Tutorials

Learn how to improving the quality of your thumbnails inside iView or through creator program preferences.

Intro
Some applications, such as Photoshop, embed a small, low-quality thumbnail into the media file. Digital cameras do this as well. During import, iView renders that pre-existing "built-in" thumbnail and stores it in the catalog file. Maintaining this default setting makes importing fast, but it also makes poorest quality thumbnails.

To improve the thumbnail quality, you will set the iView preferences to render its own thumbnails on import. Or you can rebuild thumbnails individually. These thumbnails will be superior in quality and take up much less catalog space than the "built-in" thumbnails (See tutorial on catalog size).

Rebuild Thumbnails on Import
One option is to have iView render new thumbnails during the Import process. This is achieved by checking the box "Ignore built-in thumbnails" in the Import Options dialog box of the Edit Menu (Shift-CMD-I).

Rebuilding Thumbnails Individually
If you have an existing catalog that used built-in thumbnails, then select the thumbnails and choose Rebuild Thumbnail in the Action menu (CMD-B). This function is also accessible from the Contextual Menu (Control + Click on Thumbnail)

Changing Size of Thumbnail
The size of thumbnails can be changed in the Size Menu, located in the lower left hand corner of the catalog window. When you increase thumbnail size, iView will show a dialog box that says "Some media items have smaller thumbnails than the selected size. Do you want to rescan with the new size?" Choosing "OK," will make iView execute the "Rebuild Thumbnail" command on all the files in the catalog.

Next > Thumbnails from Digital Camera Files