{"id":25135,"date":"2021-06-14T16:17:01","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T15:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurnsearch.wordpress.com\/?p=25135"},"modified":"2021-06-14T16:17:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T15:17:01","slug":"how-to-extract-windows-explorer-thumbnail-previews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/2021\/06\/14\/how-to-extract-windows-explorer-thumbnail-previews\/","title":{"rendered":"How to extract Windows Explorer thumbnail previews"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to extract Windows Explorer thumbnail previews from a specific Windows folder, using old-school desktop freeware:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Install the freeware Q-Dir<\/a>, a quad-view Windows Explorer replacement. This has a useful “print the folder as you see it” feature, something lacking in Windows Explorer.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Use Q-Dir to navigate to your chosen folder. Show the folder with medium or large thumbnails, as you prefer. Then print the folder view to a Microsoft .XPS file, using Q-Dir. The .XPS format was Microsoft’s attempt at a .PDF rival, and all Windows installations should be able to print to it.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Now install the little freeware utility STDU Extractor<\/a> and load the .XPS file you just printed. This utility can extract images inside several formats, including from .XPS files. STDU will show you a preview of the available thumbnails and let you extract as .PNG files or in other image formats. For some reason its batch extract is very<\/em> slow, but the individual select-and-extract is fast.<\/p>\n

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For batch processing of a folder with thousands of Windows thumbnail previews, you’re probably looking at an overnight job — due the slowness of batch in STDU Extractor. The workflow is more useful if you just want a few dozen at a uniform size, and without faffing around trying to manually take exactly-sized screenshots. As you can see from the above final-output example, the drop-shadow is also extracted. But neatly so.<\/p>\n

What you don’t get is the extracted thumbnail being given the name of the file it represents. So far as I can tell, no such software exists for that sort of extraction.<\/p>\n

So long as you have software that gives you Windows Explorer previews for its file-types, the above workflow can work even on files that are not images. For instance, the above test is with an E-on Vue 2016 3D scene file.<\/p>\n

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Saving the .XPS to .PDF and extracting images from that will not work. The preview thumbnails become fragmented into strips by the PDF printing process.<\/p>\n

There are also freeware extractors that will attempt to load the Windows thumbnails .db database in the Windows ..\/System folder and extract from that. But that’s ‘pot luck’, even if you can get them to open. The above can target a specific folder and a few specific icons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to extract Windows Explorer thumbnail previews from a specific Windows folder, using old-school desktop freeware: 1. Install the freeware …<\/p>\n

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