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JPEGs Not Previewing on Mac

JPEGs Not Previewing on Mac

For some reason that feels very random, for the past month or so my JPEG thumbnail images on my Mac seem to only show randomly. I can see all of them in Bridge, but in the Mac’s finder many of my JPEGs routinely will not show a preview. See image above.

Anyone have any idea on how I can fix this?

Update: Thanks to Jason Weems for troubleshooting this and figuring it out for me. It seems that I had the “show icon preview” box under the finder view/show view options unchecked. Now that I checked that box all of my JPEG thumbnail icons have returned. Still stumbling my way around this MacBook even after a year of use.

Thanks Jason!

6 Replies to “JPEGs Not Previewing on Mac”

  1. I’ve ran into this a few times… the only way I know around it is to delete the icon reference in the file info. Easy enough to do for 2 or 3 but what a pain to have to do it for bunches of them! I blame Leptard.

  2. I’ve been noticing this with my Illustrator files… though NONE of the icons are showing up. It used to be in Tiger that if you saved your Illustrator file with PDF compatibility, the MacOS would happily provide you with an icon preview… not anymore.

    But here’s the really strange thing. In a Spotlight search, the icons DO show up. As a temporary work-around, I’ve just been searching for a “space” within a folder to get my preview icons back. Hopefully Apple will be fixing this soon.

  3. Is it only Photoshop .jpg’s? Do they not show up even when “Show icon preview” is selected in the directory’s View Options?

    Without further troubleshooting information, it’s hard to pinpoint the root cause, but there’s a couple of thing you can try. Get Cocktail or Onyx and run the regular maintenance routines (permissions, cron jobs, cache cleaning) and see if that helps. You could also get CocoThumbsX or a similar program and let them add the icon to the file. I usually do that anyway (or at least I did before Leopard), because then it doesn’t matter if “Show icon preview” is turned on for whatever directory you’re in.

  4. Jason, thanks for the great advice. “Show icon preview” actually for some reason had been unchecked. I checked that again and now all my JPEG icon previews came back. Really appreciate the advice. Still stumbling my way around the Mac in some ways even after a year of use.

  5. Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the Illustrator icon preview problem, which still exists even when preview is checked.

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