Is there no way to cycle through images in Finder?

I want image folders to be in Icon view and then be able to view the pics and cycle through them in the same order that they are sorted in Finder.
Basic image viewing essentially.

I recently switched to OS X and realised there is almost no way to achieve this, so I'm guessing there are some workflow differences at play.

I've already tried the usual things:

1. Quick Look does not cycle through the images (pressing right arrow - next only works till end of "line", so 4-5 images tops in icon view).

2. Quick Look + Tab key does not help either, since while this DOES cycle all the way through, it ONLY does so in Alphabetical order.

3. Coverflow. Ugh

4. List view + Quick Look + Down arrow works but then you lose the icon previews, so its kinda pointless for image files.

Is everyone on OS X using some other method? iPhoto?

Thanks

Preview can be used for much more than just a quick glance at one image file when you get out of the habit using it like on a windows machine. To open up the power of Preview I keep it on the dock so it is handy all the time (doesn't have to be open and running). Select the group of files you want to see or just drag the whole folder to the dock and drop on Preview. Preview will open with all the images in a side bar and some buttons at the top by the Search box. One is called thumbnails and you can drag the divider bar to change the size. By dropping multiple files on Preview you can now do Batch operations too, like Adjust the size or flip and rotate. You can easily Crop images and do Color Adjusts in Preview as well. I also use Preview to "Annotate" screen shots by adding boxes, circles, arrows and text when I need to. I try to use the features that came on my Mac when possible. I believe they were designed to work well together and I don't need to run a lot of 3rd party software to try and force my Mac to act like Windows machine. Another way is to open Finder in column view and under Finders View menu Select "Show Icons, Show Icons Preview and Show Preview Column". This will let you see a good sized thumbnail and you can use the arrow keys to scroll up and down the list.

I use quick view from List View. Personal I never use icon view on any platform.

If I want more comprehensive features I use Preview (as per Pomeroy's post) or primarily Picasa (which I use to organise all my pics - don't like the bespoke library method that iPhoto uses).

Finder+Quicklook/Preview don't really satisfy the basic image viewing use case though.

All I need is picture viewing like in FB, G+, Flickr, Picasa, Explorer or Nautilus. Any photo utility elsewhere basically

You have icons sorted by date. You can then open any image and then go next, next, next to cycle through them. That's all

Lets say you have 200 vacation pictures sorted by date (so that they aren't mixed and jumbled)
You have them in Icon view so that you can see which picture is which
You want to view couple of pics that catch your eye (6 pictures taken in the bar, 4 on the beach) etc.

How do I do that with Quicklook or Preview? I can't open all 200 in preview and then scroll 200 pics down the single column on the sidebar.

Any suggestions?

I use quick view from List View. Personal I never use icon view on any platform.

Click to expand...

This! Every single Mac person I spoke to IRL has this workflow but thing is, I don't see how it works.

How would you know which image is which in List view? Consider the 200 vacation pics example, you wouldn't know which ones to click on.

I use List view myself in Documents, Music and Videos but (in my very personal opinion), Pictures make most sense in icon view, which is why the vast majority of platforms (Web, desktop and Mobile) use icon view for pictures.

I'm genuinely interested in how to make List view work better to optimise image viewing

All I need is picture viewing like in FB, G+, Flickr, Picasa, Explorer or Nautilus.

Click to expand...

Then use Picasa . . . . .

Or make thumbnails bigger in icon view.

This! Every single Mac person I spoke to IRL has this workflow but thing is, I don't see how it works.

How would you know which image is which in List view? Consider the 200 vacation pics example, you wouldn't know which ones to click on.

Click to expand...

How do you do it in Explorer? (assuming that's where the origin of your workflow lies)

You want to view couple of pics that catch your eye (6 pictures taken in the bar, 4 on the beach) etc.

How do I do that with Quicklook or Preview? I can't open all 200 in preview and then scroll 200 pics down the single column on the sidebar.

Click to expand...

Select the ones you're interested in (use shift, CMD + click or click and drag etc), then right-click - Open in Preview or assign a shortcut key for the same

How do you do it in Explorer? (assuming that's where the origin of your workflow lies)

Click to expand...

Select the ones you're interested in (use shift, CMD + click or click and drag etc), then right-click - Open in Preview or assign a shortcut key for the same

Click to expand...

In Explorer (or FB or Flickr or G+), you can click any on any pic and it opens up in an image viewer. Now if you click next, it just goes onto the next pic sequentially.

This does not happen on the Mac.

So in Explorer or the other Web based image albums, you can simply click on whichever pic you like and start viewing from there. Then stop if you find irrelevant images (50 pics that do not have you in them ) and then pick up back from where you want.

On the Mac, you have to multi select and pre-open then if you want to cycle through them, but even then if I press CMD+Click/drag, I'll have to keep doing it for every set of 3-4 pics I want to view in an album. Or else I'll have to skim the whole album and decide before hand exactly which ones I want and then view only those. (since Preview has only opened those).

Let me make it even easier to understand
I want iOS like browsing! (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch)

I agree it's a pain/shame Quickview doesn't auto-move to the next row in icon view.

But you could try list view but with large icons
Or
Picasa as a third party option.

All the examples you give are third party solutions with the exception of Windows Explorer and the image viewer in there uses a large thumbnail view not an icon view.

But you could try list view but with large icons

Click to expand...

Oh that'd be a nice solution

How do I go about making them bigger? I can't find the option in Lion.
(If you meant the two available choices in "Show view options", they can best be described as S and XS, both don't allow differentiation between photos and are hence of very limited usefulness). I'm guessing you're referring to some other option?

