Thumbnail size in Finder

[Ashika]

Hi, I'm having a slight problem with seeing the thumbnail images of the files I'm working on, as they appear rather small on my screen. Could someone tell me if there is a way to enlarge the image, or this is as good as can get? Thank you.

[Lee D]

@Ashika Welcome to the forums.

Are you referring to the thumbnail sizes in Finder on macOS? Have you tried adjusting the Show Options within Finder with the folder/location open?

[Ashika]

Thanks for this answer, however I need to enlarge the thumbnail images in Affinity Designer not in Finder on my macOS. 

However, I did what you suggested in Finder and the thumbnail images there got bigger, which was nice; but in Affinity Designer nothing changed. That's where I would like to make a change.

When I go to File, then Open (in Affinity), then select anyone of the images in the left-hand column, the image appears (with all their specifications)but very small (like in the image of the screenshot attached previously). 

Any other suggestion?

Thank you, Lee.

[Juhani]

I think the problem is that Affinity saves only 512x512 px thumbnail sizes with its files, which is indeed very small given modern high pixel density displays. I'm having the same problem when looking at Affinity documents using Finder's Quick Look functionality on Mac. This is especially painful when say trying to evaluate which paper texture to use for an artwork. All of my jpgs and psds are rendered nice and crisp on my retina displays, but Affinity documents are blurry and low-fi.

Could a request be made to increase the thumbnail size of the documents, or even better provide an option for the user to choose how big thumbnails they want to save with the documents (ideally up to full size previews) with the cost of increasing the file sizes?

[PaoloT]

The same happens to me. Exported files show a big enough preview, while Affinity files have a small, often unreadable dimension.

Mac, Monterey.

Paolo

 

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, Juhani said:

I'm having the same problem when looking at Affinity documents using Finder's Quick Look functionality on Mac.

You should be able to resize the Quick Look window by dragging on a corner, or click on the small icon in the header to view it at full screen size.

Also, in Finder icon view the maximum thumbnail size is 512x512 for all document types, not just Affinity ones, at least on my Mac running Catalina.

[Juhani]

23 hours ago, R C-R said:

You should be able to resize the Quick Look window by dragging on a corner, or click on the small icon in the header to view it at full screen size.

I can resize the window all I want but if the preview size is low it's still a blurry mess.

23 hours ago, R C-R said:

Also, in Finder icon view the maximum thumbnail size is 512x512 for all document types, not just Affinity ones, at least on my Mac running Catalina.

That I believe is not correct. The macOS's own icon preview sizes go up to 2048px i think and in case of jpgs, pngs, and psds, you can quicklook them at their full sizes.

It seems to me it's all about how big thumbnails Affinity is including within their documents, which is far too low at the moment.

[R C-R]

29 minutes ago, Juhani said:

That I believe is not correct. The macOS's own icon preview sizes go up to 2048px i think and in case of jpgs, pngs, and psds, you can quicklook them at their full sizes.

I was looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Icon_Image_format. I'm not sure how that differs from preview thumbnails.

[Ashika]

That's right. No matter what I try to do to enlarge a thumbnail image in Affinity (by grabbing it from the corner - any corner!), it just snaps to the original, miniscule size.

I checked with the Finder, and yes, I can make the thumbnail images bigger there, but Affinity still offers me only a tiny viewing option. Too bad!

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Ashika said:

That's right. No matter what I try to do to enlarge a thumbnail image in Affinity (by grabbing it from the corner - any corner!), it just snaps to the original, miniscule size.

Have you tried using Quick Look (by tapping the spacebar) with an Affinity or other format file selected? When I do that I can grab any corner of the QL window to enlarge the image to any size, up to the largest one that will fit on my screen.

EDITED to add:

As the Quick Look link says, QL offers a full-size preview, not just a thumbnail, of nearly any kind of document. This includes Affinity app documents because each of them includes a QuickLook.qlgenerator file in the app's package. So for example, for AD2 the path is /Applications/Affinity Designer 2.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/QuickLook.qlgenerator. This is true for V1, V2, & the betas.

All the QL features are available from both Finder & from Affinity's File > Open menu, so for example you can choose what to open in Affinity by selecting one or more files, tapping the spacebar, & if more than one is selected by using the cursor arrow keys to scroll through them. You get a resizable window with the preview in it, not just an icon or thumbnail view.

[PaoloT]

It's not only a matter of how it looks if the preview window is enlarged. It is a matter of getting advantage of the Quick Look feature of the Mac, where you can scroll through a lot of images without having to raise your hand from the keyboard. With the small previews generated by Affinity for their own files, this is made nearly useless.

Paolo

 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, PaoloT said:

It is a matter of getting advantage of the Quick Look feature of the Mac, where you can scroll through a lot of images without having to raise your hand from the keyboard.

??? In this respect Quick Look works the same in Affinity as it does in Finder or any other app when accessing the file system.

