Jaggy Adobe JPEGs in Leopard's Cover Flow

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Jaggy Adobe JPEGs in Leopard's Cover Flow

Posted 10/26/2007 at 2:00:00pm | by Roman Loyola

Cover Flow is a major new feature of the Finder in Leopard. It works similar to the way Cover Flow on the iPod works. It's especially handy when you're perusing a folder of pictures.

For the most part, the picture previews in Cover Flow look crisp, but there seems to be an exception with Adobe JPEG files. In my experience, when you look at JPEGs saved in Adobe JPEG format, the image preview in Cover Flow is quite jaggy.

This JPEG file came straight from an Olympus camera. It looks great in Cover Flow, a new way to preview files in the Finder. Click on the picture to see the full image in a new browser window.

I took the same image, opened it in Adobe Photoshop CS3, and saved it as a JPEG with the compression level set to 12 (I didn't do any image modifications in Photoshop). Here's how it looks in Cover Flow — a jaggy mess. Click on the picture to see the full image in a new browser window.

I was able to repeat this with other Adobe JPEG photos. I also found that if I open the Adobe JPEG file in Preview and save as a JPEG, the newly saved file looks sharp in Cover Flow. I suspect that Adobe does something to the preview that causes the jaggies. If you look at the Adobe JPEG image in Quick Look (hit the spacebar afer you select the file in the Finder), the image looks fine.

A reader on Digg asked if Photoshop CS3 was set up for Full Size Image Previews (Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling). It wasn't initially, but I turned it on and retested. It didn't fix the jaggy images.

The fix. According to Apple, if a file already has a preview, "Leopard respects the preview." If there's no preview, "Cover Flow will provide a large size preview." The fix involves removing the preview from Adobe JPEG files.

In Photoshop CS3, go to Preferences (Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling). Under the Image Preview pulldown menu, select Never Save. Then open the Adobe JPEG file and save it as a JPEG. The file will save without a preview, and Cover Flow will create a crisp and clean one. See below.

It seems as though the preview that Adobe creates is of a lower quality than what Cover Flow creates. Click on the picture to see the full image.

By the way, Leopard adds a white border to preview icons. When you save a file in Photoshop CS3 as a JPEG, the border isn't on the icon preview (see below).

Top: The JPEG file straight from the camera has a white border. Below: The Adobe JPEG file sans border.

COMMENTS: 28

TAGS: Photoshop

COMMENTS

Thanks
Submitted by Regie Fernando (not verified) on Sat, 2007-10-27 21:30

Great tip!

Im having the same problem. Another thing now is how to uncached the files that were saved with adobe lowres thumbs. And also how to do this similarly with adobe lightroom?

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Lightroom
Submitted by rloyola on Sun, 2007-10-28 22:22

I'm not aware of the problem with Lightroom. Adobe hasn't gotten back to me; when I check in with them, I'l ask about Lightroom.

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???
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2008-05-13 11:41

Creating a new icon through Graphic Converter does not seem to work. I can't see in GC a way to strip the existing icon…

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Alternative fix desired
Submitted by MikeT (not verified) on Sun, 2007-10-28 02:10

I have thousands of pictures saved using Adobe Photoshop. No way can I spend the time it would take to open, save, and close them one-by-one. There needs to be a solution that doesn't involve doing anything manually to each and every picture.

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Strip custom previews
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 2007-10-28 06:01

Graphic Converter has batch processing capability. One option is to remove the preview icons.

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RE: Alternative fix
Submitted by rloyola on Sun, 2007-10-28 22:26

I feel ya, MikeT. I also have thousands of pics. You could create an Action in Photoshop, but that's not really efficient. There's Graphic Converter, which I think come with your Mac (or at least it used to). Mixel's icon tip probably can be used using an AppleScript. I need to research this further.

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RE: Alternative fix
Submitted by philippe | photofloue (not verified) on Mon, 2007-10-29 13:14

Creating a new icon through Graphic Converter does not seem to work. I can't see in GC a way to strip the existing icon…

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Fix : CocoThumbX
Submitted by philippe | photofloue (not verified) on Mon, 2007-10-29 15:55

The fix is using CocoThumbX to strip existing PS generated thumbnails
(source : this thread at Apple Support).
Just tried it, it works perfectly.

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GraphicConverter
Submitted by Pariah (not verified) on Mon, 2007-10-29 16:25

This is how to do this in GraphicConverter.
Under the File menu scroll down to "Convert and Modify", select it and a pallet will open. There is a drop down menu, scroll down to Remove Resource.
In one of the file windows navigate to where the files you want are located.
You can shift click and option clink for multiple selections and GC will also recursively remove resources from images in nested folders so it is possible to strip thousands of files at once.

