So, it’s been almost two years since we first published a little a piece on getting your thumbnails to work again in Adobe Creative Suite 2. The exec summary: Adobe disabled many of thumbnails that used to display in Explorer, presumably to ‘motivate‘ CS3 users to use Bridge. After some teeth gritting and a little research, we figured out a workaround and published it there.
Two years later, it’s been one of our more popular posts ever since — approaching 140 comments last time I checked, and generally getting another comment or two most weeks.
However, Adobe still like Bridge and still would like you to use Bridge, so responded by making things just that little bit more difficult in CS3. If allowed, Illustrator CS3 checks that thumbnails are disabled every time it starts — if it finds they aren’t, it makes changes to ensure they are.
If you let it that is..
Thankfully the issue has been solved, and I’m keen to pass on the solution and the credit for it.
William M Park is a talented painter, Photoshop power user and apparently sometime registry tweaker.
Along with the DLLs and REG files mentioned in the original solution, William has put together a detailed PDF explaining the registry changes CS3 users will need to make to get their AI and PSD thumbnails back.
You can download the PDF, DLL and REG files in a nice neat ZIP from here.
Nice work, William.
With William’s kind permission, I’ve republished the instructions from his PDF here to give you an idea of what’s involved without having to download.
Enabling AI and PSD thumbnails in Windows Explorer
Adobe CS, CS2 and CS3 disables thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer. To correct this:
- Go to ‘Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore’ and follow the instructions to create a system restore point. In the unlikely event things go wrong, come back to this menu to undo any changes you’ve a made since.
- Place the following files in
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell- psicon.dll
- aiicon.dll
- Run the two registry files.
That will work if you are running CS or CS2, for CS3 you will have to edit a key in the registry, to prevent Illustrator from deleting the key every time it starts.
- Click start/run, type ‘regedit’, then locate and right click the following key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}\InProcServer32 
Click ‘Permissions‘.
- Click the ‘Advanced‘ button.
- Find your user name (i.e not
WILLIAM(DELL\WILLIAM)), highlight it, then click the ‘Edit…‘ button.
- Put a tick in the Deny column’s ‘Delete’ box, then click ‘OK’. Ignore any security warning and just click OK.
- This will prevent Illustrator from deleting the key when it starts.
That’s it. If everything has gone to plan, you should now have thumbnails.
jgaris points out in a comment below that Windows Vista has an issue with some of the uppercase directory names used in the Illustrator reg file. The fix is straight forward.
To correct this, follow these steps:
1. Before double-clicking the file aiicon.dll.reg, open it in a text editor
2. On line 6 is the path to the aiicon.dll, but it is in CAPS. Change it to all lowercase (like the actual filename - aiicon.dll).
3. Save the file and close it, then double click the file to apply the registry changes.
The psicon.dll.reg is already correct and does not need to be edited.
Then restart your computer and all should be good.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Oooo very nice I was hoping someone would find a way to do this. I really dislike having to open Bridge just to find that one file I need.
October 27th, 2007 at 7:44 am
WOOHOO how totally awesome! i wasn’t aware the first fix existed and have really resented having to occasionally stuff around opening bridge when i just couldn’t remember from the filename what i was looking at.
GUESS WHAT ADOBE - a lot of us aren’t mac users, so stop trying to force us to behave like them - just a thought.
i was thinking myself fortunate not to have lost PDF thumbnails as well, even though they have now developed that nasty magenta frame
THANK YOU mr developer and thank you SITEPOINT - *runs away to set it up*
October 28th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Oh nice thanks for posting!
October 29th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Yeah, I guess Adobe built Bridge but most of us have gotten over it. ;)
October 30th, 2007 at 12:30 am
I’m running CS3 on Vista… The photoshop thumbnails now work GREAT (THANKS!!!), but I can’t seem to get the illustrator thumbs to work properly. Any hints?
October 30th, 2007 at 1:38 am
O yes!!!
I works like a charm, i always thought this was an bug or something.
But it works again!
October 30th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Cool, it also work for PDF :)
I never have this in the first place.