Try it for yourself: In the Affinity File > Open window navigate to a folder that has a number of files that Affinity can open. Select one or more of them & tap the spacebar to open the Quick Look window. Now you can resize preview by dragging on any of its corners like you can with other app windows, & then use the keyboard's cursor arrow keys to scroll through them.

4 hours ago, PaoloT said:

With the small previews generated by Affinity for their own files, this is made nearly useless.

Affinity's QuickLook generator creates full sized previews. By default, the faceless quicklookd.app displays them at less than full size but you can drag them out to as large as will fit on your screen.

[PaoloT]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Affinity's QuickLook generator creates full sized previews.

Affinity files are shown with a small preview. Exported files (TIFF, PNG…) with a bigger one. So, no, the size of the generated preview is not the same.

Affinity Photo preview:

Exported PNG preview:

 

[lepr]

 

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Affinity's QuickLook generator creates full sized previews. By default, the faceless quicklookd.app displays them at less than full size but you can drag them out to as large as will fit on your screen.

Affinity's QL generator clearly uses the 512 px thumbnail which has been embedded in an Affinity document rather than actually rendering the document/file as some QL generators do.

[Juhani]

I think you guys are talking about different things. The question is not whether Mac’s quick look works within Affinity’s Place or Open dialog boxes the same way as directly in Finder. Of course it does. The problem is Affinity’s own proprietary afphoto, afdesign and afpub files having too small thumbnail previews embedded within them that cannot be viewed large enough with any file browser, not with a Finder nor with Affinity.

[lepr]

36 minutes ago, Juhani said:

I think you guys are talking about different things.

We got sidetracked onto clearing up one user's misconception.

47 minutes ago, Juhani said:

The problem is Affinity’s own proprietary afphoto, afdesign and adpub files having too small thumbnail previews embedded within them that cannot be viewed large enough with any file browser, not with a Finder nor with Affinity.

The user should be able to choose embedded thumbnail/preview size from a range of size options, in my opinion.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Affinity files are shown with a small preview. Exported files (TIFF, PNG…) with a bigger one.

In each of your screenshots there is this  button that if clicked will expand the preview to the maximum size that your screen will support.

So even if for Affinity files the preview is only a scaled up, pixelated preview, isn't that enough to tell if it is a file you want to open in Affinity? What about other files that are small, like many PNG's, JPEG's etc? For instance, I have lots of small raster image files that are less than 512 px wide or tall. I can still preview them at very large screen sizes if I want to decide if I should open them with any particular app or not.

1 hour ago, lepr said:

The user should be able to choose embedded thumbnail/preview size from a range of size options, in my opinion.

OK, that may be worth a feature request, but consider that very large ones will add considerably to the file's size so what would you suggest as the maximum size limit?

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Juhani said:

The problem is Affinity’s own proprietary afphoto, afdesign and afpub files having too small thumbnail previews embedded within them that cannot be viewed large enough with any file browser, not with a Finder nor with Affinity.

Large enough for what? IOW, what are users using thumbnails/previews for that requires larger ones? For me, the only thing I use them for is to decide if I want to open a document to edit it, or to delete it. Small ones are enough for me to do either thing.

[Juhani]

22 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Large enough for what? IOW, what are users using thumbnails/previews for that requires larger ones? For me, the only thing I use them for is to decide if I want to open a document to edit it, or to delete it. Small ones are enough for me to do either thing.

A real world example that made me post in this thread – to judge which paper texture to use as an artwork base layer that are in .afphoto and .aftemplate file formats. At the moment, there is no texture as such visible, just a blurry mess of pixels.

39 minutes ago, R C-R said:

OK, that may be worth a feature request, but consider that very large ones will add considerably to the file's size so what would you suggest as the maximum size limit?

Preferably a user could choose from a list of possible preview sizes, say: low (512px), medium (1024px), high (2048px), and also the full-size preview. Lightroom does it, as does Bridge and Photoshop with its psds. It wouldn't be such a radical thing to do. A no brainer rather.

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, Juhani said:

A real world example that made me post in this thread – to judge which paper texture to use as an artwork base layer that are in .afphoto and .aftemplate file formats. At the moment, there is no texture as such visible, just a blurry mess of pixels.

So if say the afphoto file is from a high resolution source like you might get from a high end camera, or something created from scratch in Affinity at say the Architect E preset (14400x10800px) how large would the preview or thumbnail have to be to see any paper texture you had applied to it?

For something at that resolution, the embedded preview would have to be enormous, would it not?

[lepr]

[Juhani]

macOS Sequoia's QuickLook forces Affinity documents to open up larger than previously, at more than 100%, so since the image preview sizes are still extremely small inside Affinity documents, the renders look blurry and just unprofessional. Please add the ability to set our own preview sizes and quality levels that we save into the file formats.