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Well it's true. I really do feel really stupid. I bet most of you already
knew most of what's in the Thumbnail part of this tutorial already but, I'm going
to share it anyway. Just don't think too little of me for missing all this helpful
stuff that you already knew. |
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 Enable your folder Step
One.OK, here we go. We're going to make it possible for you to see thumbnails of your pictures or other files in any folder on your computer. Let's pick a folder that you
have some digital pictures in, or just create a new folder that you're going to
put pictures OR EVEN HTML files. So, here all you do is right click the
folder that you want to enable. And then click (that's left click) the Properties
choice as shown at the bottom. |
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So, in Windows 95 and Windows
98 here's the properties view of any folder on your computer. That's why I feel
so stupid. The "enable thumbnail view" option has been there all the
time and I never noticed.
Yes, all the way back to Windows
95 on just about every folder. Anyway, all you do is click in the box where
I have the big red arrow. Isn't that easy? |
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| Windows XP is even easier.
Here's the properties view of Windows XP. Just select the tab that says customize,
then click on the dropdown window as you can see here and select Pictures. Wow
is this great or what? |
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| OK, you're not quite
done. Once you've enabled Thumbnails, you have to select them. And that's
easy too. First, here's the way your VIEW menu looked before. You can choose Large
Icons, Small Icons, List, or Details depending on what you want to see. But,
no thumbnails. Of course you did get a preview one picture at a time over
at the left if you had your folder options set right. But boy was that slow. |
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| Here we are looking at
the same folder, but now you see you can select Thumbnails. It's just that easy
and I never knew. Now you can see what each picture is of. Now you won't guess
and have to open lots of pictures just to get the one you want. And there's more.
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| And there's still more.
You can select thumbnails on any type of file folder and some files like HTML
(web pages) will show a 'thumbnail view' of the page. Isn't that neat?THERE'S
ONLY ONE DISADVANTAGE. We'll isn't there always a problem? Well this
one isn't too bad depending on the speed of your computer. If you have a bunch
of pictures, or if your computer is slow, it might take a few minutes for them
all to resolve and display. But it still really beats opening them or previewing
them one at a time. This really isn't a big deal,
but if it bugs you, you can always just
click back to Icons and zip you're there. But, if you're like me, I'll
bet you never will. |
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| And, there's still more.
Here's a typical view of the file folder of one of my digital cameras. This one
is the one that I use in the studio to take the review shots because I can use
it with external strobes, time delay so I can shoot the displays and shoot from
my keyboard. Anyway, for all this time,
and over 1,000 shots just since I last reset this camera,
I've had to look at the icons pretty much like you see here. So, what
picture is P9991114? Heck I don't know. So this is where it's really great.
Scroll down. |
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| Is this great? Here's
the exact same folder. All I did was enable the Thumbnails. And now I can
see each of my shots and pick the best ones to work on. This is saving me massive
amounts of time and frustration. And since these are TIFF files,
each about 6 megabytes, they take more time to load. So for me this is awesome.
For JPEG and GIF things are always faster, but I save a ton of time and can see
so much I'm a great deal more than thrilled. |
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| But there's still more.
With Windows XP, there's also a Filmstrip option. What's that? Well just hold
on. If you're using XP, open your View Menu and select Filmstrip. |
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| Oh wow, look at all you
can do. First look at the bottom right. Do you see the highlighted blue
square around the picture under my arrow? Well as soon as you select that picture,
you see an enlarged preview of that thumbnail above. And, depending on how big
you have the folder window itself open, the picture preview you see will get bigger
and bigger. I'd love to know who thinks of putting all these great things in our
programs. Anyway let's keep going. Check out the arrow in the
upper left. See where it says "View As a slide Show?"
Well, just click on that and you'll be able to enjoy an automated slide show of
all the pictures you have in the folder. It's really great. |
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Here I'm showing you just
what the slideshow picture looks like. It will be whatever size your pictures
are. And there are controls that will popup to give you some control. SIDE
NOTE: I don't have time or space to show it here, but there's another
neat thing you can do with all your pictures with XP. Just choose properties
on your desktop and go to screensavers. Then select "My Picture Slideshow"
then click settings and navigate to a folder with pictures in it. Then your screensaver
will be your pictures. It's neat.