October 30th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Great! That’s what I looking for. Bridge, on my laptop open slowly. Most of the time I use explorer to access files. Say said, “gotten over it”. Thanks
November 1st, 2007 at 7:24 am
does anyone know where the dll’s go in vista?
I dont have a folder named Shell in Common Files\Adobe
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:58 am
never mind my question………I decided to create the Shell folder in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe, drop the psicon.dll in there, run the reg file and now I am a very happy user :)
Thank you very much!
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Good work, mroemer.
I’m not a Vista user, but I’m sure plenty of future readers will appreciate your R&D.
November 4th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Works great, thanks to all involved in finding this solution.
Just one advise for all of you with non-english systems: edit the reg files to make them reflect the appropriate path, or it won’t work at all.
Thanks again!
November 6th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Thanks for publishing this. Although, I think its total bull sh. that we have to do a registry hack in this day and age just to do this, just one more reason that there is a 99.99% chance my next computer purchase is going be a mac.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Not really. Having a Mac wouldn’t really help you here. This is an Adobe issue.
In my experience, thumbnails at the OS level is something that PC does better than Mac, which is the main reason Adobe is having much more trouble getting traction with Bridge on the windows platform compared to Mac and by extension — and why these thumbnail fix posts get so many visits.
Explorer automatically generates thumbs based on file extension and relying on local DLLs (often provided 3rd party providers like Adobe). It keeps that thumb data in the folder.
Finder seems to rely on the authoring app to make a thumb when file is created and embedded into the file. So if you make a PNG in Photoshop it will have a thumbnail, but if download, browse or get the PNG elsewhere, it won’t have a thumb.
As a result, Bridge is much more useful to Mac users.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Awesome!, but, its not working, do I have to reboot?
November 13th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Ah! Great article, great screen shots and a *very* useful link.
Good job :)
Thank you!
November 16th, 2007 at 2:13 am
Despite my nickname I’m a Windows user, and just like “Mack” says some comments above, I also use Vista and CS3, and I get to see fine the PSD thumbnails, but not the AI ones, it keeps on showing the Illustrator logo instead.
Any hint on this anyone?
Thanks!
November 16th, 2007 at 8:39 am
However, there is a caveat here…the reason that Adobe created Bridge was not to drive users of Adobe products to use their image browser, but to prevent the problem of “this file is in use by another program and cannot be saved”. This is a flaw in the Windows code, as the thumbnail display can lock you out of saving your Photoshop or Illustrator document. This is why the psicon.dll and the aiicon.dll have been blocked out of the code, Adobe would rather have you use Bridge than to not be able to save your document due to a flaw in the Windows code that Microsoft refuses to fix.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Interesting. I haven’t seen that issue on any of my systems but thanks for the snippet on Adobe’s reasoning, Christine.
I’m still a little skeptical though. There are 150+ comments between the two threads, and no-one seems to have mentioned a permissions issue.
I’m not saying it can’t ever happen, but it doesn’t appear to be an issue demanding the kind of far-reaching response we’ve seen.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Hi,
Thank you very much for this improvement in the workflow of designers. I changed the register for windows spaninsh users and posted it here:
http://ceslava.com/blog/como-ver-las-miniaturas-de-los-psd-y-ai-en-el-explorador-de-windows/
El mismo tutorial traducido e implementado los archivos y las instrucciones para Windows en español.
November 17th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Great tips! Thank you. I was missing my Photoshop thumbnails :)
The thumbnails for Photoshop work fine.
However, I’m using Windows Vista and Adobe CS3, and the “aiicon.dll” doesn’t seem to work (as macbcn said above).
I have no Illustrator thumbnails (neither .AI nor .EPS thumbnails) (not working in “Adobe Bridge” either by the way).
Does anyone have a solution for this problem?
Thanks in advance and again, great job! :)
December 6th, 2007 at 4:15 am
I figured out why people are having problems with Illustrator icons in Vista with this fix… it is is very tiny issue, and easy to fix. Apparently the registry settings are case sensitive, and the supplied aiicon.dll.reg uses CAPS in the path to the file.
