Requested Thumbnail generation

[PicTweak]

Hello Irfan and all the developers,

(great job so far!)

I'm having problem with thumbnails. IV generates them anew each time I enter a directory. It's not a problem if there are <50 pics, but my dirs usually contain 100-300 pics - and it's a pain to wait each time for all the thumbnails.

I would appreciate any improvement on this subject.

Some ideas would be:
- Generate TNs in background - so I at least don't have to wait
- Introduce the option to store the generated TNs somewhere. This approach has a couple of problems:
a) where to store the TNs and
b) how to detect which are to be updated
- (more ideas available, if enough people are interested to move in this direction...)

Regards,
PT

[paul-p]

I would confirm this problem, too. This also may be annoying for quite big images.

There is nothing to invent a lot - Windows Explorer stores cache of thumbnails in a file called thumbs.db which is appearing in the same folder. IrfanView could use the same approach - store thumbnails in a kind of cache file.

The cache file stores thumbnails and references to the original picture filesizes. If such filesize was updated, it will re-generate the thumbnail again and update cache. If the new file appears in the folder, the same process repeats.

[schmirk]

Pre Saved Thumbnail Cache(generate only once)

I have been looking forward to this feature for years. With cameras taking larger and larger file size photos(not to mention high resolution print production images) the Irfanview "/thumbs" option is becoming slower and slower to use as it has to grind through the generation of each image's thumbnail every time I open a folder. Even if it was just open a minute ago. To me this is terribly inefficient and seems like it could be easily remedied.

Even perhaps window's thumbs.db could be used?

I am not a programmer so perhaps I am wrong and it would be a horrible task to add this feature.

Or perhaps my recent searching missed the fact this feature IS available and I have but to turn it on or plug it in!?!

Thanking you so much for this great program. I have not even come close to using it to its full potential. It is almost perfect.

[schmirk]

Alas, I am impatient. I took a good look at what I need out of my picture browsing software and decided on a few things.

1. It must cache thumbnails for instant loading when browsing.
2. It must not save the cache in either my Operating System partition or my Data Storage(pictures and files) partition. Both partitions are sacred and I protect them with a keen eye.
3. I need it now, as a reformat of my PC is hung pending solution to numbers 1. and 2.

I momentarily considered tweaking XP to create larger thumbnails and just use an explorer window in thumbnail view. It did not take long before my stomach started to turn... As a general rule windows must not be allowed to touch anything important (music files, pictures and my data) and thumbs.db must remain turned OFF.

Enter google 'picture browser' --> XnView.
After a short read I decided to download Xn context, Xn lite, and Xn standard. I tried 'context' first just to see. I came, I saw, I uninstalled.
Next, XnView Lite.

Wow!

It does everything. Every imaginable feature is editable, configurable, adjustable. I am sorry if I was asking too much. It seems Xn uses more horse power in its file browser than irfanview in its entirety. I dont mind a 2MB install for total browsing functionality but now I see adding that functionality to irfanview would make it very cumbersome indeed. It took me perhaps an hour to casually look through all the customization/layout options in XnView and finishing with 'double click to open images in Irfanview' I believe I have satisfied all my needs. I have not lost my dear efficient Irfanview and I have perfect thumbnail browsing.

Here are the main features in the XnView thumbnail browser that I treasure:
-Opens any image with a double click in Irfanview!
-Windows explorer right-click context option 'Open folder in XnView' for instant specific viewing no matter where I am in my windows directories.
(I configured Xn to open in browser mode, full screen with large thumbnails 215x215 resulting in rows of 4 across.)
-Open XnView browser in full screen from quick launch bar with my 'Pictures' root directory preselected.
-All thumbnails instantly appear no matter how many images are in the folder or how large the image files are.(this is the thumbnail cache in action)
-Minimal eye candy. It certainly installs with a lot but comes out very clean when everything is turned off.
-Thumbnail database stored on a partition devoted to Temp files. I highly recommend a small Temp partition if you are looking for long term use of your computer between reformats and also if you have a drive devoted to personal data - easier mirroring and less risk of file corruption. I spent some time test driving XnView and quickly accumlated 10mb in my thumbnail cache. Just a start but that is 10mb made up of many many small files, each one taking a place in the MFT. I do not want this kind of activity in a large file storage drive(8k or even 16k clusters).

I'm sure there are more technical perks in Xn but my needs are of the base level variety.

So thank you once again for all the work that has gone into Irfanview. It is good stuff and now I can enjoy it even more efficiently. Who ever thought THAT would be possible?...

[koupa]

Thumbnail caching in Thumbnails app

Right now i use 2 seperate applications for my images. Irfanview for my everyday needs and ACDsee for managing my library. I want to replace ACDsee because it's expensive for yearly updates and don't support large thumbnails. Only 320*320 pixels. But their thumbnail database is by far the best. Once it caches the folder it opens instantly. No matter what you have in there.

So I would like to enable caching to use in the application.