I have folders where I'm setting to icon view, handful of .dng files. fine art images.
5 of them show an image thumbnail. 5 show a text icon. Any idea why the inconsistency?

dng? some graphics format I presume? some of them may be corrupt or an internal format that cannot be rendered by finder. try opening them in preview and see if they all open or not.

Should be fine. This is "digital negative" from CS5 (Adobe).

Ever tried to relaunch Finder, or restart, or invoke DW? Could be a finder.plist issue.

Mac, how relaunch finder? What is DW?

While awaiting "Mac's" answer... google will give you over 700,000 links with the solution in under 2 seconds. Just a thought.


My guess: DiskWarrior.

Thanks, Hal!
DW is indeed Disk Warrior, used to rebuild directory. I have a hunch that just running Disk Utility may not do the trick.
To relaunch Finder, press command(Apple)-Option-Escape, in the dialog box click on Finder, then click on "relaunch" at the bottom of the window. It helped me when icons on the desktop became unresponsive or were not rendered right (generic icons instead of application-specific).

Finder can also be relaunched by clicking and holding on the Finder Dock icon while pressing the Option key, then selecting Relaunch from the contextual menu.

Did not work for me. Do you mean "right click" (or control-option-click)? That thing works.

No, it's definitely Option-click for me; right-clicking or Control-clicking yields the same contextual menu as plain clicking. Are you sure you were clicking and holding the mouse button with the Option key already drepressed? If so, perhaps this is an OS thing. I'm running 10.5.8.

Edit: Control-Option clicking does the same thing, without the delay. Nice to know!

Sorry, your way works too (I was pressing Option and clicking at the same time!). And it takes a couple of seconds for the menu to appear.
Option first, then right click also works, understandably.

thanks DK, the finder I did the finder relaunch, but it did not solve the issue. oh well..

DK, you are a moderator here a long time. One of my favorite people on this forum. Always have incisive ideas and solutions. thanks.
You ever notice that Hal, hardly ever provides much useful information, but spends most of his energy criticizing/analyzing the thread themselves?


Please do not make any more ad hominem remarks; they will be deleted.

I might have an idea about the icon view. If you click on a file, then command-I (get info), what is written under open with? Is there any difference between the "image icon" files and "text icon" files? If yes, choose an "image" file, get info on it, see which app opens it, then go to get info of a "text" file, choose the same app and then click "apply to all". Maybe you get all icons in order.

Mac, that sounded promising! But both had Adobe Photoshop CS5 for the open with.

I all but give up. The last suggestion: open a "text" file in CS5 and "save" or "save as". It may now be shown as an image icon. Another thought: when I save files in Photoshop, I then see them as image icons. Sometimes, when they get transferred from another computer, especially from a PC to a Mac, or e-mailed, they may lose the image, although still openable with Photoshop. Could be just a CS5 glitch or transfer glitch.
If they all open well, I would not be worried...

What!!!???

When Hal was recently missing for a while, other folks were worried. There's a reason. Like other knowledgeable contributors, he has helped many folks - including me and my daughters - out of some very tricky technical jams over the years.

To use the vernacular of the young: "Get Real."

ryck

You know, if some image isn't showing a preview/thumbnail... there's a pretty good chance that one wasn't saved into the file. But i guess the constant stream of intriguing mysteries keeps the juices flowing around here. (at times it's unclear whether "MBP" represents MacBook Pro or Munchausen By Proxy).

I second the "What!!!??"

There are some extremely knowledgeable people here, but I've learned more from Hal than from everyone else put together, and that's saying a lot because, like I said, there are many other knowledgeable people here. Pay very close attention when he speaks.

His contribution to this thread, and apparently what you're objecting to, was to remind you that you can find out stuff on your own without waiting to have the information spoon-fed to you. His advice would fall under the "Teach a person to fish..." philosophy. If you want to learn, you should listen.


As for relaunching Finder...

Relaunching Finder is for emergencies, like when Finder stops responding. It should not be used for something as trivial as hoping to refresh some icons. Doing so may in fact have the opposite effect of the one intended.