To correct this, follow these steps:
1. Before double-clicking the file aiicon.dll.reg, open it in a text editor
2. On line 6 is the path to the aiicon.dll, but it is in CAPS. Change it to all lowercase (like the actual filename - aiicon.dll).
3. Save the file and close it, then double click the file to apply the registry changes.
The psicon.dll.reg is already correct and does not need to be edited.
Then restart your computer and all should be good.
December 8th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Thanks a lot. You have taken a lot of stress from a poor designer´s mind. Great site and great find. Thanks to the developer. Cheers.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:00 am
@jgaris: Nice work. I’ve copied your instructions to an update to the post above.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Hi, I have had the problem of Photoshop not saving my file because it is open somewhere else, but I haven’t seen that problem in a long time and i’m using the solution here for the thumbnails.
In another computer, that is loaded with Phosotoshop and Ilustrator CS3 the Ilustrator icons show the orange generic one, even that I changed the path to lowercase as someone pointed out and still no icons from AI. They look fine in Bridge, of course.
Any help? Thanks…
December 11th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
If you’re using Vista, you might want to try jgaris’ solution above.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Well, I did it before posting here. The problem is after doing what is stated here and is not working with the Illustrator icons, just with the Photoshop ones, so, any help? Thanks :)
December 17th, 2007 at 2:07 am
Hey, i’m using Vista 32-bit Home Edition
and i am the only user of this pc.
In the registry i do not have my username in any of the entries.
Users(Core Duo\Users)
Administrators (CoreDuo\Administrators)
SYSTEM
CREATOR OWNER
Can someone tell me which i should use.
Thanks in advance.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:21 am
I have also had problems getting this to work with Illustrator CS3 on Vista32; i tried all the extra remedy solutions too, none of them work. But here’s something I noticed: if you right click an .ai file and go to Properties, the little icon in the upper left corner of the dialog will be the thumbnail, it just doesn’t show up in Explorer.. pretty strange. I noticed this after editing the registry settings created by the .reg file, the last few have a space in them so I thought that might be a mistake. That may or may not have anything to do with it, but like I said, i only noticed the thumbnail in Properties after removing these spaces by hand in the registry; could be wrong.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Another thing: removing those spaces in the registry keys changes the .ai icon from a Vista vector logo to a bitmap flower logo. Beats me, i’ll keep messing around with it.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Yes, removing the spaces in the keys the .reg file creates INDEED causes the thumbnail to appear in the Properties dialog. I’m surprised the Explorer thumbnails aren’t working though since inside each “shellex” key for .ai and .eps files, there are IconHandler and PropertySheetHandlers. The PropertySheetHandlers works (with spaces deleted), IconHandler doesn’t apparently, and the two keys point to the same CLSID, but are formatted differently. So once again, I’ll keep fiddling with it and get it hacked out.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I’m stumped, I’ve tried all sorts of registry hacks and I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem lies within the aiicon.dll. The DLL itself is last modified 7/05 while the psicon.dll is last modified 12/05 and it works fine. So maybe a newer version would fix it. As of now the best i’ve been to accomplish is to allow for a Preview tab in the Properties dialog that gets enabled when you delete the strange spaces in the .reg file, as well as doing the permissions hack to prevent the keys from being deleted. Thats as much as I can accomplish, maybe someone who can locate a newer version of the aiicon.dll can try it out.
December 21st, 2007 at 9:53 pm
this still dosent work i have copyed the .dll’s after fixing the “Case sensitive aiicon.dll” line 6 of the dll,
i did the regedit fix,
still no AI icons, maybe my user settings is all messed up
duplicate entries
something of interest
i removed inheritance
thus deleting all previous users for the aiicon.dll file, then creating just a user permission for me
being fraserbra/ANTEC900 also me being the administrator, and no luck, even after a restart, i then added the other key entries MANUALLY
December 26th, 2007 at 6:23 am
The psicon.dll.reg went in without problem. aiicon.dll.reg gives me an error? Cannot import …aiicon.dll.reg: Error accessing the registry.
thanks
December 26th, 2007 at 6:43 am
It isn’t a permissions problem. I exported the contents of {0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612} and deleted the key
from the registry, tried again and failed to merge aiicon.dll.reg
then merged the exported key back in with no problem.
