Automatic Windows Thumbnail Image Generator

Image icons in Windows look all the same and the only way to distinguish or sort them is by using folders or file names. Xentient Thumbnails introduces a third possibility by providing an automatic windows thumbnail image generator for all images on the system.

The system works by assigning thumbnail icons to every image in the active folder which are then available independently of the view mode that the user has selected for the folder. When I read about the thumbnail image generator I had fears that it would slow down the system but this is apparently not the case since the application only becomes active when a user opens a folder that contains images.

Image icons are stored in a thumbnail cache that is set to keep 2000 thumbnail images with a size of 31 Megabytes. The size of the image icons cache can be changed, the maximum is 10000 thumbnails with a size of 156 Megabytes.

The cache can be cleared or disabled in the settings as well. They also contain the option to disable thumbnail generation. The settings can be accessed from the Windows Control Panel which is a bit unusual.

The program can be uninstalled easily which will also clear the icon cache leaving no traces of the application on the system. The application is compatible with Windows 98, ME, 2000 and Windows XP and supports the most popular image formats (JPG, JPE, JPEG, JP2, J2K, GIF, PNG, BMP, WBMP, EMF, WMF, PCX, PBM, PGM, PNM, PPM, RAS, TIF, TIFF, and TGA.)

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday August 27, 2008 -
Tags:icons, image icons, thumbnail image, thumbnail software, thumbnails, Windows

Responses so far:

1. Melik Yuksel says:

   August 27, 2008 at 9:44 pm

   This is one of my favorite services running on my computer. I would definitely download this on a fresh install of Windows XP along with XPize (or xpize, “all lowercase because it’s fashionable”).

   Looks like Ghacks has been helping me out here, Martin. :)

   Reply