I’ve scanned a lot of pictures into my computer, but I have to wait forever every time I try to look at one full-size. When I double-click on the picture, I see the message “Generating Preview”, and sometimes it takes as much as a few minutes before I actually see the picture. Is there something I can do to make my scanned images show up faster?
“Generating Preview” is the generic message shown to you by Windows Picture and Fax Viewer while it sizes up a large image to be displayed on your screen. The cause of this problem is that images that are scanned into your computer with a scanner are usually very large, and need to be resized in order to fit on your computer screen. The solution is to resize your scanned images so Windows doesn’t have to.
Why does Windows Picture and Fax Viewer have to generate a preview?
Scanners usually scan images at a very high quality, so that you get the best picture possible. These high quality images are so large that at their full size, only a small portion of the image actually fits on your computer screen. Windows Picture and Fax Viewer’s job is to show you an entire image, not just a small portion, and so it must resize these large images to fit on your computer screen each time you look at them. When you have an image that is many times the size of your computer screen, it can take some time for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to down-size the image for your screen.
Do your own resizing as you scan
To eliminate the need for Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to resize these large scanned images, you can do the job yourself at the time that you scan the image. Before you save your scanned image, look at the different menu options that your scanning software presents to you. Most likely, you’ll see options for rotating images, fixing colors, and of course, resizing images. The width of your image will probably be in the thousands of pixels - this is entirely too large to fit on your computer screen. Enter a new number for width in the range of 800 - 1000 pixels.
Maintain your image’s aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is a term that refers to the numerical ratio between an image’s width and height. If you change the aspect ratio of an image, it will appear distorted. For example, take an image that’s 500×300 and change its size to 1000×300. Because this image’s height has not increased with respect to the new width, the aspect ratio has changed and the image will appear horizontally stretched.
If your scanning software automatically calculates a new height value for your image when you change the width, then your software is able to dynamically maintain aspect ratio. You’ve got nothing to worry about… save your image and be done with it. If the height does not change with the width, you’ll need to manually calculate the new height manually. You can do this with the simple equation of Aspect Ratio = Width / Height.
Your resized image will now display faster
Once you have down-sized your scanned image, save it as your normally would. The next time you try to view it with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, the need to generate a preview will be eliminated (or at least, you’ll have dramatically reduced the time it takes to generate a preview), and your image will show up on-screen much faster.
[tags]images,photos,scanning,windows picture and fax viewer[/tags]
