MysticThumbs is a small application that makes your file browser display thumbnails of lots more image types than Windows normally does by itself. Instead of viewing generic images, after the installation, the app makes it possible to view previews of RAW camera photos, SVG graphics and game texture files of unusual formats.
You can customize how the thumbnails look
The app doesn’t have an actual interface, but rather a small, plain settings window with tabs and checkboxes that is definitely focused more on function than looks. Any changes you make within the settings, you’ll see afterwards when you open File Explorer. If you were to judge the app based on this, it doesn’t look like much. The real power happens quietly inside File Explorer.
Nevertheless, the settings window is important as it lets you customize how the thumbnails should look. For starters, you can control how it handles the transparent parts of images making the thumbnails. You can make the transparent part just show a solid color you pick or keep it translucent. You can set a high DPI so the images scale on very sharp, high-resolution screens or for people who need bigger visuals because of poor eyesight.
It can create thumbnails for both files and folders
Windows already shows thumbnails for basic image formats like PNG or JPG, but for files like PSD, SVG, RAW, game textures and some PDFs, it often shows a generic icon. MysticThumbs fills that gap and it allows you to see actual mini previews of supported files instead of those plain icons.
Take note that the thumbnails can be extended to folders, as sometime Windows just doesn’t show a preview of what’s inside. Here the changes are not very significant, but rather the app can push the folder icon to show a small preview of the actual images inside, so they look more like mini galleries of their contents.