Photo cannot enlarge the thumbnails to view them

[Penyfan]

I am days into a free trial on my Mac but cannot enlarge the thumbnails to view them so really I can only guess which ones to open.. As the Mac is my main computer this is a deal breaker for me unless someone can enlighten me.

I also down loaded onto a laptop with windows 10 and that gives the full range of thumbnails to view but it's the Mac I need to use. 

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by Penyfan

[thomaso]

Hi Penyfan,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

What thumbnails are you talking about? I am sure you are well aware that in the interfaces of both macOS and Affinity apps are various thumbnails, at different spots, and with different display options. Enlighten us with details about your desire?

[h_d]

If you're talking about the size of thumbnails in MacOS Open... dialogs, these are set at system level, not by Affinity Photo. To get a larger preview, you can set the view options in the Open dialog to Columns and then click once on the thumbnail.

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, Penyfan said:

cannot enlarge the thumbnails to view them

I am guessing that you are talking about the Quicklook function in Mac OS. Yes we are stuck with relatively small previews of Affinity documents as opposed to much larger previews of other files (like jpeg or tiff or pdf).

Otherwise the advice from h_d may be of use.

[Fixx]

OSX can show Affinity thumbnails all the way up to 512 pixels: 
 

[thomaso]

33 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

the Quicklook function in Mac OS. Yes we are stuck with relatively small previews of Affinity documents as opposed to much larger previews of other files (like jpeg or tiff or pdf).

Hm?

1. You can drag-scale the quicklook window to any size.
2. Additionally you can click the double-arrow icon to get the preview in fullscreen.

 

[Penyfan]

Thanks all for your suggestions ,

The quick look function as suggested by Old Bruce seems to be the only one that I can work with, a bit long winded but at least it gives a large preview ,which helps to decide if the image is worth enhancing or a trash bin candidate.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Penyfan

[Old Bruce]

24 minutes ago, Penyfan said:

...which helps to decide if the image is worth enhancing or a trash bin candidate.

Ever since I switched over to digital I fell in love with the trash. Second thing I do, transfer photos to computer and start trashing. Thankfully the Quicklook previews for my CR2 raw files are large in size.

[thomaso]

21 hours ago, Penyfan said:

I am days into a free trial on my Mac but cannot enlarge the thumbnails to view them so really I can only guess which ones to open.

15 hours ago, Penyfan said:

The quick look function as suggested by Old Bruce seems to be the only one that I can work with, a bit long winded but at least it gives a large preview ,which helps to decide if the image is worth enhancing or a trash bin candidate.

You seem to use the Open dialog window of Affinity Photo to pre-select + discard images. Just in case: the macOS Preview.app enables you to see the thumbnails in a scalable sidebar + one large image at a time. To discard an image simply use the delete key (or context menu), to trash a bunch of selected thumbnails use cmd-del.

[Pierre Gill]

Affinity need to fix this problem. Using Quicklook on a mc (spacebar) an afphoto preview is 1/3 of a .psd or any other file.... its a big problem. Thanks for fixing this in a very near future...

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Pierre Gill said:

Affinity need to fix this problem. Using Quicklook on a mc (spacebar) an afphoto preview is 1/3 of a .psd or any other file....

I am not sure what you mean by this. On Macs, the QuickLook afphoto preview window can be resized the same way as with any other QuickLook preview by dragging on a corner or edge of the window.

[h_d]

By default, the QuickLook preview for .afphoto files is smaller than that for .jpg, .tiff, etc. Dragging to enlarge an .afphoto QuickLook preview results in a slightly pixellated view. IMH though the previews for .jpg, .tiff etc are too big and the QuickLook preview for .afphoto is just right. 

So to say 

5 hours ago, Pierre Gill said:

its a big problem

is a personal opinion. I would say it's no more than a minor irritation.

[Pierre Gill]

no its a big problem. this what a normal quicklook compares to .afphoto To do the same size I would have to drag the corner of afphoto file. I won't comment on that.

+ wait there is more.

Afinity creates a Thumbnail with a corner... which means it sometimes cover the face of a person if its on the right side.... ummmm not the best concept I would say.

So any idea how to make a "normal" thumbnail with Affinity?

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Pierre Gill said:

So any idea how to make a "normal" thumbnail with Affinity?

Both the column and the gallery view ('cover flow') show larger previews and each without the 'dog-ear'.

The preview size is related to the finder window size. Also you can move the vertical bars to influence column sizes and this way preview size, too.

I did not discover yet when a preview of a landscape or portrait ratio file is cropped to a square and when it's displayed in the file's ratio.

EDIT: with shift-cmd-P you also get an additional, larger preview in the two window view modes 'icon' and 'list', without the need to manually use Quicklook.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Pierre Gill said:

Afinity creates a Thumbnail with a corner... which means it sometimes cover the face of a person if its on the right side.... ummmm not the best concept I would say.

The dog ear is created by Finder for certain file types in the icon view mode, not by Affinity. From what I can tell, if Preview app can open the file (even if it is not the default for that filetype) then there is a frame border instead of a dog ear; if Preview cannot open that file type then the dog ear is used.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

if Preview app can open the file (even if it is not the default for that filetype) then there is a frame border instead of a dog ear; if Preview cannot open that file type then the dog ear is used.

Here it's different: I have set the finder window to 'list' view and not showing file content thumbnails – and get the dog ear also for PDFs and JPGs, but never get the dog ear for Affinity files.

Wheres in window mode 'icon' I get the dog ear in the Affinity thumbnails (NOT in their preview), and still for thumbnails of PDFs (which can be opened by the preview.app). So, I can't detect a rule for the dog ear.