December 29th, 2007 at 7:03 am
This web page literally saved my butt! Whomever figured this out is a rock god and I hope they are getting lots of sex! I cannot believe Adobe would actually engineer this to happen. I wasted a whole day re-installing software trying to figure out why this was not showing up. It’s absolutely insane and if any Adobe programmers or designers are reading this, stop being idiots and start making your products user-friendly, not user-hostile!!! I would’ve thought that the hatred Microsoft has elicited would’ve showed you that! And again, props for this page. What a save!
January 7th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I have Windows Vista too but nothig even if I follow all new steps (rename into the dll aiicon.dll in lowercase)!
Someone have a solution please?!?!?
January 9th, 2008 at 8:02 am
If you don’t have the Adobe SHell folder in your common files…like me… I did what someone else suggested… in my common files folder I had just “adobe” and then inside that folder I added “Shell” and put the .dll files in there and VOILA !! It worked !!! Good luck !!
January 17th, 2008 at 10:07 am
how to change a size icon ?
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 am
Okay, I have a (probably) dumb question. Does it matter if my program files are not located in the C: directory? I have a custom build computer and have a different directory letter for program files (running 2 hard drives, one for programs and the other for data storage). I’ve run this fix on my work PC and it’s like magic. However, on my home PC I can’t get it to work. Any ideas?
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:45 am
Okay, I have a (probably) dumb question. Does it matter if my program files are not located in the C: directory? I have a custom build computer and have a different directory letter for program files (running 2 hard drives, one for programs and the other for data storage). I’ve run this fix on my work PC and it’s like magic. However, on my home PC I can’t get it to work. Any ideas?
(If it matters, I’m running XP Pro)
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:54 am
NM!!! I answered my own question. I edited the provided registry files in notepad and changed the directory from C: to my directory letter where the programs are stored. Re-ran the dll.reg files and “presto” my thumbnails are back! I bow down to the person who created this fix…THANK YOU!!!
January 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Ok i found the fix for the issue for writing to the aiicon.dll error. first open up the registry and go [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.EPS\ and go (rigjt click, go permissions, and go advanced, select your name ex: administrator(###Yourcomputername) and go edit, and select full controll, and apply.
Next go to [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.13\ and do the same thing.. Right click, go permissions, go advanced, select the same … administrator(##your name) and go edit, select fill controll, and apply.
Then close the regristy, and run the aiicon.dll reg edit icon.. andn you should beable to write the regristry keys then follow the rest of the steps.
However i my .eps thumbnails still dont show up. It did right the reg keys!
February 1st, 2008 at 10:35 am
I got the .psd thumbnails to work in Vista, but still no .ai thumbnails even after trying the reg key fix. has ANYONE gotten it to work in Vista using CS3? If so HOW??
February 6th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I decided to further investigate the problem of this hack not working in Vista. In the end, I concluded that Vista has a problem processing aiicon.dll, and it WILL NOT work under Vista, although there may be alternatives.
First of all, I tried to make sense of what the registry entries were accomplishing. Here are select lines from the .reg file provided for the hack:
This line creates a communication handler that will be assigned to the Adobe DLL file containing the code to process Illustrator icons. It is called a class ID or a GUID, and was created solely for this purpose. You could generate any number of these arcane-looking entries with a simple utility called GUIDGEN.EXE which comes with Visual Studio… It is meaningless in itself, until it is assigned in the following line to the aiicon.dll.
These lines assume that you’ve put the aiicon.dll file into it’s default location, but if not, feel free to modify it as appropriate.