Finder uses the invisible .DS_Store file in each folder to record information about the folder and the items it contains: window size, position, view, icon positions, Spotlight comments, and even thumbnails. For efficiency, it caches this information in RAM (because it's constantly changing and Finder doesn't want to be banging the disk), and only occasionally updates the actual .DS_Store file. It does always update the file when it quits, as happens when you log out.

But when you relaunch Finder, it isn't given a chance to quit. Relaunch yanks the rug out from under it, killing it dead even if it was in the middle of doing something. If this happens at the wrong time, whatever Finder was doing can be left half-done. One way to corrupt a file is to leave it partially updated, and if you happen to kill Finder when it's in the middle of updating a .DS_Store file that file can be left corrupted. Odd icon behavior, in particular, is a common symptom of a corrupted .DS_Store file.

I'm not saying that "Relaunch Finder" alway, or even usually, corrupts .DS_Store files, but it can, and force-quitting Finder or any other application is both rude and potentially harmful. Only do it when the program is already being rude to you by not listening.

When I want to quit and restart Finder, I usually do it from the command line, using the Terminal command:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

If you don't want to do it from the command line, you can instead use AppleScript Editor to create the one-line script:

tell application "Finder" to quit

Save that as ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder/"Quit Finder.scpt", creating missing folders as needed.

While you're in AppleScript Editor, open its Preferences and enable "Show Script menu in menu bar". That adds a menulet to the right side of your menubar, with an icon that looks kinda like a paper scroll. When you're in Finder, that menu will now have a "Quit Finder" item.

Using "Quit Finder" (unlike "Relaunch Finder") politely asks Finder to quit, giving it a chance to clean up after itself. In particular, all the information it has been holding in RAM gets cleanly written to all the affected .DS_Store files.

After you Quit Finder, you can launch it again at your leisure by clicking on its Dock icon. (When I quit Finder from Terminal, it's usually as part of a script that eventually has a matching osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to launch'.)

To see the difference it makes, move a Finder window and maybe change its view. Use the "Relaunch Finder" command, and notice that your changes are lost. The window reappears in its original location and using its original view.

Do the same thing using "Quit Finder" instead, and notice that your changes are preserved.

Now extrapolate to icons. Indiscriminate use of "Relaunch Finder" (or the Terminal equivalent killall Finder) can leave stale icon information in the .DS_Store file.

You can force Finder to rebuild a corrupted .DS_Store file by deleting it. (Google will tell you how.) Finder will rebuild it the next time it's called upon to display the contents of that folder. It'll for sure get the icon thumbnails right if it does, but be cautioned that this also is not a procedure that you should consider normal. There's a lot of other information in the .DS_Store files (like Spotlight comments, for example) that you'll be throwing out when you do this.

Nice explanation, thanks. It is good to know. It occurred to me to do it regularly because the Finder on my old G5 became partially unresponsive at times (like no way to change a filename on the desktop). At all times, the normal behavior was restored upon relaunch (same as with log out - log in).

Is Relaunch really just a GUI front end to killall Finder, though? At an earlier point in time, you thought so, but experimentation suggested otherwise.

Ok, guys, I just opened those non thumbmail ones in PS, adjusted a bit. Trying to shake a thumbnail into the finder icon. no luck.

Strange... What if you save such a file in s different file format, not dng? And, out of curiosity, why dng? My PS5 does not even have this option.

dng is a raw format, you need the software to get it to dng

That could be the problem. I hear that raw formats may not be handled 100% accurate. I assume that saving in a different format, a CS5 native, could restore image icons.
BTW, if only dng files have this unusual behavior, my guess about raw could be right.

I think I see this in other circumstances too.

Weird! I did write that, but I don't remember the experiment.

I had done a simple test just before posting my earlier reply above, in case behavior had changed since the last time I checked remember checking.

So, I did some more extensive tests. The primary test is: change something in the interface (move a window, change a view, navigate a window to a different folder, etc.), quit and restart Finder by whatever method, and see if that latest change got preserved. The four methods I tested were:

1. Use an AppleScript to 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
2. Use option-right-click on Finder's Dock icon, and select "Relaunch Finder"
3. Select Finder from Activity Monitor, click "Quit Process", and then click "Quit"
4. Select Finder from Activity Monitor, click "Quit Process", and then click "Force Quit"

In methods 1 and 3, Finder quits and stays quit. You can restart it by clicking on its Dock icon. All changes are saved and restored. Nothing noteworthy shows in Console.

