10.5: Strip icon previews for better Cover Flow view

Dec 18, '07 07:30:08AM

Contributed by: robogobo

Viewing images in Cover Flow sometimes shows a high resolution preview, and sometimes not. At first I thought the Finder just needed time to "catch up," but I sat and waited a long time for a high res preview to be generated, and nothing ever happened.

It turns out Cover Flow will generate a high res preview only if a preview is not already associated with an image file. The existence of a preview depends on what application created the file. Photoshop creates a low res preview (by default, this can be changed in its prefs). So did Image Capture in Tiger. If you do a Get Info on one of these image files and delete the icon in the upper left, a new one will be instantly generated (even if Show Icon Preview isn't checked in View Options). Now, Cover Flow will show a high res preview.

[robg adds: Queue user fds points out that you can remove the icon from a number of files at once. Just select them all in the Finder then press Control-Command-I. Select the icon and delete, and you'll remove them all.]

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