ImageFolderQLGenerator (original) (raw)

ImageFolderQLGenerator will not work in Snow Leopard. This is due to the fact that Quick Look generators are not allowed to generate previews and thumbnails for folders in Snow Leopard. (I know, this sucks.) Due to this I am not developing or maintaining this program anymore.

This is a Quick Look Plugin (or Quick Look Generator) that creates thumbnails and previews for folders that contain image files. The thumbnails and previews it generates look like the normal folder icons, only with small thumbnails of some of the contained images overlaid on top. Here are a couple of screenshots to give you an idea of how it looks:

"Why is the folder icon inside that 'generic document' icon?"

As you can see from the screenshots above, Finder automatically wraps thumbnails into these "icon decors" with their page curls and drop shadows and whatnot -- I haven't found any way to prevent this from happening. :( As far as I know, Finder decides if it wants to do that based on the type of the content (in this case, folders) and there's nothing you can do to influence its choice. If someone knows a cure for this, please let me know!

How it Works:

ImageFolderQLGenerator starts by going through all the files within the folder it gets a reference to, either until it finds X number of image files (determined by the file extension,) or until there are no more files to go through. It then draws the folder icon and on top of that the thumbnails of all of the image files it has found, using first the thumbnails saved into these image files, or if no thumbnails are found, the full image files themselves.

How to Change the Number of Pictures Shown:

By default, a maximum number of two (2) pictures are drawn for folder thumbnails and four (4) for Quick Look previews. If you'd like more or fewer pictures to be shown, you can set the user defaults picturesInThumbnail and picturesInPreview like this:

• To change this value for thumbnails, run this in Terminal (all in one row):
  defaults write org.hasseg.imagefolderqlgenerator picturesInThumbnail -int <NUM>
  (where is the maximum number of pictures you'd like to see on your folder thumbnails)
• To change this value for previews, run this in Terminal (all in one row):
  defaults write org.hasseg.imagefolderqlgenerator picturesInPreview -int <NUM>
  (where is the maximum number of pictures you'd like to see on your folder Quick Look previews)

Contributing:

If you make improvements to the source of ImageFolderQLGenerator, please let me know. Thanks!

Source code is available in a Git repository (click here to show/hide):

Repository URL:
http://hasseg.org/git-public/ImageFolderQLGenerator.git/

Repository web page:
http://hasseg.org/gitweb?p=ImageFolderQLGenerator.git

Example:
cd ~/mycode git clone http://hasseg.org/git-public/ImageFolderQLGenerator.git/

Latest Version:

Version 0.6.2 → Download
October 01, 2009

Changelog:

• Made it possible to disable the drawing of thumbnails by setting the picturesInThumbnail user defaults key value to 0. Note: you need to run qlmanage -r in the Terminal and restart Finder (or just restart your computer) for changes to the user defaults keys to take effect.

Older Versions:

Show/hide older versions

Version 0.6.1 → Download
August 10, 2009

Changelog:

• Fixed some memory leaks.

Version 0.6 → Download
July 31, 2009

Changelog:

• Added option to specify the maximum number of pictures drawn (separately for folder thumbnails and for Quick Look previews):
  • To change this value for thumbnails, run this in Terminal:
    defaults write org.hasseg.imagefolderqlgenerator picturesInThumbnail -int <NUM>
    (where is the maximum number of pictures you'd like to see on your folder thumbnails)
  • To change this value for previews, run this in Terminal:
    defaults write org.hasseg.imagefolderqlgenerator picturesInPreview -int <NUM>
    (where is the maximum number of pictures you'd like to see on your folder Quick Look previews)
• Made the default maximum number of pictures drawn for thumbnails 2 instead of 4.

Version 0.5 → Download
July 27, 2009

Changelog:

• The previews and thumbnails are now drawn in correct proportion (regardless of the requested size of the preview) as well as in the center of the requested area (e.g. the previews shown in Path Finder's preview module will now be displayed with the correct proportion and in the center of the preview area).
• Previews/thumbnails will no longer be drawn for the root paths of any locally mounted volumes (e.g. if you insert a CD that contains images in the root path, Finder will now display the normal CD icon instead of a folder quick look thumbnail).

Version 0.4 → Download
July 08, 2009

Changelog:

• If there are only one or two images in a folder, draw their thumbnails as bigger (since there's more space)

Version 0.3 → Download
July 08, 2009

Changelog:

• Thumbnails are now created for all supported image types (instead of just jpeg, png and gif).

Version 0.2 → Download
March 27, 2009

Changelog:

• Initial release.