Enable Thumbnail view for PSD files

By default, You can not get the preview of Photoshop PSD files in Windows 7 Explorer. They will look like this Screenshot (The thumbnail you can see is of a PNG file):

We will perform some trick to enable the thumbnail preview of these PSD files in Windows 7 without any need of softwares.

 

Enable Thumbnail view for PSD files : Steps

Download this open source dll file (new page will open). You will get something like this:

Step 2
Note: This method currently might not work for Windows 7 64 bit (please read the comments). We are trying to solve the problem, we will update the method as soon we get it universally working. (31/03/2010).
Differs a bit in 32 bit and 64 bit.

For 32 bit:

Place it in :

For 64 bit:

Place it in :

Paste it :

Step 3

Open notepad; Copy the code given below:

For 32 bit:

For 64 bit:

Now save it as “psdreg.reg” (Without quotes. Change file type to all files, otherwise it will be a text file):

Double click it and accept security prompt; Windows will inform you the values has been added:

Check your PSD files now:

Note:

1. Dont follow this method if you have folders containing GBs of PSD files; particularly if individual file size is like me (See first screenshot).

2. It will slow the explorer a bit.

3. You can use paid third party tools like Ardfry Codecs for Windows Explorer . In that case, apart from Windows explorer, you can get preview of PSD in Windows Photo Viewer, Windows Media Player (Windows Media Player can open any image file: try it) , Windows Media Center etc programs. I used trial version to check:

Note:

All the needed registry files plus those registry files you need to remove thumbnail preview in Windows 7 is here, Click here to download.