[help]thumbnails in column view

Why is it that in column view, some of the icons for my pictures are thumbnails, and others are the standard .jpg/.gif/etc icon? (this is in the normal column, NOT the preview column)

Under get info, the ones that have thumbnails have the thumbnail for the actual icon, but the ones that don't have the generic icon. I can select the thumbnail icon and hit delete to revert it back to the default icon, but it appears there is no way to make the icon the thumbnail. (confusing, I know). Any image I download off the internet has the generic icon, any image I create(or modify) has a thumbnail icon. I'm assuming OSX does this.

I know it seems trivial, but I was wondering if there is a setting I could change to make all of my image files have thumbnails in column view.

#314468

A lot of images (especially from the internet) don't have a saved or embedded preview, so the OS doesn't bother attempting to read into the image to produce a thumbnail unless you force it to - it just relies on the extension or suffix. In many cases, images that have been saved in an application such as Photoshop will have an embedded preview which is why you see a thumbnail in either icon, list or column view. If I remember correctly this is a resource fork which allows the OS to recognize the file type and creator code of the said file.

#314529