Okay, these entries are the meat of the matter. This is telling Windows that for Illustrator files (ending in .ai), it is going to extend its capabilities with a Shell Extension (ShellEx). The key {BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1} is a call to XP’s ‘Summary Info Thumbnail Handler’. Although Vista has a newer method of extracting thumbnails, this is still supported. (It is based on a routine known as IExtractImage instead of Vista’s , and does not support the ‘details’ pane in Vista’s Explorer. In Vista, a continuous spectrum of user-selectable sizes is available rather than the discrete sizes provided in XP. These are referred to as Live Icons.)
February 6th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Oops, ignore the previous post… it posted too soon. Sorry :( Here is the complete gist of what I was trying to say. It is long and involved, but *should * be comprehendable to non-programmers, and those curious enough. Fool with your registry at your own risk! There is no undo button!
I decided to further investigate the problem of this hack not working in Vista. In the end, I concluded that Vista has a problem processing aiicon.dll, and it WILL NOT work under Vista, although there may be alternatives.
First of all, I tried to make sense of what the registry entries were accomplishing. Here are select lines from the .reg file provided for the hack:
This line creates a communication handler that will be assigned to the Adobe DLL file containing the code to process Illustrator icons. It is called a class ID or a GUID, and was created solely for this purpose. You could generate any number of these arcane-looking entries with a simple utility called GUIDGEN.EXE which comes with Visual Studio… It is meaningless in itself, until it is assigned in the following line to the aiicon.dll.
The call to “Summary Info Thumbnail Provider” is not the problem. It works in Vista, and is used time and time again in the registry for other file types. The value above, {0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612} sets it towards the previously defined location of aiicon.dll. If you put the file where it belongs, this too works. It is easily tested by observing that the icons for .ai files revert to their old feathers.
The exact same is repeated for EPS files, with the same references pointing the thumbnail provider towards the adobe dll file.
This line is unnecessary for CS3. This is only for Icon display, and has nothing to do with thumbnail generation. If omitted, then Windows will use the icons for CS3 which are found in Illustrator.exe itself, rather than using the out-of-date ones in aiicon.dll.
These lines also have nothing to do with thumbnail generation or display. Rather, if you right-click on an .ai file, the PropertySheetHandlers Shell Extension tells Windows Explorer to add another page to the summary box. In this case, the ‘Illustrator Thumbnail’ tab. If this appears, it is another indication that Windows is properly finding aiicon.dll.
…and so on with the .reg file, repeating these for other file types.
Basically this .reg file kind of sucks, and doesn’t reflect CS3, even if it does work on XP. I thought its omissions might be part of the problem Vista fails to display the thumbnails, so I set about changing it. Here is my new and improved reg file:
The above registry file is basically the same, although it adds support for CS3 (Adobe.Illustrator.13) and more importantly, adds our com entry for aiicon.dll into Windows approved shell extensions. XP isn’t so picky on this, but Vista really cracked down on what it assumes when handling properties.
This registry file works beautifully with CS3 on XP, but again, it does absolutely nothing on Vista.
I’ve confirmed that the call to the ‘Thumbnail Summary’ works on Vista; I’ve confirmed that Explorer is indeed interacting with aiicon.dll (when it comes to displaying old icons or the Property Summary Page), but the shell extension to display the thumbnail doesn’t even seem to be being processed.
Why is this??? We known that aiicon.dll works with CS3 on XP with exactly the same registry entries. I decided to run a process explorer on what happens when you view a file folder in Vista that contains .ai and .eps files in a thumbnail view.
What happens when you view a folder containing Illustrator files? First, dllhost.exe executes a com handler {AB8902B4-09CA-4BB6-B78D-A8F59079A8D5} which is the process id for ‘Thumbnail Cache Out of Proc Server’: Explorer is reading the thumbnail cache. Then, an instance of mcupdate.exe executed, which is ‘Windows Media Store Update Manager’, and then briefly, verclsid.exe. No matter how many times I refreshed the window or restarted Explorer, I never found a reference to aiicon.dll or it’s com handler. It simply wasn’t being processed.
