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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.