In methods 2 and 4, Finder quits but immediately relaunches. Recent changes are almost always lost. Once in a blue moon, a recent change will be preserved. That's probably what I saw in the quoted experiment. There is a message in Console, from "com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[pid1]" notifying that "(com.apple.Finder[pid2]) Exited: Terminated", where pid1 is the instance of launchd handling LaunchAgents on my behalf, and pid2 is the particular instance of Finder that was running.

To verify that Finder is being run as a LaunchAgent, I found:
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Finder.plist
Notice that, as observed, once Finder is launched it is kept active until it exits successfully. That gives us a quicker test: if Finder stays quit, you know it received a quit message; if it comes right back, you know it was killed.

Since Finder is running as a LaunchAgent, we can ask launchd to give us more information, using the command:

launchctl list com.apple.Finder | grep LastExitStatus

After "Quit Finder", the last exit status is 0, as expected.
After "Relaunch Finder", the last exit status is 15, which is SIGTERM.

Note that SIGTERM is the signal that killall uses by default, so yes, "Relaunch Finder" does the same as "Killall Finder" (except that it probably uses launchctl to get Finder's pid and uses that with kill, so as to limit collateral damage in case there's another process also called Finder).

OK, this started bugging me. I kept asking myself questions like, "How could I have never noticed that Finder was a launch agent?"

It occurred to me that maybe my earlier tests were under Tiger, and maybe the situation there was different. It turns out Tiger does not even have a /System/Library/LaunchAgents folder (which I'm pretty sure I had noticed before), nor is there a per-user copy of launchd. The command launchctl list com.apple.Finder and even just launchctl list both come up empty. (You need to use sudo launchctl ... to get any interesting output.)

Nevertheless, although the mechanism is different, the behavior is the same. "Relaunch Finder" and force quit Finder and killall Finder all do the same thing: Finder gets no chance to clean up after itself. It doesn't even get to update how many windows it has open, let alone their size, position, view, or current folder. Only when you 'tell application "Finder" to quit' does it get a chance to clean up and terminate gracefully.

My installation of Tiger does (10.4.11, Build 8S165), but it's empty.

I believe that it apples to all applications. Quit and force-quit are different in terms of saved work. If I recall correctly, in some older Mac OS versions finder relaunch was actually called force-quit.

Yes, for (almost) all applications they're very different, and I cringe every time I see someone casually suggest kill or killall. It's not just whether the application gets a chance to save its work; if you kill an application while it's in the middle of updating a file, for example in the middle of saving your work, that update is left only half-done, and the file itself is probably corrupted.

Unix has always supported the notion of signals (man 3 signal) as a way to notify an application that something has happened outside. Programs can register to "trap" these signals, and take special action when they occur. A signal that a program does not trap usually causes the program to be aborted; that is, to terminate immediately without finishing whatever it was in the middle of doing. That depends on the signal though; some signals are benign, sent on an FYI basis, and do nothing if not trapped.

The most common signals sent by a user are:

SIGHUP (hangup): originally meant the controlling terminal has hung up. Many programs, by convention, trap SIGHUP and interpret it as "reload preferences, and continue". For example, web servers and other daemons often interpret SIGHUP as a signal that they should check their config files because they've probably changed. Few if any Macintosh programs trap SIGHUP, and will terminate on receiving one.

SIGTERM (terminate): the program should terminate as quickly as possible. This can be trapped, so a program can do cleanup first. If not trapped, it is terminated immediately. Few if any Macintosh applications trap SIGTERM; Unix shells routinely do. Finder, in particular, does not. SIGTERM is the default signal sent by kill, killall, and force quit. kill and killall will send a different signal on request.

SIGKILL (kill): the program terminates instantly. This cannot be trapped. Its main use is to terminate a program that is trapping and ignoring SIGTERM. (For example, the shutdown(8) command sends a SIGTERM to all running applications. If they don't terminate quickly enough, shutdown follows up with SIGKILL.)