This lead me to investigate verclsid.exe (found in Windows\System32) which stands for ‘Verify Class ID’. from the following blog, I gleaned this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/05/04/2402028.aspx:
“To protect against buggy shell extensions, Explorer was modified to use a helper program called verclsid.exe whose job was to be the “guinea pig” and host the shell extension and do some preliminary sniffing around to make sure the shell extension passed some basic functionality tests before letting it run loose in Explorer. That way, if the shell extension went crazy, the victim would be the verclsid.exe process and not the main Explorer process.”
This makes Windows more stable, but also appeared to be keeping my thumbnails from ever leaving the starting gates.
To test this, I renamed verclsid.exe, and viewed the same folder. Immediately Windows Explorer crashed (where as before it must have erred out inside verclsid and was never noticed) with the following messages:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.0.6000.16549
Application Timestamp: 46d230c5
Fault Module Name: aiicon.dll
Fault Module Version: 11.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 3f4b4692
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00001f38
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: d6aa
Additional Information 2: 550813108d42c370043e28bb37aac5af
Additional Information 3: d6aa
Additional Information 4: 550813108d42c370043e28bb37aac5af
To sum things up, thumbnails don’t appear because Vista has a problem with the way aiicon.dll processes them, and prevents it from even executing.
I don’t think there is any way to make aiicon.dll compatible with Windows Vista, but if there are other DLLs out there that are specifically for processing Illustrator files, there is no reason they couldn’t be harnessed to a Shell Extension with a simple registry edit.
Also Windows Vista now uses codecs for thumbnail generation and actively discourages shell extensions. If there are any Windows programmers out there, it shouldn’t be hard to get details for processing Illustrator files and write a custom one. I would much rather extend Explorer than rely on Bridge or any of the numerous “shell replacements”!
Hope someone takes this from here or proves me wrong… :)
Jay
NOTE: To review your Illustrator registry entries, open a command console window and navigate to “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Support Files\Contents\Windows”. Next execute “Illustrator /DUMPREGINFO” from the command prompt. This will start Illustrator inside of Windows, but will also create a textfile in the same directory called “registryinfo.txt’. Open this file up in Notepad and have a look at it!
February 7th, 2008 at 9:05 am
That’s some impressive reg sleuthing there, Jay.
If you do manage to come across a viable Illustrator DLL for Explorer, and you’re happy to tell the world, I’d be happy to set you up to post it here. I don’t use Vista, but almost every week there are people around here asking for a Vista solution, so there’s an appreciative audience waiting there.
Let me know if you’re interested- alex[at]
February 10th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Here’s what has to be in the regs for german systems^^
aiicon.dll.reg:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}\InProcServer32]
@=”C:\\Programme\\Gemeinsame Dateien\\Adobe\\Shell\\AIIcon.dll”
“ThreadingModel”=”Apartment”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}\MiscStatus]
“IconBits”=”16″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ai\ShellEx]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ai\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.eps\ShellEx]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.eps\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.EPS\shellex]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.EPS\shellex\Ic onHandler]
@=”{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.EPS\shellex\Pr opertySheetHandlers]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.EPS\shellex\Pr opertySheetHandlers\AIPage]
@=”{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.13\shellex]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.13\shellex\Ico nHandler]
@=”{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.13\shellex\Pro pertySheetHandlers]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Adobe.Illustrator.13\shellex\Pro pertySheetHandlers\AIPage]
@=”{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}”
psicon.dll.reg:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs]
“C:\\Programme\\Gemeinsame Dateien\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.psd\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}]
@=”Photoshop Icon Handler”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0B6DC6EE-C4FD-11d1-819A-00C04FB69B4D}\InProcServer32]
@=”C:\\Programme\\Gemeinsame Dateien\\Adobe\\Shell\\psicon.dll”
“ThreadingModel”=”Apartment”
February 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Thank you so much for this! I’m on Vista and thumbnails are working perfectly! As mroemer discovered above, all you have to do is create the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell folder on Vista.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I wish I knew enough to even begin to tweak the registry, but thank you so much!
March 6th, 2008 at 6:49 am
You just made my day very bright and shiney!
I finally got to see my .ai and .psd thumbs afer a year of gazing at those annoying iconthumbs.
I’ve been wondering how to see them without opening a whole new prog. like bridge.
