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Increasing size of thumbnails for Mac?

Community Beginner ,
Jun 18, 2021 Jun 18, 2021

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I'm new to Mac and cannot really see the tiny thumbnail icons which PS seems to give as standard- is there a way to enlarge them. They look especially tiny on my 27 inch screen!

 

In Win 10 there was a choice of several sizes and I always used the largest when secection an image to work on.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks, Pete.

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

I'm pretty sure I understand what you want because I successfully did this myself. The open/save Finder window has the icon size fixed at 80 pixels. You can however adjust this in your home Finder plist file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist   is where this particular plist is located in your home directory.

 

First you will need a Plist Editor. This is my favorite: "Plist Editor" in the MacOS App Store.

Navigate to and open:  com.apple.finder.plist  

Go to the "FKDefaulticonviewsett

...

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Adobe Employee ,
Jun 18, 2021 Jun 18, 2021

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Hi Pete, 

 

If you are looking to change the thumbnail size for images/files in finder, you can check out the steps suggested here: https://bigtechquestion.com/2020/01/09/software/mac/make-photo-thumbnails-bigger-mac/

 

Hope this helps! If it doesn't please elaborate what you are looking for so that we can try & help out with that. 

Regards,

Nikunj

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Community Expert ,
Jun 18, 2021 Jun 18, 2021

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It's unclear if you're asking about Mac Finder previews or thumbnails inside Photoshop's Layers panel.

 

If the latter, right-click or Ctrl+click on thumbnail to bring up the context menu. See screenshot.

image.png

 

If the former, Apple has online documentation on how to use Mac Finder.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

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Hi, sorry for the delay in replying and thanks for your responses. I'm not trying to increase the thumbnail sizes in Mac Finder, I've already done that successfully. Also, I'm not trying to increase the size in PS Layers (which is useful but not what I'm after)!

My method of working is to Import the images from memory card to Lightroom, into a filing system of Folders and Sub-folders; normally I don't use Lightroom for any further processing, I do that in Photoshop CC. This is where my problem arises: when I click on the Folder, PS shows all the images as thumbnails. In Windows there was a facilty to choose the size of these; on the Mac I can't find that option and unfortunately the display size on the screen is approximately 13mm x 10mm, i.e tiny! I've increased the size of the window to max but that doesn't increase the thumbnail size, it just shows more tiny thumbnails.

I took several hundred photos at a motor racing event the other day so trying to see which images are worth further processing is impossible with these tiny versions.

 

So, if anyone has an ideas about how to fix this in the Mac version of Photoshop I would be obliged (it is, for sure,  not a Mac problem, it is the way PS handles Mac).

 

Is there a tech dept at Adobe which deals with Customers issues such as this?

 

Thanks for your advice.

 

Pete.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

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Adjust screen resolution, etc... from your Mac OS display settings.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Community Expert ,
Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

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Pete,

In addition to Mac display settings, you can adjust UI scaling from Photoshop's Preferences > Interface panel.

 

Adobe Customer Care is mainly for billing, accounts, software installation & activation issues.  For questions about product usage, these user-to-user forums are your best resource because we actually use the products regularly, customer care agents don't.

 

Feel free to post your Photoshop feedback below where the product developers will see it.

https://feedback.photoshop.com/

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Community Expert ,
Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

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@Forrrest Grump wrote:

(it is, for sure,  not a Mac problem, it is the way PS handles Mac).


 

If you are talking about the file dialog box you see when you choose File > Open, can you describe the evidence you have for why you think it is not a Mac problem?

 

Because Photoshop appears to use the standard macOS Open/Save dialog box, and as far as I can tell, it works the same in Photoshop as it does in any other Mac application: macOS does not provide a thumbnail size control in the Open dialog box, not like you have in the Mac Finder. Can you name a Mac application that does have a size control for Icon view in the Open dialog box? (If there is one, they probably custom-coded a non-standard Open dialog box.)

 

In fact this same problem has been discussed on the forum of a major competitor to Photoshop, Affinity Photo. It too suffers from the same limitation imposed by macOS. That forum thread suggested this useful workaround: Even though macOS does not provide a size control for icon view in Open/Save dialog boxes, macOS does support QuickLook in that dialog box, so if you select an image and press the spacebar (standard shortcut for QuickLook), a large preview will open. You can press the arrow keys to see other images using that large QuickLook preview.

