Why are some photo icons dog-eared?

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Level 2

275 points

Why are some photo icons dog-eared?

Certain picture folders on my Macbook show icons of image files and the icon is dog-eared. Other icons in other folders show the pic icon with a small white border around it. When I use coverflow, the icons that are dog-eared are blurry and pixelated until I use quicklook and then it enlarges normal. The icons that are not dog-earred (and have the white border around it) are very clear in coverflow and when using quicklook. When I use "get info" the information is the same for dog-eared photo icons as well as normal ones. The same camera is being used for both types of photos. I'm using iPhoto 08 with Leopard. Any clues here? Thanks

Macbook 2.0ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Dec 5, 2007 11:15 PM

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Answer 1

Dave E

Level 4

1,250 points

Dec 5, 2007 11:51 PM in response to pete paxton

The dog-eared icons (especially lower-res) were probably added by some old-school photo editor/importer. The Classic Mac OS (9 and before) often used the dog-eared icon convention for every document icon.

Photoshop and its brethren also tend to stick a custom icon on the image file. Maybe the software that was installed with your camera does that too. This is not required on Leopard as the OS takes care of the preview icon.

Some file types may be registered to be opened with a certain application, and that application would provide a convention for icons of files that belong to it.

Quicklook seems to be actually looking inside the image file, so regardless of the custom icon, the image will show up fine. Coverflow uses the icns files, which are typically in sizes from 128x128 to 32x32 or smaller. Your dog-eared icons are probably using the older 48x48 icon sizes.

Anyway, that's about all I know. Ways to remove the dog-eared icons:
Get info on the file and see what the default application is, to open the file. Make sure it's Preview.
Or, Get info and select the icon in the info window and delete. Custom icons pasted there are removed by this action and you should get the retro-photo (white bordered) look again.

Do post back if any of this makes sense and/or works.

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