If you shoot photos in raw format and want to be able to view the thumbnails in Windows Explorer, you need to install a codec pack that can handle the raw formats.
For example I’ve been using Nikon’s lately and their raw image format is .NEF If you do not have a codec pack installed to handle .NEF’s then if you are in thumbnail view in Windows Explorer browsing a folder of photos, you will not see thumbnails.
For a long time a popular codec pack was FastPictureViewer Codec Pack which was free for individual use. However I found out that they are no longer offering the free version. The least expensive version they offer, 1 license meaning 1 computer, is $10 which I would have been happy to pay.
But then if you need to use it on more than one computer, a 3 computer license is around $27 which to me is a little steep. I like supporting developers but shelling out almost $30 is just too much.
It turns out that the last free version of the Codec Pack was version 1.70 and I was actually able to find a place to download it.
I also noticed another problem recently – I’m not entirely sure what caused it but I think it was that I installed Nikon ViewNX which is their image viewer. But I think it also installs some really, really crappy codec pack that causes thumbnail loading in Windows Explorer to take a really long time.
Today I uninstalled ViewNX and all other Nikon software and sure enough the thumbnails are loading fine again in Explorer. But I also updated to FastPictureViewer Codec Pack 1.70 (had been using 1.65 for a long time) which perhaps helped.
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