And it was here all the time…..
Should have gone on this “search mission” a long time ago ;-)
But Yes!!! Thank you sooooo much for this.
greetings from a verrrrry happy me!
March 22nd, 2008 at 2:38 am
Thank you again Site Point & William.
I’m running XP Prof and the routine worked great the first time.
March 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 am
Thank you again Site Point & William.
I’m running XP Prof and the routine worked great the first time.
I love Bridge (with ACR) for much of my workflow. But I also use Windows Explorer a lot.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
any idea how to get this to work on xp64 pro?
March 28th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Oh my God! thank you sooo much…. it realy helps me ! just now i’m thinking of re-installing my xp to vista, but when i read this article, it felt like teardrops from heaven. again, thank you !
April 6th, 2008 at 11:29 am
yeh - this worked GREAT in x86, but now that ive moved to x64 i really really really miss the thumbs!
im lost without them!
anyone got any ideas for the 64bit environment?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:27 am
I’m having the same problem with the 64bit environment. I followed the steps above and am having no luck.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Get used to Bridge. I too run Vista 64 and I have not found a fix for this in a year of searching.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:37 am
thx for the good solution
stopped reading after some posts that helped me
works well on my win xp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:)
April 19th, 2008 at 2:26 am
No fix to view eps thumbnails for Vista means I may go back to XP just for that purpose. This is a big headache and Bridge just doesn’t cut it.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:28 am
Ah, so no fix for vista 64bit no wonder. I give up. I have spent many hours looking and trying things myself. Hard to believe it is still an issue with SP1 on vista 64 as well. Having the icons show the files is so handy. Very disappointed.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:24 am
all thats all very well if you know about reg edits etc but i doint and when i tried to follow that guide i couldnt….and that so called ‘key’ HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0C5B0CED-206B-4c39-B615-0EB23C824612}\InProcServer32
i did a search and it didnt find it…i also dont understand
stages 2 and 3
Place the following files in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell
psicon.dll
aiicon.dll
Run the two registry files.
??? can any1 translate this into really simple terms/guide as Im totally FEDUP with having to go through 20 files to find out which 1 im after in illustrator on cs3 for windows xp…I REFUSE TO BUY A MAC…I HATE THEM………………….but adobe on window3s aint good either. driving my round the twist
HElp plz…………………
May 16th, 2008 at 11:51 am
to moodyedge,
you first have to run the *.reg file in order for the key to be added to your registry, then do all the steps.
But FIRST, backup the whole registry: run regedit > file > export… > -give it a name- > export range = all > Save
Hope this helps, good luck.
to the authors,
thanks for the tweak, it’s working and I’m glad I won’t have to open all illustrator files just to see what is inside. I’m another thankful soul in this thread.
June 1st, 2008 at 10:40 am
Adobe just doesn’t seem to realise the world does not revolve around them and their applications and their limited ways of doing things.
I very seldom have a project that is ‘one application only’ or is immune from the need to use Explorer add-ins such as bulk renaming tools, one-stop indexed searches, and sourcecode/version control.
Bridge just simply cannot handle a typical project which encompasses many files from many programs and the idea that we are going to give up on Explorer because Adobe seem to be the only people on the planet who can’t write a working previewer, or because of a minimal risk, rarely encountered bug with a simple workaround, is absurd. To reinvent the wheel as a square is nonsense.
Of course, the other excuse is always “it must be cross-platform”. No. As a software developer I call that laziness (and a willingness to compromise product quality for no good reason).
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
I just tried to do this on my XP Pro 64 bit system and had no luck getting it to work. Has anyone else tried it on XP-64?
Seems simple enough to do…can’t figure out why it didn’t work…
TIA!
Dean
June 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I’m running XP Pro SP3 on a fresh install, and this hasn’t worked. I’ve tried it twice. So unless I’m just doing something stupid…
CS3 is my first CS, and looks like a fine piece of software, but Adobe really seriously has me questioning going BACK to Photoshop 7 now, simply because of some of the crap I’ve had to deal with so far.