SIGINT (interrupt): meant to tell the program to stop what it's doing. For example, by default control-C from a Terminal session sends SIGINT to the current tasks. Your current shell usually traps and ignores this, but child processes also get the SIGINT and usually terminate.


Use of killall makes me especially nervous. Over and above the rudeness of kill is the added fact that its aim is so broad. It kills all processes by the given name, not just the one you think you're killing. For example, killall bash would be frightening, if bash didn't already trap SIGTERM. (You test that at your own risk. I'm afraid to.)

Thanks for the explanation! Hope you don't mind my Freudian typo in the previous post (apples instead of applies) :))

WRONG!!!



The remainder of this post has been removed. While you may feel strongly about another poster’s comments, these forums are not the place to settle any non- troubleshooting differences, or to make ad-hominem remarks regardless of whether they may seem justified. Please refrain from any comments that can be taken as such, and focus on the topic at hand: troubleshooting.

kevs's post fits your characterization of my post to a T and was not edited, which, in conjunction with your having edited my post, may be construed as (Edit: unwarranted, in my eyes, anyhow) editorial comment on the part of the Mods.

PS: kevs's post approached was (Changed after Alex posted.) ad-hominen...my first reaction to it was to report it as such; mine was a statement of fact

Although I generally agree with your assessment, sometimes it is better just to ignore certain things than escalate them...

Thanks for the wisdom, Alex.

(You may have noticed, though, that I'm kinda thick-skulled [Edit: not to mention hard-nosed].)

As for me, you are fully excused!

Artie,

I'm gonna make an unModerator-like comment here.....

I'm sorry to see that you have chosen to demonstrate your thick-skulled and hard-nosed character here on the FineTunedMac forums. One of the qualities that I have been proud to mention to all with whom I've discussed this venue has been the level playing field that was embodied here....unlike most of the Windows-centric forums that we have all visited at various points in our collective past experience.

Your recent posts have put the lie to that. Please don't spoil this community for others.

If I may, Artie may have a point or two because the original poster has not come back after some suggestions and did not provide any further info as to whether the problem was remedied or not (I assume that some suggestions were not given a try). I also kind of resent such situations (see them all the time on CNET forums) when people ask questions and then vanish without feedback. Unless, in this case, no real solution was provided and the poster was not satisfied or got upset...

I concur with alternaut's actions and macmaniac's comments. Personal attacks and/or casting aspersions on the actions or motives of another is not acceptable. No matter what anyone else has done, or has not done, two wrongs never make a right.

FWIW I was going to comment on keys' post, but ryck beat me to the punch and his response seemed entirely adequate.

As yet unclear is what does the "5" refer to. 5 of the folders or 5 of the files? I.e., are the views in any given folder itself consistent... or are the files being displayed inconsistently within a single folder?

If not the latter... then I can easily see where this might boil down to a difference in settings for View Options amongst the various folders. I.e., what is the status of the checkbox for Show icon preview when looking at the View Options window of the folders being discussed?

Good point! However, from his replies to me I assumed that the difference was in files, not folders. On the other hand, your query may well apply to individual files as well; if this is true, would be easy to remedy.

Here is a link:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/220/screenshot20110616at105.jpg/

Macmaniac, thanks for seeing it the correct way. I've just noticed over the years that Hal and Arite have never solved any of my issues, ever, but they both spend a tonnage of time criticizing and complaining about the posts.
Ganbustein is nice, but I just never understand the replies, but he means well.
I come back to this forum for 3-4 guys who never criticize, and provide brilliant ideas and solutions. Without those few I would be gone.

I would remove the extra numbers in the filenames (they are all different from the format of the files that show pictures) and see if this works. I have seen before files that would not even open in the intended application because of some "forbidden" syntax in the filename. Hal's suggestion about the view options may also be tried.

Mac, good observation! those all, I added a text indicting something to me. That should be it, but I tested one, got rid of the text opened in PS yet the icon remained text. But you may be onto something, does not test out yet...

I don't know which "years" you're referring to... i've been a member starting at MacFixIt in 1999. When i've criticized your posts it's because they often contain vague descriptions. But most of all, there's a definite sense that you consistently put as little effort as possible into the matter.

