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.
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iwrb
April 08, 2008 at 10:54am
problem solved. thanks!
Ravenmoon
January 24, 2008 at 9:17pm
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....
Kirill
January 16, 2008 at 4:19pm
can you fix folder icons i used cocothumbx for jpeg and they now look good but folder thumbs are still fuzzy?
Anonymous switchergirl
December 26, 2007 at 1:35pm
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.
Thunk Different
December 06, 2007 at 5:09pm
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.
MikeT
November 09, 2007 at 6:22am
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?
skivyleague
November 03, 2007 at 5:49pm
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"
mixel
October 28, 2007 at 4:11pm
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!
Rob
October 28, 2007 at 8:18pm
Im not sure I want to delete ll my JPG icons, If I do what you were talking about
MikeT
October 28, 2007 at 3:10am
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.
4colorgrafix
November 20, 2007 at 4:33pm
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
rloyola
October 28, 2007 at 11:26pm
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.
philippe | photofloue
October 29, 2007 at 2:14pm
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…
Pariah
October 29, 2007 at 5:25pm
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.
Mike Madden
October 31, 2007 at 9:08am
how can you fix folder icons i used cocothumbx for jpeg and they now look good but folder thumbs are still fuzzy?
philippe | photofloue
October 29, 2007 at 4:55pm
The fix is using CocoThumbX to strip existing PS generated thumbnails
(source : this thread at Apple Support).
Just tried it, it works perfectly.
Anonymous
October 28, 2007 at 7:01am
Graphic Converter has batch processing capability. One option is to remove the preview icons.
Regie Fernando
October 27, 2007 at 10:30pm
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?
rloyola
October 28, 2007 at 11:22pm
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.