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how can you fix folder icons
Submitted by Mike Madden (not verified) on Wed, 2007-10-31 08:08

how can you fix folder icons i used cocothumbx for jpeg and they now look good but folder thumbs are still fuzzy?

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Changing multiple files in Photoshop
Submitted by 4colorgrafix (not verified) on Tue, 2007-11-20 15:33

Photoshop has an automation feature.

1) Using File -> Automate -> Record, you could record changes made to one file.
2) Save it as part of the Actions Pallette.
3) Apply the action to your 1000s of files.

For more information look at this website:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2006/07/13/automating-photoshop-routines.html

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There's an easy way.
Submitted by mixel (not verified) on Sun, 2007-10-28 15:11

If you select a lot of pictures and right click/get info.. You can delete their icon at the top of the window and it'll rebuild them all. :D Well it's working on my pixelly previews at least.

No need to use any extra software, 3 click process. Woo!

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?
Submitted by Rob (not verified) on Sun, 2007-10-28 19:18

Im not sure I want to delete ll my JPG icons, If I do what you were talking about

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Nice one, mixel
Submitted by rloyola on Sun, 2007-10-28 22:18

Great tip!

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i thought it was ironic
Submitted by skivyleague (not verified) on Sat, 2007-11-03 16:49

that the article is on jaggedy edges and photoshop and jpegs and Roman's header image for the article contains a very obvious jagged photoshop edge where the grey of the image with his face on it was composited with the grey that serves as the background image for the word "Roman"

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tradeoff
Submitted by MikeT (not verified) on Fri, 2007-11-09 05:22

Thanks for the additional workaround methods.

Is Apple going to leave us with this tradeoff situation? If we want clear pictures in Coverflow view, we have to give up picture icons and go to generic icons in Icon view?

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"don't smoke so much weed"!!
Submitted by Seo (not verified) on Sat, 2008-02-23 11:10

"don't smoke so much weed"!! Are you stoned?!? - Nice

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Clearer picture.
Submitted by Thunk Different (not verified) on Thu, 2007-12-06 16:09

This is somewhat of a surprise, but at the same time, not. I Don't adobe has been doing a very good job lately, ther CS3 is only exciting because everyone says it is, it's not really so much better than before, tired, cluttered.

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give it some time. don't
Submitted by robogobo (not verified) on Fri, 2007-12-07 15:29

give it some time. don't smoke so much weed.

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No such animal as too much
Submitted by Dave's not here. (not verified) on Tue, 2007-12-11 15:04

"don't smoke so much weed"!! Are you stoned?!?

First thing in the morning; last thing at night.

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Solution and snarky comment
Submitted by Anonymous switchergirl (not verified) on Wed, 2007-12-26 12:35

I just switched to mac (or rather ADDED a mac to my fold for music production) and I think it's hilarious that mac's are supposed to be so great for graphics, yet the font handling is abominable, ergonomics of the cutesy mouse and keyboard are miserable, the previews in finder are fairly horrendous in terms of resizing the file open dialog and a lot of basic GUI problems that require a lot of clicking or 3rd party apps to fix stuff that just works in windows unless you're stupid. Windows is really easy unless you're an idiot (most of my family.) Now that you allowed me to totally say all the negative stuff (appears to be a no-no in mac-scientology clone world) here's a fix and merry xmas:

CocothumbX is the BEST freeware batch processor to fix the icons. It removes all the adobe created icons (that's the problem - Leopard's a control freak and doesn't like anything that IT didn't make) and leaves behind the Leopard generated icons which resize and look great. Just drag a pile of photos onto the program and check teh Remove Thumbnail option and when you look in finder, it's fixed.

Here's the URL http://www.stalkingwolf.net/software/cocothumbx/

It's FREE, but I suggest you donate (like a did) even 1 or 2 euros to support this person who's helping apple do their job, and saving us all a lot of aggravation. Cheers!

PS - I still love my mac, but boy has it been a ride so far.

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can you fix folder icons i
Submitted by Kirill (not verified) on Wed, 2008-01-16 15:19

can you fix folder icons i used cocothumbx for jpeg and they now look good but folder thumbs are still fuzzy?

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On a related note...
Submitted by Ravenmoon (not verified) on Thu, 2008-01-24 20:17

Does anyone know how to make the white borders around he Finder icon previews go away? They are ugly, unnecessary, they make it harder (no easier) to see what files are.... in short this is one of those 'improvements' that seem to rocket us right back to 1995....

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jaggy adobe jpegs
Submitted by iwrb (not verified) on Tue, 2008-04-08 09:54

problem solved. thanks!

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Re: How do you update your Ipod
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