So yeah... if you're looking to play 20 questions (since the descriptions are so lame), then i'm not your guy.

What you don't seem to appreciate is that issues in some thread you've started don't necessarily belong to you exclusively... and i'm just as concerned about the next person that lands here (via google or whatever) who has the same issue.

Also, your reluctance to run Terminal commands disqualifies your judgements about the help i've provided. It's you who failed to follow my advice (tons of times).

The screenshot suggests that some of the .dng files have previews embedded inside of them and some don't.

My understanding of DNG files is that the Finder can not view them directly; it doesn't understand the file format. So it relies on whatever program creates them to place a preview inside the file which Finder can understand. If it finds a preview, it shows that preview as the icon; if it doesn't find a preview, it shows the generic DNG icon. It looks to me like some of your DNG files contain previews and some don't.

This is a very fine observation! Does that mean if the file is opened in PS, then saved in a different format that Finder could recognize, the preview would be possible? Another question: how does the preview information get built-in? Is it some kind of raw format glitch or peculiarity?

ok Hal.

Tacit, ok, but these were all taken in same month. I'm not sure why the ones I added some text to don't have the preview.
Any idea to know why one has a preview and ones does not?

Well... it is almost certainly no coincide that the very files which lack a preview in Finder also all contain the [same] string “-5MB-file” in their name.

I don't know what the exact reason is (and confess my interest is now waning), but tend to think that it indicates some sort of special option(s) for saving a reduced-size file... which might intentionally omit the preview info that Finder (or whatever) needs.

[probably a little RTFM about the particular app in question would help]

I've reopened this thread on the assumption that those with an interest in the Mac-related issue(s) discussed herein will manifest the discipline to limit their comments to those issues.

Everyone has had his or her say about the side distraction, some more than once, and that's over and done with. Any further comments along those lines will be removed—without comment.

Thank you.

(Reply addressed to Hal for simple chronological reasons.)

thanks DK, as I was going to reply!

So I did remove that text, 5mb file, and those ones still have no icon preview.

The suggestion wasn't "Maybe the icon preview isn't showing because the name contains the phrase '-5MB-file'."

The suggestion was "Maybe the name contains the phrase '-5MB-file' as a reminder that it was saved without an icon preview."

Changing the name of a file won't change what's in it. If it doesn't have an icon preview, it still won't under any other name. (Changing the filename extension (the .dng part) will affect how the file is interpreted and how it's displayed, but even that won't change what's in the file.)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Gan,
I made that change to remind me I forgot to shoot the image in hi-res.

What program did you use to add the text?

And why wasn't that obviously relevant info about those text differences (and the reasons for them being there) mentioned in post #1?

Tacit, I just click the file name and added that. But again, I deleted it and the preview still does not appear.

H-
it did not occur to me an issue until it was pointed out.

So then —by inference —i suppose we should also just assume that those items had no preview before you renamed them? [it would be better if that detail was specified by explicit elaboration... but perhaps that didn't "occur" to you either?]

Now, here's my ticket out of this mess...

Perhaps a listing in Terminal would reveal info that Finder doesn't show. Such a listing might provide clues which could lead to a solution... potentially.

Copy/paste this command in Terminal, and add a _space_ afterwards:

Code:

ls -Orbitlake@ 

(do not hit return yet, and do not paste that text with any newline at the end). Then drag/drop (or copy/paste) that same folder (pictured on page 2) from Finder into the Terminal window, so that its properly formatted pathname appears after the command text... and (now) hit return.

Copy/paste all text from the Terminal window and post in a reply here. (Wrap with code tags for bonus points).

And if terminal listings aren't forthcoming... the "fix" is probably a simple matter of getting a program such as GraphicConverter to add the missing preview —by using its browser view, and then choosing “Create preview” from the action menu. [though i suspect the graphics proggie originally used to save those files may have a similar feature (a matter of rtfm)... and, assuming those files contain any data at all that is [as we have no info about their actual size.]

Tired GC years ago, bit messy. Developer is a nice guy though.
I'm sticking with Photoshop and Bridge and the Mac finder.

Okay slick... so now what?

None of us really knows precisely what you've done, how you've done it, or what you've done it with, but the fact that only the shots you forgot to shoot in high-res do not show previews should suggest something to YOU.

