turned on .. but many times the names are too long.
The problem is .. Many times I have several Images (that will look the same in Thumbs) but are different types.
Thumbs are great in a folder Browse .. but not on the desktop .. IMHO.
At least .. M$ could have given me the option to turn thumbs off on the desktop only.


and it doesn't change the icons on your desktop
Right .. W7 isn't smart enough to see a psd file as an Image.
This makes it difficult to edit the registry Right Click context menus ..
to do the same file type R click customizing that XP can do.

 

[dali137]

Followed the steps to a T I believe but I got this error on the last step...
The module ""C:\Program" failed to load.
Make sure the binary is stored at the specific path or debug it to check for problems with the binary or dependent .DLL files.
The specified module could not be found.

Running Windows 7 64bit

 

[jafergusonuk]

Ardfry do a full range of thumbnail viewers for PSD, NEF (Nikon's Raw) and DNG files. Find them at Ardfry Imaging, LLC unfortunately there is a charge , but the viewers are very good.. I use Win 7 64 bit and they work for me. As far as desktop ini is concerned, I don't think Win 7 uses that anymore. Look at your System / Device Manager to see if your USB ports show up there, if not you will need a driver.

Regards John F

Howdy! new here..... :sa:

guys, im curious if it is possible to make a thumbnail view for PSD files? like in windows XP....



also one more thing.... is desktop.ini not applicable in win7? cause my USB has a background image and it wont' show up in win7.... ?



-thanks!

 

[tagen]

Two Answers for you

I believe someone just wrote about the mystic thumbs program - and it works for me which was surprising since I'm working 64 bit, but before that I was using the Irfan View graphic program and you can use the thumbnail explorer and psd will show up.

Anyway, hope it helps!
T.

 

[alt20]

Followed the steps to a T I believe but I got this error on the last step...
The module ""C:\Program" failed to load.
Make sure the binary is stored at the specific path or debug it to check for problems with the binary or dependent .DLL files.
The specified module could not be found.

Running Windows 7 64bit

The quote marks around the regsvr32 command b33z wrote aren't interpreted correctly by the command prompt. Try copying and pasting but then deleting and retyping the quote marks manually before you hit enter.

 

[dali137]

tried pasting and deleting/re-typing the quotes.... no go... Also hand-typed the whole command... same error. Tried moving the dll to a few other spots and updating the cmd to match... still nada.

Thinking this fix isn't in the cards for me.

 

[noyb]

I tried a couple of the PSD Thumbnail fixes here ..
But since some of my Photoshop files are huge .. (I think this is the reason) ...
My Thumbnail viewing was really slow.

I've decided .. If I need to Browse psd's in Thumbs ... I'll just use my Irfanview Thumbnail browser.

 

[alt20]

tried pasting and deleting/re-typing the quotes.... no go... Also hand-typed the whole command... same error. Tried moving the dll to a few other spots and updating the cmd to match... still nada.

Thinking this fix isn't in the cards for me.

Strange. Did you try moving the dll to somewhere without a space in the path, e.g. c:\PSDCodec.dll

 

[kucing13]

well so far i can say OK. I rarely have time to play with my PS CS4

 

[dali137]

I did try moving it to a path with no spaces but nothing changed...

Just tried it again though skipping the PSDCodec folder and just putting the dll in root C... I get a different error now...

*The module "C:\PSDCodec.dll" was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80070005.
For more information about this problem search online using the error code as a search term.*

tried searching for the error code in conjunction with the PSDCodec and found a Spanish site where someone got the same error but no solution was posted

 

[alt20]

Hmmm, I'm guessing that the error code is irrelevant to the dll file, so if you just try searching for regsvr32 0x80070005 then you might find a solution that works despite being about a different dll file. If that makes sense?


Also if you're doing

regsvr32 C:\PSDCodec.dll

then you probably won't need the quotes around the address. Don't know if you've done that or if it'll make a difference, but thought I'd mention it in case!

 

[Elmer BeFuddled]

Another Thumbs Up for Mystic Thumbs for viewing psd files.
The only issue I've had was when I went from CS4 to CS5,. A simple un-install, re-install of Mystic Thumbs and back in business (on 64 bit).

 

[premier69]

i performed the dll register guide and it worked, except for no difference before and after... explorer still doesn't render psd thumbnails....

 

[cleftangels]

Seriously this is the easiest thing to do actually.

Download psicon.dll

From : psicon.dll download - free dll files

Place it in c:\program files\common files\adobe\shell

If the shell directory isn't there create it.

now open notepad and copy and paste the next few lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs]


"C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll"=dword:00000001


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx]


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]


@="{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}"


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}]


@="Photoshop Icon Handler"


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\InProcServer32]


@="C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll"


"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

Save the file as psdreg.reg

Now double click the file and then click yes. Now just either restart or kill and restart the "explorer.exe" process.

go look at any .psd and you will see thumbnail

 

[lorddenis]

Seriously this is the easiest thing to do actually.

Download psicon.dll

From : psicon.dll download - free dll files

Place it in c:\program files\common files\adobe\shell

If the shell directory isn't there create it.

now open notepad and copy and paste the next few lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs]


"C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll"=dword:00000001


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx]


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]


@="{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}"


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}]


@="Photoshop Icon Handler"


[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\InProcServer32]


@="C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll"


"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

Save the file as psdreg.reg

Now double click the file and then click yes. Now just either restart or kill and restart the "explorer.exe" process.

go look at any .psd and you will see thumbnail

those are some very beautyful sig's.