icon preview behavior in finder window (DPDS)

[habilis]

• I have multiple folders full of hundreds of digital photographs.

• Each folder contains about 500 2MB jpgs from my camera (Sony DSC-P71 3.2 Megapixel)

• in the view/view options dialog box I have icon preview active with maximum size icons(128 X 128) so I can view good size thumbnails without the aid of slow image viewers like iPhoto.>see attached (202k)

* Here is the dilemma: The icon previews load in just fine and I can see very nice thumbnails of all my photo's. everything's great and works just like I planned. I can even close that window and open it 12 or 24 hours later and all those icon previews are still fully loaded with no change. However, after about 48 hours the previews disappear and have to be completely reloaded (which takes some time). The previews will also disappear if I relaunch finder or restart.

I've affectionatle named this phenomenon as DPDS or Delayed Preview Degeneration Syndrome.

* Here is the question: Is there a cure? Do we have the technology? Can I get those previews to stay permanently loaded?

 

[slur]

- Get a copy of GraphicConverter and start it up.

- In GC's Preferences find the Browser->General pane. Enable "Preview:Create Automatically"

- In GC Prefs, find the Save->General pane. Enable "Add resource fork."

- In GC Prefs, select the Save->Custom Icon pane. Enable the options you want here, at minimum the "Create new icon suite (icns)" and "Add thumbnail icon (128x128)."

- In GC Prefs, go back to the Save->General pane and disable "Add Resource Fork" if you wish. (The image browser will still create previews automatically.)

- Drag the folder containing your images onto the GraphicConverter icon in the Dock. A picture browser will appear and put icon previews onto all the images contained therein.

Now you don't need to use the Finder's automatic preview function for the folder, so you can turn it off.

Even after all this trouble, be aware that this may not actually improve the speed of display in the Finder. The reason the images have to be reloaded after a period of inactivity isn't just that the Finder is forgetting them. Even if it chose to "remember" them the Virtual Memory system would eventually page the cache to disk after a period of no-access. For the best performance you should probably divide your images into smaller groups in separate folders.