Photoshop CS, no OS thumb support

Not sure how relevant it is for those that frequent this site, but thought I’d pass it along anyway. It’s usually easy to find out what “new and great” things are in a software upgrade, but finding out what was dropped isn’t as easy. Reading over the “readme file” (I know, forgive me please), I was surprised to read the following…

Thumbnail Icons for .psd files

Photoshop CS no longer provides thumbnail icons of .psd files through operating system folder windows. Please use the File Browser to view your .psd thumbnail files.

I quickly confirmed this fact right after installation! This was a bit of a bummer to me, as it is one area of XP I really enjoy and take advantage of (where supported). So, I went on a search to find out “why” this was removed and if there was any thought of bringing it back in a maintenance release or such. Discovered that some folks actually have had some nasty issues with this feature, so for the time being, Adobe pulled the plug. There is an option available, though, it’s not for the casual user or faint of heart.

The following is provided for information purpose only and requires alterations to the registry. Proceed at your own risk AFTER making a backup of the registry! If this looks like “Greek” (or is that “Geek”) to you, then DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHANGE ANYTHING! The way it is listed below is for folks that have upgraded from PS7 to PS CS (8.x) and have performed the upgraded on top of, or installed in parallel with, PS7. Others should be able to do it as well, it just may require a little extra effort. Of course this does go on the premise that the file “psicon.dll” is present on the system and in the proper location (X:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell where “X” is the drive the OS is installed) .

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Verify the following keys and values, or make them present with these values.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\(Default) = Photoshop Icon Handler (REG_SZ)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\InProcServer32\(Default) = C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell\PSICON.DLL (REG_SZ)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\InProcServer32\ThreadingModel = Apartment (REG_SZ)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\MiscStatus\(Default) = (value not set) (REG_SZ)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\MiscStatus\IconBits = 1 (REG_SZ)

Then you need the “shellex” structure present under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.8. There is no entry by default, so “you” will need to create and populate it.

Perhaps the easiest way of doing this is to extract (export) the complete “shellex” from under the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.7 entry. Remember where you have saved this registry tag (put mine on the desktop) and edit it so that each reference to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.7 is changed to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.8. Once that is done, simply register it (I double clicked on the icon) to the registry.

If you don’t have PS 7 installed, or the “shellex” structure isn’t present to “export”, manually create and populate the following keys and values:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.8\shellex

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.8\shellex\IconHandler\(Default) = {0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}(REG_SZ)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.8\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Photoshop.Image.8\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\PSDPage\(Default) = {0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D} (REG_SZ)

It works and I’m happy to report I’m backing to having thumb support on all our Win XP Pro systems running PS CS (8.x) package. Time to go find what other features or items have been dropped with this “upgrade”.