Adobe Photoshop 6 and 7 are better than Photoshop CS and CS2? What? Huh?
Well not really, but one thing that version 6 and 7 did have, but was eliminated from CS and CS2, is the ability for Windows XP to display thumbnails of PSD images.
Since I had installed CS, and subsequently CS2, I noticed that I could no longer get thumbnail images to appear in Windows XP. I recently had a bit of time and tracked down the issue. Apparently, some people have had trouble with the thumbnail functionality so Adobe removed that feature. I have not had any real trouble with it. So I found out how to fix it.
Here is how to restore the thumbnail functionality.
Download the thumbfix.exe or thumbfix.zip file from my web site and extract the files to a new folder.
Copy the “psicon.dll” file to the C:\Program Files\Common Files\AdobeShell folder.
Once that is done, double click on the “ThumbsForCS2.reg” file if you are running CS2 or the “ThumbsForCS.reg” file if you are running CS. This will prompt you with a dialog box similar to the following:
“Are you sure you want to add the information in ThumbsForCS2.reg to the registry?”
Click “Yes”
You should see the following dialog:
“Information in ThumbsForCS2.reg has been successfully entered into the registry.”
Click Ok.
This .reg file tells Windows how to use the psicon.dll file.
You should now have Thumbnails once again!