smArtist thoughts10 Jul 2007 10:21 am
Productivity Tip #12: ThumbPlug TGA for TGA thumbnails in Explorer!
Here’s a quick one. Ever wanted to be able to view TGA files in thumbnail form in Windows Explorer, only to find that Windows won’t support it? Be frustrated no longer, for Thumbplug TGA is here.
Just download and install, and view thumbnail TGAs wherever they might be. Invaluable little plugin.
[update] Sven-Erik Neve in the comments pointed me to Koshigaya Thumbnail Support, which is the same thing as ThumbPlug except that it also supports PNG, PSD and every other major format. I tried it and after closing Explorer a couple times, it WORKS! Thanks Sven-Erik!! :) [/update]
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July 10th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I came across a similar app called Koshigaya Thumbnail Support. You run the exe, select the file types for which you want thumbnails in Explorer an save your choice. The tool supports TGA as well as e.g. IFF, TIFF and PSD among other file types.
You may find it on the website http://www.koshigaya.de/. Enter the Tools category and there you go.
Such a tool seems too good to be true; and personally I couldn’t get it to work on Windows XP–though comments on the website suggest that it actually does work. Maybe it’s worth a try for you.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Thank you so much!
Not having thumbnails for TGA-Image really was a pain in the A**.
Not any longer. :)
July 11th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Sven-Erik, that’s fantastic! I’ll test this out immediately and see if I can’t get it working. I really appreciate the link… this will improve my quality of life greatly, if I can get it working. :D
Pete, awesome! Glad you can make use of it. :)
July 12th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Now that the Koshigaya tool works for you I gave it another try. Apparently Murphy was watching while I tried to get the thumbnails to show up. It didn’t work this time either — except for TIFF images. They’ve got thumbnails now. “Closing” Explorer with the Task Manager did the trick. So a hooray for this one :)
For the other formats I use I let your article be my inspiration.
I used both Thumbplug TGA and Thumbplug IFF; I used nVidia’s DDS Thumbnail viewer; and last but not least for PSD files I used a DLL together with a registry tweak, as seen here:
http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8028
I had hoped for the simplicity of the Koshigaya tool. Ah well, now the system’s set up anyway.
Sven
July 13th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Try this: run the Koshigaya tool, make sure explorer is closed (even through task manager, but keep task manager running), un-check every box, save settings, close it, start it again, re-check every box, save settings, then from Task Manager, Run explorer.exe and see if it works. If not, reboot, then see if it works.
Maybe your PC just needs an enema. The tool worked for me pretty quickly…
Thanks for the other link, that kicks ass! How did you find out about it?
July 14th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
The thumbnails thingy is getting hilarious. I had it put off my mind after Thursday’s installations — But first things first.
I read your question how I found out about the DLL/registry fix. I thought, “Well, I googled it.” And I wondered whether I could get the exact search phrase together again. I remembered that it was (without the quotation marks) “psd thumbnails explorer”.
I googled that. I expected that flexbeta link once again at the top. However, and that’s the hilarious part, today the first result was a blog post about ThumbView:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/thumbview
Fast forward one hour. Koshigaya doesn’t work even if I use the Task Manager to temporarily get rid of everything Explorer. A reboot doesn’t help either. I didn’t write it in the last comment but I had tried that workaround, too. I tried again today on a second machine — same result. It locks up when I hit Set Supports. The empty install folder is created but that’s it. Apparently it doesn’t matter which file types are checked.
Never mind.
Good news is that ThumbView does the same thing and actually works for me. It doesn’t have IFF thumbnails but built-in DDS ones. So no nVidia plug-in to install afterwards. Instead Thumbplug IFF. I’m fine with that :)
Sven
July 25th, 2007 at 10:06 am
It doesn’t work on two separate machines?! That’s just batty. I’m glad ThumbView works for you though!