Windows Vista > Photoshop Preview Handler
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Introduction
Preview handler is the latest methodology in Microsoft Windows Vista™, which provide a rich, interactive, and read-only preview of a file without having to launch the associated application. The in-place interactive previews of the file are available in the Explorer windows, common dialogs, and search results. The core feature is integrated into Windows Vista Shell which allows developers to extend this functionality by writing managed code add-ins i.e. preview handlers for custom files.
For example, "a Microsoft Word 2007 Preview Handler" will enable a user to view and interact with a Microsoft Word 2007 document (.docx file) without having to launch Microsoft Word 2007. In fact, you don't even need Microsoft Word 2007 or Office 2007 to see the preview if you have the related preview handler - now that's amazing.
This article describes a preview handler for Adobe Photoshop® (PSD) file. Here is how the preview of a PSD file will look like in the preview pane
The goal
When the user clicks on a Photoshop file (vista_adobe.psd) in the Windows Explorer
- A "readonly" preview of the file will be shown in the preview pane
- Image "Dimension" and "number of layers" in the PSD file will be shown in the "tooltip"
- Resolution, Color Depth, & Compression information of the file will be available to the user
All this occurs without the Adobe Photoshop application.
References
- New Shell Interfaces for Windows Vista
- Architecture of Preview handlers
- View Data Your Way With Our Managed Preview Handler Framework - Stephen Toub
- Managed Preview Handler Framework for Vista and Outlook - Daniel Moth
- Request for Adobe Photoshop SDK here
- Photoshop File Format specification
- Photoshop parser in c++ - Ihaml
- Reading Adobe Photoshop images - Igor Tolmachev.
Article History
- Mar 29, 2007: First published
- Apr 01, 2007: Content revised