All the examples you give are third party solutions with the exception of Windows Explorer and the image viewer in there uses a large thumbnail view not an icon view.

Click to expand...

No all First-party

iOS (iPhone, iPad, iTouch's default Gallery view)
Linux (Nautilus for Gnome, Dolphin for KDE)
Facebook (Its web based Albums feature)
Google+ (Same as above)
Flickr (Same)
Picasa (Same as above, I meant Web Picasa, not the desktop app )
Explorer (Sorry for the confusion, I called it Icon view because both OS X and Windows call 'that view' Icon view in Finder and Explorer, though yes, it displays Thumbnails and not "icons")

I suspect we're at an impass if we're going to disagree over what constitutes 3rd party. I'd say not built into the OS but you're examples cover web based java/HTML 5 etc solutions.

Again I doubt we'll get anywhere debating what constitutes a large or small icon.

You clearly have a very specific need/want to dip in and out of images on a regular basis that I can't resolve for you without you at least trying an additional application.

Perhaps someone else will be able to suggest a solution that suits your particular workflow

I suspect we're at an impass if we're going to disagree over what constitutes 3rd party. I'd say not built into the OS but you're examples cover web based java/HTML 5 etc solutions.

Click to expand...

No I agree first party = built into OS

What I was explaining when I referred to them is the experience they deliver natively (on their own platforms). So like FB image viewer built into FB (hence a first party solution to FB) rather than FB requiring users to use a separate web app to view pics. I din't mean an FB app on OS X (which would obviously make it a 3rd party solution).

I don't mind using 3rd party tools. I tried Picasa and it indeed does what I want. I was just wondering if it could be done natively without third part tools. (Like how Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, WP do it)

I'll try iPhoto as well, I think it does the same as Picasa apart from the small matter of making copies of everything in its own database

I have a checkered past with iPhoto (is 'hate' too stronger a word?) but I do like Picasa as it just monitors the selected folder structure and updates the library without having to create a bespoke library like iPhoto does.

You have, however, got me thinking about a solution to the QuickLook 'wraparound' issue. I'm going to keep trying to find a workaround for this.....

Yea I think I'll take your advice and stick to Picasa. iPhoto locks me into Apple's ecosystem and creates copies of everything that I then have to worry about separately. Its like the iTunes of photos

Thanks for looking into the Quicklook thing for me. Truly appreciate it. Sorry about the first party confusion . Its just that this really flummoxed me since every other Desktop OS/Mobile OS/Web based viewer handles it in the exact same way (including Apple''s own iDevices) and OS X has a very different approach to it and most long term Mac users have adapted to these patterns by looking at photos in List view!! and/or sorted by name!! which I find hard to understand.

I think this might be a clear case of Apple simply not intending the Finder to be used as a image viewer and expects users to use iPhoto for any kind of photo viewing. That would explain why Finder/Quicklook/Preview lack basic album viewing functionality (quicklook wraparound for instance). I think Apple only wants Preview/Quicklook to be used just as the name suggests, to preview/look at ONE pic at a time. For flipping through albums, they provide iPhoto.

What I'm trying to do here is probably analogous to trying to get iTunes playlists feature by using Quicklook on audio files

I use Quicklook with Finder as my image viewer and love it. Works perfectly for me. I never use icon view for anything. I use list view. Just highlight any one of your 200 photos and hit the spacebar. Then use the up down arrows to cycle through all your photos.

Jaygray said:

I use Quicklook with Finder as my image viewer and love it. Works perfectly for me. I never use icon view for anything. I use list view. Just highlight any one of your 200 photos and hit the spacebar. Then use the up down arrows to cycle through all your photos.

Click to expand...

No disrespect meant but we've covered that.

The OP, reasonably, want's to see the icon view to get an idea of the image content and then to use quicklook to show a bigger preview.

I suggested list view but you lose the ability to see a small, usable, image preview

I use Quicklook with Finder as my image viewer and love it. Works perfectly for me. I never use icon view for anything. I use list view. Just highlight any one of your 200 photos and hit the spacebar. Then use the up down arrows to cycle through all your photos.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Jay

I slowly had this realization that long term Mac users tend to always be in List view and indeed, Quicklook works fine then. But it breaks down in Icon view since it doesn't move to next items always.

List view is probably the best view for Docs, Music and Videos, however I reckon Icon view is objectively better for Pictures (since you can actually see in advance what you wanna look at, imagine trying to hunt a group of 5 bar photos from a bunch of 200 pics of a night out ). That's why I think even Apple's new platforms (iOS, along with most desktop/mobile/web competitors) almost lock you into Icon mode for photos without even the option for list view.

I think this is a fundamental difference in workflow that I stumbled upon and made it hard for people to easily understand just what it was that I was trying to achieve.

Solution for me (so far) is to probably use a dedicated app (Picasa preferrably or iPhoto if databases are not an issue) as Finder/Quicklook/Preview combo just isn't the right tool for this job I guess.

Found this on another thread

"You don't even need to bother opening Preview if you're running Leopard or Snow Leopard (which I presume you are).

I routinely "examine" photo folders by selecting all the photos in the folder (command-a), then pressing the spacebar. Instant little slideshow (can be made full screen, paused, manually controlled etc). This is called QuickLook and its very useful"

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/im...-app-how-cycle-through-all-photos-folder.html

I found this on another thread, and I think this is exactly what you were looking for. You have to select everything first, but then it goes in sequential order, without the frustration of having to click over or be on the wrong photo!

Yay!

bellefleur, welcome to the forum! You might want to note that this thread was from 2012, so they probably found a solution by now.

Just trying to be helpful for people who google search old forums for answers, like me earlier this morning.