I’ve only installed pieces of the Master Collection (Acrobat, After Effect, Premiere, Encore, Soundbooth, Photoshop) but was also forced to swallow the pill of installing Bridge and Version Cue among other things. Programs I have no need or interest for, and cannot uninstall.
Photoshop gave me no options for file associations. 5 did it. 7 did it. Why can’t CS3? After install the only file it was associated with aside from Adobe formats was BMP. I had to tell Windows which files Photoshop should associate with. And even then, things still seem broken.
If I right click and tell a BMP file to “Preview”, it opens in CS3. Not what I want. If I tell it to “Preview”, I want it to open in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. JPG files on the other hand, work as expected. “Open” opens in Photoshop, “Preview” opens in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.
And then we have the problem of thumbnails. For some reason BMP and PSD files have the Photoshop icon, but all of my JPG files do not. It’s still the standard Windows one. Ugh. It’s maddening.
Having to go through Windows to tell Photoshop it’s file associations, I can deal with. I can fix the problem of BMPs not previewing with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. But the utter lack of thumbnail previews is simply unacceptable.
I’m finished with my rant… Is there help to be had for me since this fix hasn’t worked? Or should I just resign myself to uninstalling Photoshop CS3 and reinstalling Photoshop 7?
June 6th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Thanks a ton for posting this! I’ve been searching everywhere for a way to view my PSD and AI files in Windows Explorer and finally came across this site. I love Bridge and all, but sometimes I just want to view my files in Explorer because it’s faster and easier. I’m running Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP2 and it worked like a charm! Thank you so much!! :D
June 11th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Thank you, it works a treat.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I cannot get it to display .ai files in xp media center sp3 either. But I think I did figure out why the thumbnail displays a pink flower icon (or other icons). I have several .ai and .eps files that were made with different versions of Illustrator. If you check under the properties of each file, there are two new tabs after the reg edit. One reads “Illustrator Thumbnail” which displays a thumbnail of the image (as mentioned in a previous post) and the other reads Information. Under Information it tells what version of Illustrator was used to create the image as well as other info. Not real important info, but at least an explanation.
PDF files are displaying, which did not work before so I’m happy with that.
SBergstc
June 27th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Here’s a question… When checking under the “Illustrator Thumbnail” tab, there are radio buttons to choose the Icon Thumbnail bit size. All mine show 32-bit chosen… The 3rd entry in the .AI regedit indicates “16″ for “Iconbits”… Would this mean anything???
SBergstc
June 29th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Cheers from Sweden!! Works sooo nice :)
July 5th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Hello,
I placed the 2 dll in the right folders, I changed the key properly and it still doesn’t work! Is there anyone who can help, it seems this solution works for the most reactions I’ve read here.
Thanks a lot.
Myr
July 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
i’ve the same ugly thumbs dissapearing problem after i installed acrobat8. the procedure described in sitePointBlog doesn’t help, …since it’s especially made for the illustrater abuse…:(
July 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
i’ve the same ugly thumbs dissapearing problem after i installed acrobat8. the procedure described in sitePointBlog doesn’t help, …since it’s especially made for the illustrater abuse…:(
July 18th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Anyone have an answer how to get this implemented on a PC at work? I can’t figure out which one of the dozen listed users is mine.
Thanks!
August 1st, 2008 at 9:09 am
no solution for vista and illustrator cs3?
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:27 am
I’ve been searching for a way to prevent CS3 from replacing the thumbnails of my CS. CS thumbnails shows the version of the EPS and AI files (eg. EPS8, AI10) which is useful for my line of work. But after installing CS3, the thumbnail now shows only a generic image for EPS and AI.
Would anyone know how to get back the thumbnails of CS back that shows the version numbers?
Thanks!
August 30th, 2008 at 7:40 am
hello there….im having issues with pdf thumbnails in vista 32bit….
can it be that no one official from adobe has a clue why everyone uses vista, suddenly lost the pdf THUMBNAILS????
this is outrageous for a company like adobe…
is there no way that i can get my pdf thumbnails back????
thanks in advance