And, by the way, have you tried opening the images in question in the app in which they're saved and tried to re-save them with thumbnails?

Art, not sure what that means, how resave with thumbnails?
Open with Camera Raw, in Photoshop.

I've never worked with either Camera Raw or Photoshop, so I'm just guessing, kevs, and it's up to you to figure out whether my guess is good or bad.

Photoshop may have a "Save with thumbnail" option somewhere, presumably in either its menu bar or prefs, and the reason some files have thumbnails and others don't may relate to that pref.

That's why I asked whether you did anything out of the ordinary when you dealt with those non-high-res shots.

As I said, though...just guessing.

Not sure, maybe need to go to the PHotoshop boards down the road.

Does that mean that you looked for a pref or option and didn't see anything?

I have a hard time taking this matter seriously, when we are denied so much as a basic terminal listing to contemplate for clues.

[read: pebkac]

I no longer have Photoshop Elements on my computer but there definitely was an option in the Save dialog to add a thumbnail. Unfortunately I cannot point you directly to where it is located.

The old Apple standby graphics editor, Graphic Converter, can add thumbnails to virtually any type of image.

I don't know Joe. DNG is a camera raw file, so I'm sure you save it. Not a normal file like PSD or Tiff.

Every file in your linked image is a .dng, but only the ones you forgot to shoot in high-res are missing thumbnails.

Surely that suggests something?

Edit: I'd still appreciate clarification of "Not sure, maybe need to go to the PHotoshop boards down the road." It is so cryptic that I can't begin to guess what it means as respects either of my two posts to which it presumably responds.

Technically speaking, a DNG file isn't a camera raw file, but it is related.

A camera raw file usually has the suffix .raw or .crw. It's just the raw numbers read straight from the camera's sensor. Every different brand of camera has its own special proprietary raw format; it isn't a defined file format.

The DNG (digital negative) file format was created, if I recall correctly, by Adobe. It is not the same as a camera raw file. Instead, it is a camera raw file wrapped in a TIFF wrapper, which contains additional information about the file such as what type of raw file it is, version control information, and other data.

Some cameras produce DNG files directly; the computer inside the camera takes the camera's raw format, wraps a DNG wrapper around it, and then outputs that. Other cameras don't produce a DNG directly; instead, when you import the raw file in your computer, the importer (or sometimes other software) turns the raw file into a DNG for you.

Now here's where it gets really complicated:

A workflow that uses camera raw or DNG files can store additional file data in a database or a "sidecar" file. Adobe Lightroom and the Adobe Camera RAW converter, for example, keep a database on your computer that records information such as conversion settings and whatnot, so that if you convert that file from RAW again, the settings you used last time you converted it will be the same.

Some programs do something similar, but instead of a database, they keep a "sidecar" file, which is a second file that contains that sort of information. So say you have a camera raw file called IMG2233.crw, and you convert it to a DNG and do stuff to it. The program you use to convert it might create a file called IMG2233.xmp.

Now, if the file's preview is stored in the XMP sidecar file, and you change the name of the DNG file, the preview might vanish because now it can't find the XMP file any more. If you rename the picture from IMG2233.DNG to Picture-of-my-cat-Fluffy.dng, it will look for a sidecar file called Picture-of-my-cat-Fluffy.xmp; since it can't locate that, everything that's stored in the XMP file will disappear.

One of the nice things about DNG files is that they don't need to use a database or a sidecar. Most programs that can convert images to DNG can also include the preview and metadata straight inside the DNG instead of in a database or a sidecar; it's one of the advantages of DNG.

So if you rename a DNG and its icon suddenly disappears, that suggests to me that the icon was never inside the DNG; instead, it was in a database or in a sidecar somewhere on your computer, and by renaming it, you broke the connection to the database or sidecar.

What program do you use to make the DNG files? I would check that program's settings to see if there's an option to include metadata directly in the DNG instead of in a database or sidecar.

Informative, useful post; let's see if it gets us anywhere.

Edit: Sorry for bad post. (I reread yours.)

Excellent post tacit.



