orange jacobus

Looking for help viewing external files

Greetings! Bear with me here...totally new to Mac (and posting in forums) and not tech savvy in the least.

I have a (new to me) MacBook Pro and I do a lot of photography. I have an external hard drive that I am printing from. My (remedial) question is:
How do I view the folders on my hard drive as larger thumbnails vs a generic icon of a folder with the name on it? I'm switching over from Windows and used to be able to view multiple images in the folder as larger thumbnails. It was really convenient when looking for the images I wanted.
Thanks to anyone that can help.

If I am understanding your question correctly you have a folder full of images and want to view a larger thumbnail of the image. If that's the case try the following:

1. Double-click the folder to open it.
2. Single click an image you want to view.
3. Tap the spacebar

A large view of the image should open. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through other files in the folder. This feature is called Quick Look. I'm sure there are other ways to do what you want but this is the one I use m most often. The same method works with a variety of file types (e.g. sound files and some movie types play).

Slydude is correct that Quick Look will let you see images and other type file quick. But you can only view them and not do any editing. I keep Preview on the dock and if you are working on photos you might find it really handy for quick views and edits as well. Preview will do what you tell it, if you you open a photo with it that's what you will see, but if you open a folder with it, or drag a folder to the dock and drop on it, you will see all the photos in Previews side bar. If they don't show in the side bar go up to Preview's menu bar and under View select Thumbnails or Contact Sheet. Then you can use the arrow keys to get around and Delete, Rename, move or other edits. 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. Preview is often over looked and it can do a lot when you drop a folder or a bunch on images on it at one time.

Another way is to use Finder, and select the Cover Flow view. Cover Flow is the rightmost icon in the first bunch of icons on the Finder toolbar and looks like this:



Once you have that view, you can slide left and right and the files will show as thumbnails in the finder display. You can make the images larger by expanding the window they are in with the bottom bar of the window, just drag it to where you want.

I knew you guys would come through with some of the other options.

Preview is a great option if you need to do some basic editing in addition to view ing the files.

@Jake thanks for thew reminder about Cover Flow view. I don't use that one often.

Sly, nor do I, but on that occasion when I am looking for a particular image it's brilliant.

When you are in Finder along the top, select View, this will give you the optio to view items as icons.

Thank you for taking the time to help. I'm going to check that out right now.