Viewing "Online only" file in Adobe Bridge

https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101001012/cant-preview-photos-in-dropbox-folder-when-files-are-online-only/826416

Viewing thumbnails in finder, bridge, etc locally for online-only files has been a constant pain for so many users for so long now, is anything being worked on for this?!

Yes, I know that you can alledgedly generate a thumbnail if you make the file offline, then online-only again.

No, it doesn't work consistently. Some files get thumbnails, some don't. Some load quickly, others continue to load for ages.

How about a right-click "Generate Thumbnail"?

The disruption to work this causes when dealing with large image files is maddening.

This should be treated as a known bug.

This needs to be revisited across the board, in Finder, Bridge, whatever. The experience of viewing thumbnails for online-only images is so totally inconsistent and frustrating. There has to be a way to just cache thumbnails for everything reliably. If there isn't one, give us a right-click to Generate Thumbnail. 😠

Yep, totally agree.

If osx can see/grab the thumbnails then we must find a way for Dropbox to see the thumbnails too.

I may have to leave Dropbox after years of use if the thumbnails can't be viewed in Bridge.

This needs to be revisited and looked into seriously since Dropbox and Adobe Bridge are both used in a daily workflow hand in hand.  In no way is it practical for a user to download every image JUST TO SEE A THUMBNAIL PREVIEW.

Dropbox must find out why thumbnails can be previewed in the mac Finder window, but NOT when viewed in Adobe Bridge.  Instead, they show up as generic image placeholders.  Who must we reach out to to get a proper response and a bug report submitted? 

As mentioned previously, Finder most likely contains some form of cache of the file thumbnail, which might take a little time to preview.

Regardless, as Adobe Bridge is a third party application, if it requests any information on a file, then the Dropbox desktop application would detect this as a request for the file and would download it to your machine.

I don't think that's what's happening. Here's why.

I'm in Bridge with no thumbnails of some jpegs.

Then I right click on one of the files, to reveal the files in a  Finder window.

The folder window opens with all files having no thumbnails in the window, but just the little cloud icon on the corner of each file.

All of a sudden, all of the files refresh with their thumbnails, while still maintaining the cloud icon on each file.

If Finder can show thumbnails (and update these thumbnails without downloading the files), why would Bridge not be able to?

There may be a cached version of the thumbnail in Finder itself the last time it was previewed, so it doesn't need to download the file from Dropbox. Adobe Bridge most likely can't access these cached images from Finder.

Thanks for the info.

With online-only files, how is it that the OSX Finder can see the thumbnails but Adobe Bridge cannot?

Cheers

Hi sherridge, as file thumbnails aren't included in online-only files, any program that requests information on online-only files, such as viewing a thumbnail, will force the file to download to your machine. This would also apply to Adobe Bridge.