# Basic Thumbnail Previews

### Generating Basic Image Thumbnails

Unlike the KDE file manager, Konqueror, Pixie does not by default automatically make thumbnail previews when entering a folder. This is because it can be extremely annoying to automatically start generating thumbnails when entering a folder of several hundred, (or thousand!), images. Your system will be slower while all those previews are being generated. Konqueror does a good job at minimizing this overhead by doing the thumbnail generation in a separate process but the disk is still being used.

Images without a preview are represented by a picture of the the PixiePlus logo. If you want to see the thumbnail previews you need to press the "Create Thumbnails" button on the toolbar. The progressbar on the bottom will indicate how many you have to make.

An image without a preview and with a preview

Pixie uses persistant thumbnails. This means once you make thumbnail previews you don't have to remake them every time you enter a folder. If you have a couple thousand images it can take awhile to make all the thumbnails, but once finished Pixie is very fast at viewing them from then on. Pixie features an optimized demand-loaded thumbnail preview loader specifically oriented to dealing with hundreds or thousands of previews.

If making thumbnails is taking too long you can press the stop button. Any thumbnails you already made will stay valid.

### Setting The Thumbnail Size

Pixie supports four different thumbnail sizes:

- Huge 120x120
- Large 90x90 - the default.
- Medium 64x64
- Small 48x48

To select the size you want use the "View" item on the menubar, then select the "Thumbnail Size" submenu. Larger previews are higher quality but take up more space, while smaller previews are harder to see but you can fit more inside the browser window.

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