 

I would go a little further and suggest that the Open dialog box is my least favorite way to preview images for opening in Photoshop. I prefer to use any of the following more efficient methods:

  • Look at the images in their folder window in the Mac Finder, where you can use either the size control for Icon view, or Gallery view which provides a large preview; when you identify the images you want just drag and drop them into the Photoshop application window or onto the Photoshop icon. Drag and drop is fewer steps than having to go through the Open dialog box. 
  • Preview the images in Lightroom, especially if you are already using it for organizing. In addition to providing large previews, Lightroom of course has a command to open selected images directly into Photoshop, which, again, is so much faster than multiple clicks through the Open dialog box. I specifically use Lightroom Classic, which also lets me drag images from that and drop into Photoshop to open immediately. 
  • Preview the folder in Adobe Bridge, which lets you both set a larger thumbnail size and provides a resizable Preview panel, and a full screen preview similar to Quick Look (i.e., press the spacebar). When you have selected the images you want, just hit Enter or Return to pop them all open in Photoshop. Again, so much faster than the Open dialog box.

 

So the macOS problem you are running into can be solved in many ways: Inside the Open/Save dialog box with QuickLook, or by previewing in a better way than inside the limited Open/Save dialog box.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

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I'm pretty sure I understand what you want because I successfully did this myself. The open/save Finder window has the icon size fixed at 80 pixels. You can however adjust this in your home Finder plist file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist   is where this particular plist is located in your home directory.

 

First you will need a Plist Editor. This is my favorite: "Plist Editor" in the MacOS App Store.

Navigate to and open:  com.apple.finder.plist  

Go to the "FKDefaulticonviewsettings" and click on the triangle to expand to the settings.

Enter 256 in "iconsize" as shown. Then press Enter to confirm, File > Save to keep the changes.

Next Relaunch the Finder by pressing and holding Option/Control on your keyboard and pressing the Finder icon in the dock. You should see "Relaunch" as a menu option.

Open Photoshop and see what the icons in the open window look like.

If they are too large, experiment with different iconsizes.

 

Screen Shot 2021-06-21 at 12.57.11 PM.png

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Explorer ,
May 20, 2022 May 20, 2022

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Important to note that this Plist fix is hard to find - I did it on a previous OSX installation, and lost it. My reason was to have larger 'Place' thumbnails when using InDesign and I see there are other Adobe Support threads about this which fail to provide the solution or point to irrelevant YouTubes about general Finder prefs settings. Just to confirm - this solution works with InDesign 'Place' dialogue box when set to Icons, trransforms the user experience especially on Retina res screens.

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New Here ,
Jul 01, 2022 Jul 01, 2022

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not in monterrey system

 

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Explorer ,
Jul 01, 2022 Jul 01, 2022

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It's Monterey 12.4 I'm using and it works well.

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Explorer ,
Aug 27, 2022 Aug 27, 2022

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Works in Monterey 12.5.1 also.

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New Here ,
Jun 01, 2023 Jun 01, 2023

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Navigate to and open:  com.apple.finder.plist  

 

this does not exist in ventura ?

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New Here ,
Aug 04, 2023 Aug 04, 2023

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Apparently not. I am a new Mac user and the thumbnails are useless in PS. I have to use Bridge to see the thumbnails bigger.

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Enthusiast ,
Sep 20, 2023 Sep 20, 2023

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Yes, of course it exists. You just have to go to the home library, the tilde in front of "library" stands for this... ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

 

There are several methods to display the home library:

https://www.lifewire.com/os-x-is-hiding-your-library-folder-2260833#:~:text=With%20either%20the%20de...

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New Here ,
Aug 21, 2023 Aug 21, 2023

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Hi, hope someone can help as this is driving me mad.... Ive download plist to do the fix mentioned but it just shows noting in the window, how do you get it to show the system files.. thanks 🙏

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Community Expert ,
Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021

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So basically here is what I see in the File > Open window.

