Saves jpg: Thumpnail issue

[obaeyens Profile]

There is an issue when you save the rendered output to a jpg, then Windows 8.1.1 shows the original image as thumbnail instead of the rendered.
Only when you open it you see the real image. It is really annoying because you have no idea where you rendered image is unless you open each one of them.

However a program like ACDSee does show the rendered thumbnail.

[admin]

We don't include a thumbnail in our saved jpgs, so the thumbnail you see will have been generated by windows from the full image. If you have saved over the original image, perhaps windows is caching the old thumbnail.

Tony

[obaeyens Profile]

No other program I know have this issue.
And I have saved it in a different folder so it is not a caching issue directly.

I am wondering if internally in the jpg there is some kind of GUID (metadata) that stays the same in the different so Windows 8.1.1 thinks that it is the same.

[eadams Profile]

I also find this very annoying - unfortunately, I don't have a solution.

[admin]

That's very strange. I've been unable to reproduce the problem. Eadams: which version of windows are you using? Also could anyone give exact steps to reproduce the problem?

Tony

[obaeyens Profile]

I have Windows 8.1.1

The step is just:
1. Open a jpg
2. Perform some action
3. Save as jpg

And view it in Windows explorer directly. (View large icons)

You basically get the exact same large icon as the original image.

However I did notice that if you open one of the processed images in another application, then save as another name.
Then the thumbnails could sometimes update to the correct representation.

Only Smart Photo Editor gives this issue.

The danger here is that I might incorrectly remove files because I think they are older copies.

[eadams Profile]

I did a little more experimentation, and discovered that SPE is not the only program that this happens with.

I have Windows 8.1.

I created (in Photoshop) a simple jpg. consisting of a red flower shape on a white background. The thumbnail of the saved file displays correctly.
I opened the .jpg in SPE and applied the effect Fiery which turned the image into a green flower shape on a black background. The thumbnail of the saved SPE rendition is the same as the original file.
I opened the original .jpg again in Topaz Restyle and changed the color to a blue flower shape on a sand-colored background. The thumbnail of the saved Topaz rendition is the same as the original file.
I opened the original .jpg again in OnOne Photo Suite and changed it to a B&W and added a border. The thumbnail of the saved OnOne rendition reflects the changes in the file.

See screenshot of Windows Explorer. You can see that OnOne apparently does something to embed an updated thumbnail. I can see the correct rendition of the thumbnail in the Details pane on the right, but of course it is necessary to click on each and every file to see what they really look like.

screenshot.JPG (26.97 KiB) Viewed 11042 times

There is an interesting discussion of this common phenomenon in the Microsoft Windows forum http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-pictures/windows-7-pictures-thumbnails-not-update-after/a0e3d69b-bd7a-48be-ad2f-3837fa09a48b?page=2 and several people suggested workarounds. For example, my image's thumbnail was originally saved as a medium-sized icon. So if I change the setting in Windows Explorer to display Large or Extra Large Icons, the icons are re-created and display correctly.

Here you can see the icons displayed correctly as large icons:

screenshot1.JPG (33.08 KiB) Viewed 11042 times

[obaeyens Profile]

Is it only from jpg to jpg?

[eadams Profile]

obaeyens asked: Is it only from jpg to jpg?

I don't know the answer to that for sure, but I think so because all the complaints I have found in forums refer to JPG files having incorrect thumbnails.

The best explanation I have found is in the Windows forum link I posted previously. See the explanation provided by user Axel Rietschin on page 1 of the thread. I assume this is the same Axel Rietschin who developed the commercial FastPictureViewer Codec pack (enabling the display of image thumbnails for PSD files instead of the blue PS logo), so he knows what he is talking about.

I quote:

Axel Rietschin: "some files have ready-made embedded thumbnails which are simply extracted by the system to create the Small and Medium thumbnails that gets cached to the system-managed shared thumbnail cache. Those files typically are out-of-camera JPEGs. Large and Extra-Large thumbnails are created by reducing the full-size image (or a preview of it, when the underlying format supports these, e.g. raw files) as the embedded thumbnails are typically too small to generate high quality Large/Extra-Large thumbnails.

Dumb software may fail to recreate the embedded thumbnail when saving the file (and simply copy the original embedded thumbnail to the saved file instead), as a result the thumbnail cache, which relies on the embedded thumbnail when present, keeps using what happens to be an out-of-date version of the embedded thumbnail and creates the Small/Medium cached thumbnails from it, so clearing the thumbnail cache has no effect.

When there is no embedded thumbnail, Small/Medium/Large and Extra-Large cached thumbnails are all made from the full (or preview) image and thus reflect any edits made.

This is clearly a bug in the editing applications, which fail to keep the embedded thumbnail in-sync with the full image, or fail to remove the now obsolete embedded thumbnail when saving a file."

Judging from an experiment I made, Photoshop writes a thumbnail into a JPG file, and that thumbnail persists even if the file is saved in another format.
1. I created a .JPG file in Photoshop.
2. I opened the .JPG file in SPE, made changes to the file and saved it as a .TIF file. The thumbnail of the TIF file displays correctly, reflecting the changes I made in SPE.
3. I opened the same .TIF file in SPE, made some changes and saved it under a different name as a .JPG. The thumbnail reverted to the original JPG thumbnail that was generated when the file was first created as a JPG in Photoshop.

According to my (admittedly limited) understanding of the issue, the developers of SPE should be able to add the ability of the program to replace the embedded thumbnail in a JPG or at least to remove it so that Windows would have to create a new thumbnail based on the full-sized image.

[DBenterprises Profile]

Never have had this problem but then I am a W7 user. Also, Fast Stone is my default viewer. My thumbnails are always correct whether they are showing as a DNG, Tif or Jpg. Properties show they are Fast Stone DNG or Fast Stone Tif or Fast Stone Jpg.