Add the Ability to View Thumbnails of PSD Files in Windows Explorer

If you work with Adobe Photoshop, even half as much as you say you do.. I’m sure by now you may have noticed that you are unable to view  thumbnails of PSD files in Windows Explorer. For some unknown reason, Adobe has decided it’s best to just remove this particular functionality for Photoshop users. How amazingly thoughtful of them.

So, if you’re like me and decide you don’t want to have to open a Photoshop, or the Adobe browser, everytime you want to view a thumbnail of a PSD file.. read on.

Here’s a quick, and easy, method of  adding the ability to view thumbnails of .psd files without opening (or heck, even installing!) Adobe Photoshop.

  1. First, you need to download the necessary PSD Thumbnail Shell DLL file.
  2. UnZip the psdthumbnaildll.zip file you just downloaded, and copy that file to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell\ (if it doesn’t exist yet, create it).
  3. Download and run this registry file. It will add the necessary changes to your registry to allow the Shell to access the new Adobe DLL.
  4. Restart your system.
  5. PSD THUMBNAILS!