Unfortunately, even that tiny amount of information hasn't been afforded us as yet (and we're on page 3 now). Despite my specific query for that exact detail, we still aren't sure if that was the sequence of events [or if perhaps there was never any icon there in the first place.]


Sounds as if that .dng format is intended for professionals, and perhaps others sorts of users would be better off converting to friendlier formats early on in their "workflow".

Tacit,
you lost me because the whole point of DNG is to get rid of the sidecar file!

I use Adobe DNG converter to convert from CR2 to DNG.

[see what i mean?]

OK, then; let's experiment: In the same folder of files that's pictured in your uploaded image, change the name of a file that is now showing a preview, and tell us whether the preview remains intact or disappears. It apparently makes no difference how you change the name, but for consistency, make the same change you made to the non-high-res image files. (Make a command-D copy of the file before you play with it, so you don't risk losing your preview.)

Your results will lock directly into tacit's hypothesis.

Edit: As per Hal's comment, command-D risks losing you preview; instead of doing that, option-dragging a file to, say, your desktop will create a dupe without a name-change.

It may not be that simple. If for some reason those low-res saves lack the same implanted metadata, the two types may react differently to manual renaming. [also, it would be a whole lot simpler if questions were answered and information was not withheld... but, the game is afoot. Proceed at will.]



That in itself is akin to renaming (as the word 'copy' gets appended). Perhaps option-drag to another location would be more consistent with the spirit of your experiment? [so that the file isn't renamed.]

Yep, and double triple-yep! But let's not get side-tracked by possibilities or impossibilities until the former manifest themselves and the latter cease to do so (as unlikely as that may be).


Excellent point; thanks! It actually brushed against the edge of my consciousness but stopped short of registering.

Right.

At times (well, since post #1 really) it seems this hasn't been a thread about “solving a problem.” More like: how long is it possible to defer a solution.

E.g.,

That sentence would have been gorgeous in post #1.

I'd love to respond to that with a bit of reality, but...

Good idea, I just added text to the good files, yet the previews remain so far.

How can you happily continue to post while not addressing the question asked in these two posts:

• 1
• 2

(ignoring them merely proves my point, which i will happily coninue to make). In case it still hasn't "occurred" to you, knowing the state of the icons before you "added text" would be a useful piece of information. [fwiw, learning that you renamed those items shouldn't have taken all this effort on our part either. You can VOLUNTEER information as well.]

This is attached to Hal's post for convenience only but it is intended for the benefit of all.

Rather than criticizing someone for unresponsiveness, it seems to me the better response would be to reply in kind and not respond to their questions. Over the years I have found unresponsiveness is far more likely to elicit the desire behavior than criticism.

No matter how many times Charlie Brown comes running up to kick the ball, Lucy always pulls it away. You'd think Charlie Brown would simply stop trying to make the kick, wouldn't you?

Hal, artie, and kevs: enough.

OK, then, kevs... Because it's got to be even more unsatisfying to you to see your threads languish than it is to me, I'm going to take one last shot at this and ask you to please explain, in detail, your aversion to going into Terminal, where the answers to many of your issues may lie?

Terminal is quite benign unless you "sic" it on something, and the commands that Hal has posted are no more than information gatherers that won't change anything on your Mac and just may yield insights into, if not answers to, your issues. (Rest assured that if a command is going to change something you'll be fully forewarned.)

Heck, kevs, you ran Terminal, albeit indirectly, when you cleared your caches with TinkerTool System, and you did so with absolutely no guarantee that Marcel Bresink got his commands straight, nor is there any guarantee that your having run his commands didn't clear some cache that you'll ultimately regret having cleared. (By way of example, there's one maintenance utility that I've called out four times already for either clearing the wrong cache or clearing one that shouldn't ought to be cleared.) Edit: On the other hand, though, when Hal gives you a command to run you know precisely what it's going to do.

If you begin copying and pasting commands posted by Hal, ganbustein, V1, et al and following their accompanying instructions you may be pleasantly surprised by both how many of your issues get resolved and how quickly they get resolved.

Remember that Hal and I, in particular, have got substantial time and effort invested in many of your threads (including at least four that I've [Edit: directly or indirectly] brought to conclusion) and want to see results almost as badly as, sometimes, I think, worse than, you do.