Making "Extra Large Icons" larger?

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Feb 4, 2002
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Now that windows can display RAW thumbnails correctly, just looking at the icons in explorer is good enough to cherry pick images. However, on this 30" monitor, even "Extra Large Icons" aren't that large. Anyone know of a way to increase that by 50-100%? I suspect it is in the registry somewhere...
 
Simpler solution :

images
 
I don't have Win 7 so I couldn't confirm the functionality...

Mouse Wheel Method

The option to select from only three available sizes wasn’t satisfying enough, so I found another method. Make sure the desktop has the focus, just click anywhere on the desktop before starting this process. Press & hold Ctrl on the keyboard, Scroll with the mouse wheel up or down to get the desired size.
 
Drop the resolution on the monitor so it isn't maxed out.

My 32" TV at 1920x1080 IMO is just on the other side of the sweet spot but it is a way to go assuming your desk is deep enough to set it a little further than you can reach.
 
If you open 'Personalize' then click on 'Window Color', click on the 'Item' drop down and select 'Icon'. You can increse its size and text size. Also change spacing.
 
If you open 'Personalize' then click on 'Window Color', click on the 'Item' drop down and select 'Icon'. You can increase its size and text size. Also change spacing.

You can also go the 'Screen Resolution' screen, then 'Make text and other.....larger'

Neither of these affect what I'm after. Take a look at the screenshot (I know I need to clean up my desktop).
 
Code:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Create 'ThumbnailSize' as a Dword value.

Value are in pixels and range from 0x20 (32) to 0x100 (256) with the default being 0x60 (96) - or possibly it defaults to the overall screen DPI?

Outside the valid range, you just get the default (I checked).

Having said all that, it looks very much to me that the GUI is already giving you the maximum of 256 pixels per thumbnail, so you may have to consider a third party tool for your image browsing.
 
Thanks time, that is exactly what I was looking for. And you are correct, it is already at the maximum and setting it any higher defaults. Bummer.
 
The first thing that comes to my mind is that both Picasa and ACDsee will generate thumbnails, but Picasa doesn't seem to allow me to directly change thumbnail size and the version of ACDsee I have here (and still use!) is 16 years old.

That said, 256x256 is absolutely enormous for something that's meant to just be a preview; 65,536 pixels is what, 8% of a 1024x768 screen?
 
It is enourmous for a preview, and yes I am trying to use something in a method other than directed, but it allows me to skip photo browsing programs altogether and go straight in to a RAW editor.
 
Perhaps the right answer is to find some tool that will generate previews of arbitrary size and run it against your source library in a script? The difficulty I see with that is linking the smaller preview to the larger source file, but it might make for a faster, better experience anyway.
 
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