[Pierre Gill]

well thanks for your comments... but I really hope Affinity fixe that problem. Its the way Thumbnails I created from the application itself ... Even in GALLERY mode , the preview is bigger I agree but the definition is more than half of a PSD or JPG... very annoying unfortunately. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Here it's different: I have set the finder window to 'list' view and not showing file content thumbnails – and get the dog ear also for PDFs and JPGs, but never get the dog ear for Affinity files.

If I disable "Show icon preview" in Finder list view (which I assume is what you mean by not showing thumbnails) I get one of four kinds of thumbnails:

1. Dog ear icons with a standard generic file type icon with a plain application icon & a filetype name below it
2. Dog ear icons as in 1 but with the icon of the default app I have set to open that filetype & no filetype name below it
3. Icons that have no dog ears that are full-sized replicas of the default app's icon
4. Dog ear icons with the default app's icon at a reduced size on a white background

All Affinity native format files are of the third kind. Almost all PNG files are of the fourth kind, I assume because I have set AP as the global default for opening that filetype, but I have several dozen very old PNG files that show a thumbnail preview with no dog ear even when "Show icon preview" is disabled. There are also a dozen or so JPG files that do the same. I am not sure why other than it may have something to do with being files included as samples with old versions of Adobe products or ones I created in one of those apps.

Similarly, almost all PDF's are of the first kind, but at least one does not show a dog ear .. and it show a thumbnail preview even when "Show icon preview" is disabled. I am not sure if this is a Finder glitch or what.

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

Wheres in window mode 'icon' I get the dog ear in the Affinity thumbnails (NOT in their preview), and still for thumbnails of PDFs (which can be opened by the preview.app). So, I can't detect a rule for the dog ear.

If you mean with "Show icon preview" enabled in Finder icon view, for PDF's I get the same thing, so you must be right & there is more to it than just if Preview can open the file.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Pierre Gill said:

well thanks for your comments... but I really hope Affinity fixe that problem.

Because this involves Finder view modes, I am not sure there is anything Affinity can do to change it.

[thomaso]

43 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Because this involves Finder view modes, I am not sure there is anything Affinity can do to change it.

Since the smaller Quicklook preview size of especially native Affinity files is most obvious in the Open dialog window of Affinity this appears to be a matter of Affinity. Possibly it just needs to create & embed larger preview images to avoid such irritation or complaints.

 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

Since the smaller Quicklook preview size of especially native Affinity files is most obvious in the Open dialog window of Affinity this appears to be a matter of Affinity. Possibly it just needs to create & embed larger preview images to avoid such irritation or complaints.

Maybe, but as mentioned earlier by @h_d, by switching Finder to the column view & adjusting column widths & Finder window size, the embedded previews can be made larger. This also applies to Open dialog windows in Affinity.

For me, previews of many of my native format files can be displayed in this way at larger than the Quick Look default size, for some up to the same size as when the document is open in Affinity & zoomed to pixel view size, & with no more pixelation than is already present in raster images in that document view size.

This suggests to me that the embedded thumbnails are already large enough, so perhaps something other than these 'native' embedded sizes is affecting how they are displayed in Finder & Open dialog windows. TBH, I do not know if this is something Serif could fix, possibly by changing something in the Quick Look Generator (filename "QuickLook.qlgenerator") component built into in the apps, or something they cannot because it is a function controlled by Apple's APIs.

[h_d]

My impression is that the QuickLook preview presented by .afphoto documents is a smaller, lo-res embedded jpeg. (Or png, or pdf, or tiff... without access to the structure of the proprietary .afphoto file format it's unlikely we'll ever know.) I think that Serif could change its size and resolution if they chose, but at the cost of increasing the size of the already bloated .afphoto file. I suspect improving the quality and size of the QuickLook preview isn't at the top of their to-do list right now.

But I'm just speculating, and I really don't find the current size of the QuickLook preview to be that much of an issue.

[R C-R]

As I understand it, a Mac app can optionally include a Quick Look Generator like the "QuickLook.qlgenerator" ones in the Mac Affinity apps. They use the QuickLook framework built into the Mac OS to generate a type of preview, which makes this type of preview available to other Apple apps like Finder & Spotlight, & -- if I have this right -- also to other apps that implement a Quick Look viewer, yet another feature that may be built into a Mac OS app.

I think but am far from sure that these previews are separate from & independent of the embedded thumbnails that optionally can be included in native format Affinity files via the "Save thumbnails with documents" item in Preferences > General; & thus would not contribute anything to the native format file size like embedded thumbnails do.

Beyond that, I have no idea if these previews are generated on-the-fly by the OS as needed, how or where they might be saved or cached, if the app is involved in any of this other than to provide the generator for the OS to use, or much of anything else about how it works. ☹️

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

This suggests to me that the embedded thumbnails are already large enough, so perhaps something other than these 'native' embedded sizes is affecting how they are displayed

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

As I understand it, a Mac app can optionally include (...)
Beyond that, I have no idea if these previews are generated on-the-fly by the OS as needed,

Even if Quick Look generates previews it is Affinity who provides all info to Quick Look, including preview size. It can be an icon, a low res thumbnail or a thumbnail preview.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/quicklook :

Quote

Note: The list of supported common file types may change between operating system releases. In addition, you can enable previews for your own file types by implementing your own preview extension. To learn more, see Quick Look Previews from the Ground Up.

https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/719dyb631z49zpjzk/719/719_whats_new_in_file_management_and_quick_look.pdf?dl=1 :

 

[R C-R]

57 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Even if Quick Look generates previews it is Affinity who provides all info to Quick Look, including preview size. It can be an icon, a low res thumbnail or a thumbnail preview.

But do we know which one it provides? From what I have seen from the column view, it may be a high resolution thumbnail, the same as or equivalent to opening the file in Affinity & zooming to the pixel view size.