View pictures as thumbnails

I was wondering if there is any way to view the contents of a folder (my pictures folder in this case) as thumbnails. It's very annoying when I go to look for a pic in my Pictures folder and have to keep double clicking on different ones to get a preview. When you are looking to change the desktop wallpaper in Preferences and you navigate to a folder with images in it, it shows the images, is there a way to do this while looking at any folder in finder?

Open the Finder window
Goto the directory where you have the image items.
On top of the Finder window you will see 3 different browse options. From there select the leftmost.
Click and choose the "Show View Options" from the button right of Browse mode buttons.
Check "Icon Preview Option"

You can also adjust the size of the preview by adjusting the "Icon Size"

AWESOME!!! Thank you so much Novice.

You can get a neat light table effect when you have your thumbnails in view press command and j which brings you to the view options dialogue.

You can adjust the thumbnail size. Also you can make the background colour Black which makes the pictures stand out better or you can even have another picture as a background if you like . This function only works in icon view mode

Browse iPhoto lib without starting iPhoto

I've just found a way to Browse my entire iPhoto library without starting iPhoto

If you fire up Automator and select iPhoto in the libraries column.

click on "ask for photo" on the actions column drag and drop it into the workflow pane.

Go to the File menu and " save as plug in " Name the file "iPhoto browser "Make sure the plug in is set to finder .

In use Cmd click or right click on the desktop to browse your library.

Thanks to "think mac .net" for this

thumbnail icon previews

I don't know why, BUT I did discover a fix!

Simply "right click" the Finder icon while holding the Option key, and choose Relaunch.

After relaunching, Finder was able to draw thumbnail icon previews again.

Bonus, Press SpaceBar while highlighting a file