Small Affinity 2 Thumbnails and Images in the File Window and Viewer

[Mike]

Hi,

I installed iMatch 2023 for the first time today and started experimenting with it.

1. I notice that Affinity 2 files have small thumbnails and they also appear in the viewer with previews that are about 341x512 pixels in size, even though the files themselves have a much higher resolution. iMatch only seems to be able to use this small preview. Other file types are displayed at normal size. This has never happened in iMatch 2021.

2. Another clue could point towards Affinity itself: Affinity 2 files do not have a preview in Windows 10 Explorer. This is very unusual. There are thumbnails within the folder, but the extra preview window shows nothing. Affinity 1 did not show this problem.

3. Perhaps important: I recently installed Affinity 2, but didn't use an MSI, but rather an MSIX installer, so there is no exe file.

It's entirely possible that Affinity is also responsible for the iMatch problem, but that's not certain. Does anyone have a similar problem or an idea?

Thanks!

[Mario]

Serif/Affinity does not publish file format specifications and has no developer toolkit to access their files.
IMatch relies on the "shell thumbnail handler" Affinity products install. This handler is supposed to allow Windows Explorer and other applications to produce a suitably large rendition of the file.

At least on my system with Affinity Designer 2 etc. the preview size produced by the Affinity shell thumbnail handler is 512 pixel, longest edge. IMatch has no influence on the size Windows / shell thumbnail handlers produce. This is up to the software vendor.

I think 512 is good enough for a thumbnail and a preview of the file for a DAM like IMatch.

[Mike]

Thank you for the reply and feedback on the size display.

I have size 512 for all Affinity 2 apps. This is fine for the iMatch File Window thumbnails, but I would have liked to see it full size in the iMatch Viewer. Hmm... I already suspected that the problem came from Affinity itself.

[Mario]

(...) but I would have liked to see it full size in the iMatch Viewer. Hmm... I already suspected that the problem came from Affinity itself.

That always the risk when using proprietary file formats. You are completely dependent on the origin software vendor.
Maybe ask Affinity to enhance their shell thumbnail handler to produce 1024px or 2K previews?

[mopperle]

It is correct, that Affinity saves with format .afphoto only all small thumbnail, which is OK for me.
As I'm currently testing several things, I just realized that a .PSD (latest Photoshop) file is just displayed as a white page. The option in PSD to save a thumbnail is set.
Did I miss any other setting?

[mopperle]

OK, just found out that you need 3rd party software to display thumbnails of PSD files. Was not aware of this.

[Mario]

OK, just found out that you need 3rd party software to display thumbnails of PSD files. Was not aware of this.

You don't.
But you have to enable the maximize compatibility option in Photoshop.

Adobe stopped documenting the Photoshop file format many years ago to prevent other companies from using it without (potentially illegal) reverse-engineering.

This step caused an uproar in the imaging community and Adobe was forced to bring back the compatibility mode. This is basically a composite and flattened "preview" stored in the PSD/PSB file that can be used to display the image as you see it in Photoshop. Even when all the layer types and effects and stuff in the PSD are undocumented and proprietary or even encrypted to prevent revers-engineering in the US (reverse-engineering of file formats for compatibility reasons is legal, unless you have to break encryption to do it - which makes it illegal).

When maximize compatibility is not enabled while saving (Adobe sets it to off by default), your PSD file may or may not show correctly in other software.

[mopperle]

Thx, again what learned as Lothar would say

EDIT: But this seems not to work in Windows Explorer. It works fine in IMatch.