photo thumbnail problems

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About two months ago, I upgraded a computer from Windows Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium. It worked fine, and, in several ways, better than before. But there’s a problem. The thumbnails of photos are now an annoyance, in ways I’d not seen in XP or Vista. (I can’t remember if there were thumbnails before that.) There are two problems, perhaps related.

First, when I copy photos from our camera to the hard disk, some of the thumbnails appear as if the copying process didn’t finish — that is, there’s a region of solid color, with color depending on the photo, across some part of the bottom of the thumbnail. I want the thumbnails to look as much like the photo as possible, so I fix that, which I can do by copying the photo, from DSC1111 to DSC1111 Copy. The second thumbnail looks fine. Then I delete the original photo. But it’s an annoyance.

The second problem is that the thumbnails don’t change. I can, for example, crop a photo, and save it back with the original name, or, at least sometimes, with a new name, but the thumbnail doesn’t show that the photo has been cropped, even with a view refresh. (I’ve tried copying the photo, as above, but those thumbnails don’t reflect the crop, either. In other words, they look like the original photo.)

Thanks for any advice or help.

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It looks as though some process or program is lagging behind in terms of updating itself to reflect changes.

First, when I copy photos from our camera to the hard disk, some of the thumbnails appear as if the copying process didn’t finish — that is, there’s a region of solid color, with color depending on the photo, across some part of the bottom of the thumbnail. I want the thumbnails to look as much like the photo as possible, so I fix that, which I can do by copying the photo, from DSC1111 to DSC1111 Copy. The second thumbnail looks fine. Then I delete the original photo. But it’s an annoyance.

I do digital photography quite frequently and I find the autorun feature especially usefull when it comes to transfering photos from the camara to the hard disk.
(As opposed to copying them manually from within the camaras memory cards folder to the hard drive).
A straight copy from the card also tends to preserve the photo angle and does not “upright” them as autorun settings can be configured to do.

The second problem is that the thumbnails don’t change. I can, for example, crop a photo, and save it back with the original name, or, at least sometimes, with a new name, but the thumbnail doesn’t show that the photo has been cropped, even with a view refresh. (I’ve tried copying the photo, as above, but those thumbnails don’t reflect the crop, either. In other words, they look like the original photo.)

It looks like the program you are using to manipulate photos are not updating thumbnails to reflect the changes you just made. I’ve seen this behavior in
Windows Live Photo Gallery, but only upon a fresh install. It tends to “learn” your folders and subsequently update them accordingly upon further usage.

If you are using windows Explorer, ensure that “Always show icons, never thumbnails” remains unchecked in explorer’s properties. (folder options)

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If you’re relying on explorer for your thumbnail needs you may want to switch to something else, it has a couple shortcomings. If you’re not adverse try Picasa 3.8 to maintain your entire photo database, once established (has an index of your database), it works better than autorun and the like since it will let you know of any duplicates that it already has on the disk that don’t need to be copied again from the card, many little nice things like that, and thumbnails update almost instantly as far as I know. Faststone Image Viewer is an extremely effective program as well if you just require instant thumbnail update.

Also best practices would be to review the photo quickly once its copied over, not just go by the thumbnail. It sounds like you might be getting some corruption in the copy process and the thumbnail should not be relied on solely before the original is deleted.

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Thanks, CLiNT. As to the photo editing program not updating, I am using the same program (Corel Photopaint) that I have for some time before I changed operating system. I’m pretty sure that the thumbnails did change before I upgraded operating systems.

The suggestion you made about explorer is good, but it had already been applied — I have no idea when.

Thanks, 3 Star Lounger. I may try Picasa, but I (so far) have figured that having a database of photos is more trouble than it’s worth — I’ve just tried to use sensible folder naming. I always check the photo to make sure it has really copied fully, without corruption, before deleting from the camera. So far, all photos really were uncorrupted, but it looked like some of them were.

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Thanks, 3 Star Lounger. I may try Picasa, but I (so far) have figured that having a database of photos is more trouble than it’s worth — I’ve just tried to use sensible folder naming.

Picasa doesn’t ask you to replace anything that you are doing, but it sits on top and produces a database of your folders; right clicking on any image will give you the option to ‘locate in folder’ that will open Explorer with the file replaced.

However, should you wish, you can also use it for basic edits and adjustments, loading to the internet et cetera.

As for your original problem; I suggest you change your Windows folder options to show hidden files and system files, and then you should be able to simply delete the file marked thumbs.db . Windows should then rebuild it.

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Thanks, all.

I just discovered how to change the appearance of my icons (not thumbnails — sorry) to match the way the picture really looks. To do so, I change the view to Details, then back to Large Icons. The Large Icons now look like the picture — cropped, or colors changed, or whatever has been done to them.

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