There
are transitions, they fill the screen and if you're like me, you'll
just select a new folder whenever you take pictures of the vacation, the kids,
the boat the car, or your dog. Happy days are here. Imagine having the pictures
you just took as your screensaver. Wow! |
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| And one more thing you
can do too. See the little triangles? Well in the 'they think of everything'
department, if you're like me, you take lots of portrait pictures. (Taller than
they are wide) The monitor display is really landscape. So, you can reorient your
pictures so they display correctly for the slide show.BUT
CAUTION. Here's something I would definitely change. When you reorient
the picture, you're not just doing it for the show. It
actually reorients the source picture. And that's something you might
not want to do because it can mess up your files and degrade the quality of the
pictures.So, what do you do?
Well just copy the folder BEFORE you reorient any. So, you'll reorient the My
Vacation2 folder, rather than My Vacation. |
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| Here's what your picture looks like after you reorient it. Isn't that easy? |
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| And here's a warning you
get if you try to reorient a picture that would really get messed up when you
reorient it. But, you don't get this warning all the time. So a word to
the wise. Only reorient your pictures after you backup the original folder. |
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| Now let's get some more space on your desktop and make life easier in general.
Look at the gray bar at the
bottom of your screen. It's called the Status Bar. See where the arrow to the
left is? Well, you don't need to take
up all the screen space. It's good for an additional 2 lines of text when your
writing, more cells in your spreadsheet and more of your picture when you're working
with pictures.So, just right click on the
bar and you'll get the popup menu as shown. Then click on properties. |
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| Here's what the Properties
view looks like. See where I've Clicked Auto Hide? Well when you click
that the bar will disappear from your screen and only popup when you move your
mouse cursor over where it should be at the bottom. You will really appreciate
the extra space, and remember, it pops back up whenever you want to use it. |
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| Here' you can see just
how much space you gain when you put the Status Bar into Auto Hide. All the blue
in the bottom picture will give you extra working space, so it's less scrolling
and more vision from now on. |
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| OK, need fast access
to a couple of folders? Remember the other day when we explored creating folders
for all your files so you didn't have to keep them in My Documents where they
get lost? My Pictures? More? OK so now we're going to see
just how to get instant one-click access to
a folder you're working on right now. And you can change this any time you want.
If today's project is a book, or a newsletter or you name it, why not just be
able to see everything in the file with a single click?
Here's all you do. Select a folder from your Hard
Drive. Here I'm going to select the DAK folder. Right Click on the
folder and you'll see that you get your popup menu. Scroll down to "Send
to" and then to "Desktop (create Shortcut)" and Left Click. |
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| See, now you have a shortcut
to that folder, just like with any program shortcut that you want fast access
to on your desktop. (The little arrow at the bottom left means shortcut.) And, if you want to stop here,
you can just click this shortcut on your desktop to see and access everything
in the file. However, while this is a good
idea and I do use it often, there's one disadvantage. If you have programs
open, you really can't see your desktop to click on the shortcut. And if you can,
maybe you can't see the part of your desktop where you placed the shortcut. So
read on. |
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| Ah, this works great.
So, all you do is drag the folder shortcut onto your Status Bar. You see how
I did it? Just Click on the shortcut and drag. It's easy. And
you can drag if off when you don't want to use it anymore just as easily.
Now we're cooking. |
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| And when you do one-click
this shortcut, your folder opens and you can instantly see and access all your
files. It's all easy from now on. |
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A few last things that I want to mention.
Well I hope you
knew some of these things about Digital Camera Pictures Viewed before. But, if
you didn't, you'll be saving a ton of time from now on. I just love seeing my
thumbnails. It makes my life so easy.
And now I'm going to put all
my son's wedding pictures on as a slide show. This is going to be fun. Imagine
just downloading your pictures and having an instant slide show the same day.
Still have questions? Did I miss something (probably)? I'll add it if you write to me. Enjoy. . . Drew
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