Several OSX frustrations...

I am loving my new MacBook with a few exceptions. If you can offer any help, I'd be very grateful.

1) The Optimize button often resizes the window to be extremely small or narrow, even when there are hundreds of files within the folder, such as photos. I end up having to manually drag the bottom right corner to make the window bigger. I am also one who enjoys/prefers working in full screen windows. Is there any way to customize the finder so that clicking the optimize button opens the window to the full screen size?

2) Clicking on Actual Size in Preview often does not display photos in their actual size. For example, every photo taken with my G6 only displays at about a 4 MP resolution, while I shot them all at 7 MP, and the exif data reveals as such. All of my shots with my 30D, however, display to the true 8 MP resolution. I'm wondering if this is a problem with the files themselves, or with Preview.

3) Dragging and dropping a folder has recently started "cutting and pasting" whereas before it was just making a copy. Now I must manually click on Copy for each file that I drag. Is there a way to change this?
Thanks again for any help you can offer on these three problems.

Take care!

well, not sure about the top two, but for #3, have you partitioned your hard drive, or are you working with an external at all? maybe you got used to the copying between partitions? files on the same partition when dragged and dropped should move by default. files between partitions copy; same as - gasp - windows...

eric said:

well, not sure about the top two, but for #3, have you partitioned your hard drive, or are you working with an external at all? maybe you got used to the copying between partitions? files on the same partition when dragged and dropped should move by default. files between partitions copy; same as - gasp - windows...

Click to expand...

Yes, I WAS working with an external HD, as I had loaded the photos from that HD, but that was BEFORE. The files I was moving were on the Mac HD at the time, and I was simply trying to copy them from one folder to another, by dragging and dropping. Is this not the way it is supposed to work? Or is 'Move' the default when you drag and drop on the same partition?

like i said, same partition = move default.
different partition = copy default.

you can do a copy on the same partition by holding option then click/hold and drag the file where you want it (might be easiest with two finder windows open).

looks like one of your issues may be solved.

If you drag the bottom-right corner to fill the screen, the green button should then toggle the size between full-screen and smaller.

Quest said:

1) The Optimize button often resizes the window to be extremely small or narrow, even when there are hundreds of files within the folder, such as photos. I end up having to manually drag the bottom right corner to make the window bigger. I am also one who enjoys/prefers working in full screen windows. Is there any way to customize the finder so that clicking the optimize button opens the window to the full screen size?

Click to expand...

It's called the Zoom button, actually. ;p

In theory, it's supposed to resize the window to the "ideal" size, as in the size to display everything in the window.

However, the Finder's Zoom doesn't quite work all the time.
This is especially true in Icon View, when it fails to judge the distance, and you end up with a scrollbar that can only scroll a few pixels.
(There's this other bug where sometimes, if you keep clicking Zoom, the window becomes horizontally smaller and smaller.)

It's a little better and less prone to error in List View.

No, there is no way to make it become a "toggle to full screen" button.

However, if you prefer your windows to have a large size, just set your "starting points" folders to a large size.

For instance, open Macintosh HD (or whatever you've called your hard drive) on the Desktop.
Resize it to the size you usually want your windows to be.
Now close it. (if you navigate to another folder instead, sometimes, it'll "forget" the size you've set in the first folder)
Now, Macintosh HD will always open with that size.

Set Macintosh HD and your Home folder to those sizes, since these are the folders that you usually "start in."

Quest said:

2) Clicking on Actual Size in Preview often does not display photos in their actual size. For example, every photo taken with my G6 only displays at about a 4 MP resolution, while I shot them all at 7 MP, and the exif data reveals as such. All of my shots with my 30D, however, display to the true 8 MP resolution. I'm wondering if this is a problem with the files themselves, or with Preview.

Click to expand...

I don't know about digicam picture files, but I have once experienced a similar error in Preview, where it shows some scans I made at about 50% zoom when I click Actual Size.

Try the Xee image viewer:
http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/xee.html
-browse pictures in the same folder
-very customizable (can change all the keyboard shortcuts)

Quest said:

3) Dragging and dropping a folder has recently started "cutting and pasting" whereas before it was just making a copy. Now I must manually click on Copy for each file that I drag. Is there a way to change this?

Click to expand...

On both Mac OS X and Windows:

dragging between folders of the same drive = move
dragging between folders of different drives = copy

However,
you can hold the Command key to "force" move,
and hold the Option key to "force" copy.
(You can also hold Command Option to make an alias.)