Screen Shot 2021-06-21 at 2.22.08 PM.png

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Community Expert ,
May 21, 2022 May 21, 2022

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To summarize, this is a fix for Icon size display in the abbreviated Open/Save/Export/Import Finder dialogs MacOS serves to third party software. Those dialogs keep the thumbnails at a fixed size, usually 80 pixels and that cannot be adjusted like the normal Finder. This advice can help those who need the large thumbnails, but review this procedure first and don't attempt it if you are unsure.

 

It's been a stable and reliable fix for me. Feel free to let others know, but note:

It's been tested on MacOS 10.15.7, I can't vouch for later versions. Back up the old plist just in case.

It's worked with "Plist Editor" from the App store. It hasn't been tested using other editors.
"iconsize" is the only setting I've touched. Do not adjust any other setting unless you absolutely know what you are doing.

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Explorer ,
May 22, 2022 May 22, 2022

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Interestingly my Retina 5K 27 inch screen is happy with 160 pixels instead of 256 and this is now working much faster. I did the 256 change using PList Editor from the App store, but found the thumbs were not building quickly. At 160, they have always appeared immediately and never been replaced by generic icons.

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Community Expert ,
May 22, 2022 May 22, 2022

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I'm glad that is settled for you and I would ask you to pass this method around the ID and other forums as needed. I only picked 256 because it worked best for my old non-retina MBP. I do encourage others to find what iconsize works best for their situation.

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Participant ,
Mar 31, 2023 Mar 31, 2023

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Thank you for taking your time to explain so carefully. People often don't realize how hard it is to explain steps in something like this, without assuming we know some steps. Thank you. It was easy to find everything, but when I completed the fix, and stopped patting myself on my back, I realized it works in Finder itself, but not within Photoshop. Maybe I missed something, but I would LOVE to be able to, via Photoshop, view a folder full of images at a bigger size. The 160 was perfect for me. I'm on Apple Studio with Studio Display monitor. Latest PS/IND and Ventura 13.3. THANK YOU again! Kathy  

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2023 Mar 31, 2023

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Hi Kathy,

 

You can adjust Finder icon sizes without the Plist fix.  Cmd / will place a slider at the bottom of the Finder window where you can adjust the thumbnail size.

But it doesn't work for Finder dialogs you call from Photoshop or any other app. That is what the fix is for. You should make sure you saved the new settings and relaunched the Finder.

 

"Go to the "FKDefaulticonviewsettings" and click on the triangle to expand to the settings.

Enter 256 or 160 in "iconsize" as shown. Then press Enter to confirm, File > Save to keep the changes.

Next Relaunch the Finder by pressing and holding Option/Alt on your keyboard and pressing the Finder icon in the dock. You should see "Relaunch" as a menu option.

 

I would suggest to run the edit again to make sure the new value is in there.

 

I'm working off MacOS 12.6.3, so hopefully Apple has not closed that option.

 

Edit: File > Save is the plist editor's command in case you weren't sure. 

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Participant ,
Mar 31, 2023 Mar 31, 2023

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THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!!! I've searched for this workaround off and on for years. I've had a couple of eye surgeries and am having a few issues getting Photoshop and InDesign how I need to work with less strain due to all that. But, it is so, so much better now. Imagine this, some crazy almost 70-year-old woman with purple/teal/blue hair way up north in MN (near Canada), with her nose about three inches away from  27" Apple display and squinting at the teeny icons. My team will be thrilled, as I keep telling them I'm never gonna retire as long as I can see.  I'll tell them tomorrow that you gave me ten more years...at least.

 

Seriously, I am so so very grateful and you have to know that YOU are my HERO today! I'm rambling, so one last THANK YOU!!!

 

Kathy

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2023 Mar 31, 2023

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You are very much welcome, Kathy. 🙂 I've worked the forums for years and the best answers I've come up with are the ones that are not very well documented and yet they solve someone's issues and keep them solved.

 

Keep notes on this workaround, you may someday make someone else's day.  Gene--

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Explorer ,
Jun 01, 2023 Jun 01, 2023

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Can you tell me where FKDefaulticonviewsettings is? Thanks. I'm in Ventura 14.3 and a search in Finder doesn't locate it.

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